Little Liar!!

Guys, don't worry, he likes it. Wyatt, I mean. Lincoln isn't so sure. Wyatt does this when he wants Link to transport him somewhere. Because Wyatt is lazy.

   Wyatt is a lot like his dad. He's handsome and charming and all that, but more than anything. He's lazy. Just like his mom. He absolutely detests cleaning up his toys. Which is somewhat odd, because he loves to be helpful. When I am working on a chore or in the yard, he will do all of the little "go get that rake" and "turn on the hose" jobs I can possibly give him. Even the "get dad a cold one" can be done, now that he can open the fridge, identify alcohol, use a bottle opener, and cut a lime into the correct sized wedge.

   A few days ago, Wyatt was in trouble. So as punishment, I had him clean. (As I am writing this, I am realizing that he only has to clean when in trouble, so of course he hates it! Also, cleaning is the worst, no matter what age.) He came up with every excuse he could think of to avoid putting away a single block, including running a lap around the house with each block because he was going so fast. At one point, he put a belt around his head and pretended to be Jake the pirate. This happened:

No, Wyatt, you're clearly a ninja turtle and not a pirate.

   Is... is that true? I feel like pirates probably do have to pick up blocks somewhere in the line of duty. However, I spent so much time analyzing pirate duties and pirate booties, that Wyatt's ploy actually worked for a while. When I realized he wasn't cleaning, I told Wy to pick up blocks. He walked a slow circle around me, and whispered "Pirates don't pick up blocks." Good gravy I laughed so hard on the inside, while maintaining "scary dad face" on the outside. I'll try to find a picture of SDF to include.

   In addition to his clinical, maternal-driven laziness, he's becoming quite the little deceiver. He's trying to hide things from us, writing on walls again when under a table or behind a chair, throwing his food under things to act like he's eaten. I tell ya, I don't know where he gets it from. I don't think I've told a lie in nearly seven sentences.

   Really, parenting is getting kind of tough. (Oh, shoot, that's the sort of line that pro bloggers but in all caps and bold. Okay. REALLY, PARENTING IS GETTING KIND OF TOUGH.) Wyatt has lots of new neighbor kids to play with on our street. We are suspicious that one of them might be a little liar. I wonder if Wyatt's picking these new deceptions skills up on the street, like how I picked up my fighting techniques. He's started to play a little bit differently when home by himself, after spending lots of time with all his friends from the street. Less, of pretending to be a fireman, "help me hero save me!" when a car is about to fall of the couch cliff, and more fighting and bickering among the cars themselves. On a positive, however, there's less of the cars saying "Dad do you want to play with me?!" "No, I'm busy." "But you're watching Duck football games from the past three seasons on repeat." "Right. Busy. Get me a cold one."

This is about as much work as Wyatt ever does, pulling Link from the toys.

   The thing is, Wyatt loves people. Friends and kids are his favorite thing. He'll stop whatever he's doing if he thinks someone under 17 is outside, ready to be his friend. It's tough to tell him he can't play in the street with a bunch of kids around his age, when really, if he played outside all day I'D BE ELGIBLE FOR #DADOFTHEWEEK (nailed it!), but sometimes the kids out playing are ages 7 - 12, and he's three. There's a lot of room for influence there.

   Wyatt is going to start pre-school here in a few days. Don't worry, billions of pictures are coming your way. More new kids and families. It's encouraging that it will be kids the same age, with a hopefully-wonderful teacher - and I am glad that he is going to be spending more time at his grandma's house, because she teaches and trains him well - but I feel like we are crossing the threshold from where parenting has been fairly easy (because it's all been in-house: "don't touch that," "eat eleven more bites," obey my dog" type stuff), but its going to take a big shift into other relations ("don't play with that boy at school," "don't say "butt" even though other kids do," "obey my dog."). I am a bit apprehensive about this whole thing, but we'll figure it out. There is just so much to learn. After all, PIRATES DON'T PICK UP BLOCKS.

My mood: getting ready for school
Wy's mood: so many friends
Link's mood: thinking about standing
Cara's mood: who cares
Listening to: R.E.M.

Home Cookin!!

An artistic picture of leaves and stuff.

   Guys!! I have such a great life, and you should be jealous of it. So I am going to blog about just how great it is, so you can improve yours!! You're welcome. For example, my Facebook posts get almost 8 likes on average (some as high as 15!!), my wife and I have never once said a cross word to each other, or even done a crossword, and lately we've been eating food we pulled from the ground!! Let's talk about that last one ad nauseum for the rest of this post.

   We were pleasantly surprised when the house we bought four years ago had producing fruit trees in the back yard. We thought they'd give a few lousy apples and be done, but we get a large supply of apples and persimmons each fall. (If you don't know what a persimmon is, don't ask. Only because I will talk about them for hours, driving you crazy, but also because I can't really describe the things. I will, however, bring persimmon bread to every party I go to from November through March.)

   A few weeks ago, Cara bought a bread maker. We eat like 2.8 loaves of a bread a week around here, mostly because I adore sandwiches like a spider adores all those spots under your chair. So this thing should pay for itself in about 7 hours.

   And our garden is ever growing as well, with tomatoes and onions and other things you don't care about so I won't keep listing them.

   The point is, I am working really, really hard to convince you that we are great parents living a simple, idyllic life and providing only the best for our children, and also lots of chicken nuggets. Here are some pictures to support this:

   This is some homemade bread with some homemade raspberry jam. I've found that having warm bread and delicious jam around all the time has made me want to eat only warm-bread-and-delicious-jam all the time. I finally understand the British, and I don't just mean their language.

   If you look closely, you can see some orange looking syrup. That's plum syrup, made from the plums off a friend's tree. We've also made plum jam, and both are phenomenal. Great camping food. Also, those pancakes were made from scratch, using only water and some pancake mix I got at Costco.

   Do you now see how great my life is?! It's pretty great. I will continue to blog to inspire you to live more like me!! And I have two kids and also my house is always clean so don't bother looking into it!

There have been a few pleasant surprises from our recent feeding fad:

1) We don't waste as much food. Working hard to make it and prepare it causes me to be more diligent about eating it.

2) I don't eat as much. The time and prep causes me to pause before I make that third sandwich. It's not like that bread came easy. This is not a good thing.

3) I want to tell everyone about my food sourcing all the time. Because I am obnoxious and like to brag.

4) I have become much more likely to make numbered lists about food.

5) Sliced bread is actually quite nice. You know that lame line "The greatest thing since sliced bread"?! I get it now. Also, I've been watching a lot of Cheers lately, so if you want to say "They have a real Sam and Diane thing going on," I'll get that one too. The crumb production in this household has skyrocketed, outpacing quarterly projections by a billion fold. I am working out a system to harvest the crumbs and either use it for breaded chicken, or glue it all together to form a new piece of bread.

   How do the kids feel about this? Well, one thing we've grown is spinach, and recently when offered some salad, Wyatt said what all of us have always been thinking. "Um, I think that I don't like leaves." Brilliant. A great encapsulation of the American Condition, really. Also, he doesn't really pronounce his "l's," so it came out "Um, I think that I don't wike weaves." Even better.

Perfect.