Grocery Shopping Perfected!!

   We found quite literally the last parking spot at Costco and braved the crowds for some food stocks to survive the long, moderate Willamette Valley winter. While there, Wyatt had a breakthrough whose magnitude cannot yet be appreciated. Let's just say that shopping will never be the same:

   Why on earth had I never thought of this when I was young?! I mean, younger. It's only because I am such an awesome father that Wyatt even has things like this cross his mind, really. When shopping, I am the dad that lets Wyatt ride in the shopping cart, hang on the sides like he's windsurfing, push or pull, or drive it into the little cardboad cookie stands at the ends of isles (my hope is to be all "Hey Mr. Manager these cookies are broken someone ran over them I might as well take them home," but Mr. Manager is always like "Please just call me Bob."
   Anyways, this method of cart transportation was fun, had Wyatt out of the way and safe and always nearby, and garnered us both lots of attention. All the kids who were sitting in the little seats had an expression of "What have I been doing with my life?!" why they saw this.
   December 30th, 2014, the world was forever changed. By Wyatt-but-mostly-Dad Gilchrist

   This is not, however, the first potentially-world-changing event to take place in the gates of Kirkland. Do you remember my awesome idea for a reality show? I wrote about it in my other blog, you know the one that used to house all my ideas and super impressive thoughts. It pretty much died once this one started. BECAUSE THIS BLOG GETS ALMOST 60 MORE PAGE VIEWS PER DAY.
I would love to take 12 people, lock them in a Costco, and see how long they live. Months? Years? Forever? Can they build a new society?

   I've actually written-and-then-never-published a couple things over there. (I'm not linking to it because when I went back and looked it over all I thought was "sheesh this is embarassing drivel." Totally unlike this blog, which will stand the test of time.) (Okay fine you talked me into it.) Stuff like "My thoughts on the Mission Impossible Quartology: Mission is this really necessary?!" and "151 Reasons Why Bulbasaur is the Best Starting Pokemon." (Don't really, there weren't actually 151 reasons, obvs). But, when you get right down to it, no one really cares about me when this little guy is around...

Lincoln doing what Lincoln does.

I woke up planning to make pancakes. Wyatt yelled in his sleep "I want a pancake!!" I figured I'd spoil the kid until he's completely entitled and just let him wake up to it. Sadly, he woke up like an hour and a half after this was taken and wasn't impressed.

   I know those pictures are the reason you come here, but thanks for at least pretending to read some of the text.

My mood: Left out
Wyatt's mood: hungry
Lincoln's mood: sleepy/hungry. Always sleepy hungry.
Cara's mood: Milk Truck.
Listening to: Kids Bop 7 (not the best one)

Some Big Changes!!

   Well, guys, we are now a family of four. This means I've got street cred. No more do other parents see me and offer unsolicited adviceslashjudgement. None of this "Oh we only gave Bradley breast milk from Tibetan monks, but it's good you give your newborn so much Yoohoo..." because I am legit. Now, instead, parents look at me and nod with that grim look of admiration and "You're one of us now!!" with just a hint of "Darn he's handsome."

   So, yeah, there are some changes. As you've seen by now, I had my buddy Sean Lee whip up some new art to reflect my growing family. (If you'd like so see some of his work, it's found at http://shalbro.tumblr.com/tagged/original-art).

Not at all creepy, Wyatt!!

   The first place our family of four went was to the store to buy beer. This is not a lie. Wyatt really likes it!! That is a lie. Anyways, we showed up at Wal-Mart (holy crap the first time Lincoln left the house was to go to Wal-Mart to buy beer I should go to jail), and I thought "How... How do we do this?! There are two of them!! When Wy was born it took 11 bags and 45 pounds of gear to go anywhere, and now there are two of them!!" I am pretty sure that this is uncharted parenting territory, that we are the first to ever take two kids to the store at the same time. Pioneers.

   The real big change - apart from, you know, the new person in the world with us - is seeing the changes in Wyatt. We worked hard to make him excited about the new baby. Never blaming anything on him, always talking about how much fun they would have, even buying Wyatt presents from Lincoln. But when Link came, well, this was our first captured memory:

Link with his dad, Uncle Bear, Auntie Ashley, and brother Wyatt. 

   Wyatt didn't say a word to me, or anyone, when he first met his new brother. You have to understand, from the time we realized Link was coming, to the time he actually came, only a little over two hours passed. Wyatt went from hanging out at home with Ash, Mom and Dad, to having Ash take him to the hospital where a new person was out in the world.

   He was carried in by Ashley and was completely silent, still, and expressionless, except for his wide open eyes. I asked if he wanted to meet his brother ("No"), say hi to the baby ("No"), or kiss the baby (nothing). That was his first night.

   He spent the night with Ash, and asked if mom and the baby were okay all night. He was excited to come see us the next day, but was again overwhelmed by the new reality.

   But it didn't take long for him to warm up!! He spent the next few days asking about the baby, saying hi, wanting to pet and hold and kiss it, and say "Baby winkin" all the time. The best thing that happened was, of course, done by me: I meant to tell Wyatt "I have to go change your baby brother's diaper," but instead said "I have to go change your baby's diaper."

   He perked up at this, and had a huge, wondrous smile. "Oh!! It's my baby?"
I wasn't sure what to do. "Well, no, not really ... it ... um ..."
"It's not mom's baby it's my baby!"
"Sure, Wy, it's your baby."

   Since that moment, when Link was 4 days old, Wy has called him "my baby" ever since. "Daddy my baby's crying. Mommy, my baby's hungry." It is absurdly precious. He even wants us to go back to the hospital to pick up three more babies.

Wyatt's first time with mom and Lincoln. Dad's first time trying to manually focus a camera.

   (Quick little side story: Wyatt's biggest fear is being bored. When we are going to get in the car and run lots of errands, as we are climbing into the carseat he'll often exclaim "Oh no, I'm bout to be bored!!" with a lot of fear in his voice. So, when baby Link is crying, he'll say calmly "Baby sad," and when the baby is feeding or sleeping, he calmly says "Baby sleeping," but when Link is awake and still and quiet, this is when Wy freaks out. "Oh no, baby is getting bored!!" Also absurdly precious.

   In all honesty, before Lincoln was born, Wyatt was a good kid. But since he's become a big brother, he has become an outstanding kid. I mean it. He is obedient, helpful, happy, eager to do things for us, and loves to love his brother. We are going to have 12 more kids just to make him really perfect.

My mood: up all night, sleep all day
Wyatt's mood: fussy
Link's mood: sleeping a bit more at night
Cara's mood: wants to take a bath (we all want this)
Listening to: James Taylor, New Moon Shine  

Baby Feet!!

   This blog post is exactly what it sounds like. Millions and millions of pictures of baby feet. I don't know why there were so many on the camera once I loaded the pictures onto the computer, but after assessing some damage control, I think it's a problem. Like, I am concerned for my wife and her foot obsession. Check this out...

Cara took every single one of these pictures.

I am going to show them all to you. 

Some pictures are almost indistinguishable from each other.

Others are just like what?!

But no, this is not the same exact picture as the last one. She just took two of them.

This is a much better angle.

Yeah okay that's kind of cute.

I suppose they are absurdly tiny. 

Okay my plan to mock Cara is backfiring - I am becoming obsessed with baby feet.

Don't hide from me, foot!! You're too cute!!

Wait... is this the same picture as before? (No!!)

This one is!!

We told the left foot "Be plain" and the right foot "Get angry!!"

"Work that camera, left!! What are you doing, right?!!"

I need to wrap this up in a hurry.

What!? Really, Cara? Your own feet?

I didn't realize this was such a thing for you.

I mean, if you'd told me, I guess we could have worked on it.

Did you move to a new location to get a different pattern in the background?

Here's an old picture of Wyatt's feet I dug around to find. I guess I need t join the party and make this a family affair...

I wanted to try and join in the fun, but failed miserably. Socks!? What was I thinking.

Baby Lincoln Pictures!!!!

Here are more pictures than you can possible handle of Lincoln. Hope you enjoy.

 THERE ARE SEVERAL MORE AFTER THE BREAK!!

New Little Guy!!!!!!!!

   He's finally here!!

   You've just been waiting and waiting for a reason to get out of bed and turn on that computer, I know. (Pro tip: put the computer in your bed with you. Problem solved.) Well, little Lincoln James Gilchrist is here to occupy your ample spare time.

  Little Link was born in a hurry. I'll spare the gory details, but the nurses went from rolling their eyes at our urgent requests for a delivery to screaming "Get that doctor in here or I will have to deliver this baby right now!!" down the hall. This is not a joke. That was on Thursday, the 11th of December, 2014. He weighed 7 pounds, 5 ounces, was 18 inches long, came at 9:30 pm, and who on earth cares about all of these stats anyways?

   I want to have one blog post without the #sarcasm that you all love me for. I want to talk about how blessed I feel to have this family and how great my wife is and what a huge gift all of my family and Cara's family is, but even writing that last sentence made me feel a little bit nauseous, so that plan is out the window. Let's start a long lifetime of sibling comparisons:

   Can you tell which one is which? Well, the picture quality is incredibly low with the image on the right, suggesting that it came from a more primitive time when camera phones were less like cameras and more like the cameras that were sold for Game Boy Color back in the 90's. The one on the left is Link, who had more hair, darker skin tone and terrifyingly purple hands at birth, and the one on the right is Wyatt, who ears stick out a little further, has a smaller bridge to his nose, and has obviously been cleaned up a bit. The Wyatt picture was the background to my flip phone for almost three years, and was long my favorite picture ever, but I can't use words like "favorite" regarding one of my children anymore, unless I tack on some lame qualifier. "Favorite son to eat that cookie," or "favorite son who's here right now," or something.

   Now we can jump forward a bit and compare little Wyatt to not-quite-as-little dad.

   Huh. I am not sure what comparisons can be drawn from this. Both are blonde-but-getting-darker, both have on a country-folk shirt on. Let's keep going. Here's my dad, Wyatt and Lincoln's Grandpa:

Apart from the fact that this person seems to have grown up in The Land Before Color, this is pretty fun. Can we keep going? There have to be more comparisons for us to look at.

Oh! I know, we can see how I've changed from Wyatt's birth to Lincoln's birth. This should be fun! At this point I am just typing to try and fill the white space that is going to come from having this photo of my dad off to the side instead of in the middle. I know, it's pretty pathetic, but at the same time you are the one sitting there, reading this pathetic text. Heck, you're reading this pathetic blog. This is a sad day for you's everywhere.

If I put a line in between the space will fill faster.


Gosh this picture is long! I need to just keep on adding this thrilling and entertaining filler text!!


And now I realize I need stuff in between to break it up. Okay, here are two pictures of me from the two boys being born:

Oh gosh I'm sorry I had no idea this would be so creepy. That grin!! It's just... it's going to stay with you for a couple of days!! Again, Lincoln on the left, Wyatt on the right. The picture on the right is from September of 2011, when I learned yet again the wearing yellow really brings out the yellow in my teeth.

Okay, one last picture for us to play with and compare:

   Yao Ming makes Shaq look like a regular person, but what's craziest of all is that Christina Aguilera is actually 6 feet tall!!



   I don't really know how this happened. I started by telling you about my new son and ended up somewhere else. Entirely. I guess that little Link has to get used to this. I am a big deal and the focus of conversation and parties and blogs tends to just gravitate towards me. I just hope that Wyatt, Lincoln, my wife, (and you) understand that the only person I am ever really making fun of is myself.

My mood: proud daddy
Wyatt's mood: growing more fond of his brother
Lincoln's mood: eat and sleep and that's all.
Cara's mood: glad to not have a person inside of her.
Listening to: Zelda soundtrack

Gonna Do Some Things Differently!!

1.3 years old. February 2012. Happiest day of his life, apparently.

   Baby #2 AKA New Wyatt AKA  Bruce Wayne AKA Marcus Mariota could come at any moment. Waiting for the new guy is kind of like playing Catch Phrase, where the timer starts going faster and faster. That timer is going to buzz, and it could buzz right now, but you just know that the person on your right is going to get the word she needs and throw the thing at you just before it goes off and it's super stressful so you cheat and answer the word for the other team and then grab the thing and don't even look at the word and just pretend like the word was "tree" and say "CUTITDOWNMAKEWOOD!!" and your partners are all idiots and they say "Old Man Skinner's Barn!!" and you say "YES!!!!" and press the button and pass it so that the other team can't even see what your word was at all but then you think "Wait could I do that everytime?" and pretty soon you never read the actual word anymore but spend the whole game trying to figure out what word you should make up next time and it's almost always objects that you can see so you can be like "It's that thing over there!!" and your partner says "A fedora!" and you never lose.

   It, um, it's just like that. Point is, baby's coming. We don't have a name for the little guy, but he's coming.

Also 1.3 years old. Notice the pellet stove blazing away. RIP, stove.

   So, since I am a good parent, I have been thinking about things that I can do better with this new one. Wyatt is pretty much good and screwed up, nothing we can do about that. We always viewed him as a test kid anyways. (That's what makes him special!!) But now that we've got this thing figured out, here's what we'll change and what we'll keep the same:

Things To Change
1) Only hold Marcus on my left arm. I've been exclusively right-sided with Wyatt. He won't even try to sleep on my left shoulder anymore. As such, my right arm has gone from it's pre-Wyatt status of *ripped* to a whole new level of CUT. It is a thing of beauty. All my selfies are basically just pictures of my right arm. I even got a tattoo of my right arm on my left arm. Unfortunately, my left arm has pretty much just shriveled and died in this time frame. So this is going to be a left-hand-only gig.

   That's it. End of list.

Christmas-Eve 2012. Wyatt is like Derek Zoolander, he's not an ambi-holder.

   Come on, are you surprised? I've been writing this blog every day bi-monthly for nearly three years, so you've seen first-hand just how freaking awesome I am at this. I've never rammed Wyatt's head into anything while throwing him in the air. I've only locked him in the car once, and he was asleep the whole time so no big deal. Sure I let him play in a truck full of fertilizer for days before realizing that "fertilizer" really means "poo," but I was right in there with him!!

   What would you change?

   Oh, I see. So you think I'll be a bit calmer and more relaxed on my first day home with the baby than I was with Wyatt?! Well that's where your wrong. See, I'm pretty sure that over this long, meandering stroll to having a three-year-old, I've forgotten pretty much everything about having a newborn. What do they eat?! Vitamins?! Do I just chew up vitamins and put them in a bottle?! I haven't changed a diaper since June, so, I guess that'll have to start up again. Oh! That's one thing I'd change this time around:

Things To Change
2) Potty train the baby on like day 4.

There, that's a good thing to add to the list. Whoa, now that I think about it, there are lots of things I should change.

Things To Change
3) I love it that Wyatt can take off all his clothes now, and even put on his own shoes, so let's get Marcus Mariota to do that in a few weeks.
4) Transition from "crying" into "singing." That way whenever the baby is crying it can be to the tune of Miley's "Jolene." (Seriously, have you heard that banger? It's like daaaaaang grrrrl!)

That does it. If I can handle those four things, New Marcus will be a perfect kid, just like his brother Bruce Wyatt.

My mood: anxious and stressed
Wyatt's mood: sleepy and hungry
Cara's mood: STOPASKINGLET'SJUSTHAVETHISTHING
Listening to: Jolene

Y'all Are Dropping The Ball!!

     With this being the time of Thanksgiving, I have a simple question to ask of those that know me: What the heck?!

     I don't know if there is any any polite or socially acceptable way to discuss this, but, how come no one has thrown me a second baby shower? I mean, that is a thing, right? Y'all gave us presents when Wyatt was coming, so, what, is this new one not good enough for you?

This is Wyatt's rendition of a Christmas Tree. You can even see it has presents at the base. It is his first true piece of art, and, sadly, is a little better than anything I have ever made. Clearly, he has a baby-shower on his mind.

     Sure, yeah, Cara had a bunch of girls throw her a shower, but she got things like gift cards and diapers and clothes for New Wyatt (still the working name of the baby). When do I get stuff? This new baby needs a dad that has Smash Bros! Do you really expect me to raise a child without the support of the community?! Or without night vision goggles?

     Now, I think I've been pretty patient up to this point, but the baby is due to come any minute now. The doctor recently described Cara as "Holy crap!" and this was at least three weeks before the due date. So when little Bruce Wayne shows up (the new working name of the baby!), I sure hope he's coming into a world where his dad has every season of Animaniacs on DVD.

Wyatt and Lil' Sebastian

     Please don't think I am trying to be selfish here, because, as always, I only want what's best for my growing family. It just seems like none of you have remembered the age old tradition of the second-baby-shower-for-dad that our culture has held dear for ages. You know, we play those classic everybody-hates-them shower games like "Who can eat the most ribs" or "Halo," tell stories about how great I am, and then open presents while the second round of food is being delivered (Please, no pizza, we aren't in college).

     I get it. You just thought that other person was going to be in charge of setting it up, haven't you. I've been there. It's like when I thought Justin Timberlake wanted my phone number so we could be friends, but then I realized he was talking to that girl directly in front of him and he didn't even know I was there. I still gave it to him. You're embarrassed because you think it's too late to throw me a party. It's not!! And it's okay if the party takes place during the baby's birth, even, because it is more important that this little guy know that his dad loves him so much he had to miss the big event to acquire some necessities like a cute little onesie for the baby or a cute little onesie for the daddy. It's worth it.

While Cara was taking this picture, I put my hands on my head.
Wyatt did the same, and I think we have a new tradition.

     So go ahead, take the initiative, throw me a party. It's not too late. Let's not make this a missed opportunity that we'll all regret but most of all you will regret.

They guy who took this picture started getting very, very uncomfortable.

It... it was me,.. I took the picture.

My mood: depressed without any new toys.
Wyatt's mood: depressed without dad having any new toys.
Cara's feeling: unable to sleep and always sore and totally uncomfortable but really excited to make me breakfast.
Listening to: "5000 Candles In The Wind (Bye Bye Lil' Sebastian)"