Just The Cutest Little Prayers!!

   We've been praying with Wyatt at night as we go to bed. We don't really pray before our meals because we don't really have meals as much as we have a grazing system. Sometimes Wyatt repeats what we pray, sometimes he just sits, but he loves holding hands and cuddling. Here's the best video we have:

   He likes to translate things into his own language. If I pray for a good night's sleep, he says "night night," and if I thank God for mom he says "thank mom!"

   Here's the worst video we have:

   The other night, we actually got him to pray on his own. It went like this: "Dear God. Night night. Thx mom. Thx dad. Thx papa mama. Thx weem wy. Thx choo choo. Thx choo choo track. Thx dump truck. Thx water truck. Thx trash truck. Thx car. Thx wee car. Thx faith. Thx granmama." Just like we taught him. It's like how I pray "Thanks God for my Nintendo Wii, and my DS and my old Super Nintendo and my old Gameboy and also for my frisbees and for netflix and for bikes and for The Wire and for Arrested Development."

   Odds are pretty good this is about as cute as it will get. Pretty soon he'll be enunciating and using whole sentences, sadly, so I'm glad I have just a little bit of video here to remember.

My mood: Nostalgic
Wy's mood: Car racing.
Cara's Doing: Hungry
Listening To: U2

Track Star!!

This picture has nothing to do with the following text. In fact
you can ignore my stupid grin and just get going, if you'd like.

   Living in Eugene, Oregon, AKA Track Town USA, AKA Smells Like Pot has lots of wonderful things about it. One of those not-wonderful things is the fact that there's a marathon or 5K or half-marathon for pretty much every cause and every holiday every weekend.

   So, you have to do them. They are for a good cause. They fight hunger, or you walk for a cure, or you walk for heart disease. I've never really understood why anyone would be "for" heart disease but I am sure I am missing something. You can even shuffle for a truffle, which, I'm sure is something we should all support.

   Worse, everyone you know except for you has run a marathon. I can't tell you how sickening it is to see 100 status updates one morning that say something like "Can't believe I did it! Another one off the bucket list!" or "Wow am I tired but I sure feel good. Team Beat Insomnia did it!" (there's a half-marathon to fight insomnia. It starts at 2:00 am. I am lying.) or even "Just finished a marathon and I bet my ex Jordan is still on the couch getting fatter." (Get over it, Sam, you just look sad!) These people are running marathons and you're reading about it while eating cereal because you were too lazy to make pancakes. The only thing I've knocked off my bucket list lately is "spend a whole day in your underwear," which was actually kind of awkward because I had to take out the trash. I mean, how do you expect me to do a 5K!? Don't you know that it's five thousand!!

   Wyatt, however, that kid is going to run marathons, man.

   He can run, non stop, for hours. This is not an exaggeration. He's done it after church, running in circles around the gym, he's done it at this courtyard in town where we go to eat Fro-Yo, and just today he did it around the neighborhood.

   Sometimes we go to visit our friend, Marianne. She's not home a lot, but we stop by anyways. She lives at 1933 Roosevelt Street, which is exactly 0.8 miles from our house. Marianne, who has tons of nice stuff in her living room, wasn't there today around 9:15pm during our run, but that didn't matter to Wyatt because he wanted to go "pas," which is his adorable way of saying "fast." He says it all the time. "Mon da go pas!" (Come on dad go fast!) is easily his most used phrase, distantly followed by "oh car broke" (whenever he sees my broken down Buick Grandma which is for sale by the way only $6000), and "oh no ma wor oh no" (we are sad mom is at work). He turned around and ran home, which means he ran 1.6 miles tonight. Which means I ran 1.6 miles tonight. Which means heck yeah. Here, look at the Google Mapping I made:

Google Map of the route we took.

   His first sentence he ever said was "I gon ge goo!" which, loosely translated, means "I'm going to get you!" He yells it and then runs away from me, wanting me to chase him. He literally wants nothing more than to go pas all the time. When he's not going pas, he wants his cars to go pas or his choo choos to go pas. It's an obsession on par with Ricky Bobby.

   We decided to test out this need for speed, and took him to the last All Comers Meet at Historic Hayward Field. Since you might not live in a track-and-field-and-not-deodorant crazy town like I do, an All Comer's Meet is a track meet put on for anyone and everyone who wants to. A couple even have official enough time keeping to count towards things like national meets and Olympic Trial Qualifying.

   Wyatt went, and here's what happened:

We're in the middle of the screen. Wyatt's in the yellow-orange shirt, I am kneeling behind him giving him pointers. "Okay, now, it's a 40 meter race, so don't go too hard and wait for the other kids to get tired, then sprint hard at the end! If you *accidentally* trip another kid, that's all part of racing and winning and making dad proud."

The race has just started! You can tell because Cara put her finger in the screen a little.

What's the big hurry, kid in the red?! It's just for fun and we weren't even trying to win anyways.

   Just so you all know, I wasn't even going my fastest. If I'd wanted to win in that race I totally could've. It's just that my hamstring has been bothering me a bit lately.

   Once Wyatt really understood what a race was, he wanted to do it again, over and over. We would ready-set-go a few of these for him:

   There was also a long jump that Cara filmed. Well, "filmed" probably isn't the right term. It's more like she was "out looking for sasquatch" who is always in a blurry field.

   Thanks for that glorious, one-second video of Wyatt's first-ever-athletic venture, honey!

   He had a great time, and got a participation ribbon for all three of his events!! (Long jump, 40m dash, softball throw). I am usually totally against the whole "everyone gets a trophy" mentality, but I am all for the "Wyatt always gets a ribbon" craze that is sweeping the country. It will only make him tough and strong. Besides, winning isn't everything, if you lost. If you won, well, winning is obviously all that matters.


   Without really knowing it, I've actually been preparing him for races all along. I've spent the summer building up a little obstacle course in the back yard for Wyatt. It's really not much, it just has him running some loops and climbing some things, but he likes trying to do it faster and faster. Watch!

   My intention with this was actually to work on a few things: Counting (when he does the slalom at the start), shapes (I have him run around a circle, square, or triangle and say the shape each time), putting his face in the water (he's afraid to do it when in pools), climbing and jumping (he is hesitant if there are no cushions), and running under hammocks (self explanatory). There were other things I wanted us to do, like color or make animal sounds, but he just likes the "go pas" ones, so that's what it's turned into.

   Cara's always been afraid that Wyatt will love baseball, because she finds it so boring. I've always been afraid that he'll love math, because then he'll be so boring. Now we are wondering if he's just going to be one of those runners, who just runs all the time and doesn't really know how to throw a hatchet like all the other kids. Still, we're glad he's happy going pas and having fun.

My mood: Actually quite tired from that run. My hips kind of hurt. Ugh.
Wy's mood: Not at all tired from that run.
Cara's doing: Well. Not sleeping great, but that's mostly due to the fact that I am taking up the drums.
Listening to: Third Eye Blind

Big Announcement!!

   Yeah okay let's get this over with we're having another baby.

   I thought about mustering up some excitement and throwing down lots of my trademark double exclamation points!! and trying to build up some suspense or something, but that wasn't going to work. Let's face it: This new one isn't going to be our first one, and that means you aren't going to be as excited.
   My parents already have their first grandkid. My brother and sister already became an aunt and an uncle for the first time. Wyatt's cousins already have cousins. Now it's just more of the same old same old.

   But!! We can still make this exciting!! I'm talking about photos and updates and pinterest and fruit and all kinds of good things!! Here's what I mean.

   Spend half an hour on Pinterest (which my wife does like 6 times a day), and you'll see that pregnancy announcements and gender announcements are A HUGE DEAL. You have to let the world know how cute and artsy you are and how happy you are to be having a baby and also that you are going to be the best parents evar!! So, we've got that covered:

   These are 6 images that appeared on the first page of searching "Pregnancy Announcement" on Pinterest. Let's see what we've got:

Can't spell. Is that ring both an "o" and an "a"? Just trying way too hard here.

Whoa! I don't want to see people making out unless it's me and a steak. Also, walking around on those shoes must've been stressful.

Um, hmmm. Well, so, I guess anyone who can recognize those feet knows who this girl is and that she's pregnant. Angela?

Ah yes, the chalkboard with arrows and colors. Classic.

So, wait, boy + girl + tree = 3? I don't get the math on this one. Maybe it's boy tree girl plus sign three?

And this one!! Okay, actually that's really funny. You guys win.

   As you can see, there's a lot of pressure to pull this thing off right. People need to get excited for you and also know how wonderful you are, all at once. A while back, Cara and Wy and I were bored and decided we'd get a head start on this whole "baby announcement picture" thing. These were the results:

This is the creative process at work.

We realized people would take this the wrong way. WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!

True story: We had a friend take these photos. The friend is actually a photographer. The friend didn't want us to use his name because he didn't want anything to do with these things. Thanks, Jake!

We figured we'd make a few with some random dates, just hoping to get the due date right. Notice we didn't put down any years or anything.

What fun we were having.

Our try at the whole mathy thing. Because there'd be four of us. I guess I forgot to add a tree in there somewhere. During this photo-shoot, someone actually walked by and said "What does that even mean? Are you having a baby or something." I politely replied with "MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS AND DON'T LET THAT DOG POOP ON MY LAWN!" (It wasn't my lawn.) (She didn't have a dog.)

It's not... you know, Cara ...  the baby's not going to be in my belly. Why are you doing this?! You know I've had body image issues ever since we were pregnant the first time around. It changes you.

What is with this belly obsession!?

Do you get it!? Cara drinks water, dad drinks whatever's in that bottle and we're not telling but it's probably just used for cooking anyways, and Wyatt LOVES milk.

Here, we gave Wyatt a bag of chips and said "spell out "I'ma big brother!" or something" and then came back a few hours later.

   So there you have it. The secret's out: Not only are we pregnant, but we aren't photogenic, clever or going to be featured on any pinterest boards.

   Now, I'm sure you have a ton of questions, so let me answer them for you.

   How did this happen?!

   That is not a question I am going to answer. This is a family blog. Well, it's a blog about a family. No, it's really a blog about a dad who needs attention. 

   Are you going to change the name of the blog?!

   To what? "My Kids Is Special!!?" That doesn't even make any sense. You should be embarassed for even suggesting that.

   You should be embarrassed that you can't spell "embarrassed" right. Those aren't my questions, Grant. I have questions like "When will-

   - "When will I get a new little plushy batman drawing for the new kid?" Great question. I probably need to update Wyatt's anyways to reflect his age and sensibilities. We don't know if the new kid is a boy or a girl yet, so the plushy image could be Link or Spider-Man if he's a boy, and Zelda or Samus if he's a girl.

   You are awful at this. At least you answered the question about the gender. When is the soon-to-be-forever-screwed-up-by-this-blog kid coming?

   The "doctor's" tell us it's coming in December, but I think I know my own body and have a good feeling about late August.

   Ugh. Are you going to find out the gender in advance?

   Probably. But not because of ultrasounds or anything. We have a neighbor who has visions about these sorts of things. He accurately predicted that Wyatt would be a boy and he'd be super cute and he'd grow up to be a rock star, so he's pretty reliable. He also knew in advance that Hillary was going to run for president.

   Ugh. How's mom doing?

   Yeah great fine who cares what else?

   Have you thought about names at all?

   Yes. If it's a boy, probably Link or Spider-Man. If it's a girl, um, can you trade those things in for boys?

   What, you don't want a baby girl?

   No no no, it's not that at all. I'd love a baby girl. I don't want a middle or high school girl. Those things are terrifying.

   Aren't you a teacher?

   Yes and if the girl's knew how scared I was of them and their drama they'd have all the control.

   Okay let's wrap this up.

   Well, I'm in charge of this blog. I ask the questions around here.

   No, seriously, I've been asking questions for like 15 minutes.

   Wait, what? Seriously?

   Yes!! That's been your whole gimmick!

   Are... are you sure that's right?

   Well, now I guess we've switched and you are asking stupid questions.

   How did you do this? Are you like a spy or something?

   You keep asking questions. And if I were a spy I obviously couldn't tell you.

   Okay. Got it. You can't tell me. I'll just have to do some digging on my own some other time. 

   I need to be moving on. I can't just sit here and entertain all day. I've got important things to do like mail a few more wedding thank-yous. Let's wrap this up.

My mood: ecstatic! Also, I can't believe any of you would read this far!!

Wyatt's mood: kind of understanding what's going on but not really!

Cara's mood: Sleeping okay these days!!

Listening to: The Shins.