Big Brother Update!!

Announcing pregnancies is a young blogger's game, so let's ruin the secret right off the bat: Spoiler alert, we're having another one. Baby is due at the end of May and Cara's been real sick so far. Like, can't get off the couch, certainly can't make dinner, and probably can't clean a single thing or stop watching Netflix sick

We had planned to keep it from Wyatt for a while, but then we got bored and grabbed a camera. If you've been around the Wy Guy at all lately, you know how sweet and excitable he is, so this was a prime moment for us to get some precious, viral-ready video of him finding out he's going to have another baby to torment him.

Here goes:

Oh goodness. That's a top-five video for me at this point. No joke. (If you're curious, here are the other top 4, in no particular order.) Colin is one of the neighbor boys across the street, and any chance Wyatt gets to play with a neighbor boy causes him to abandon any activity that was currently taking place. I could be giving him candy wrapped in money and he'd run out to see Colin if given the chance.

We are looking forward to having what is most certainly a boy. We know it's a boy because there's no way it's not a boy, so there's no reason to ask us what we are having, it has to be a boy. Wyatt wants to name the baby "Jet," which was growing on me until I heard the full name: "Jet Rocket Flash." Now I'm convinced. (When asked what we should name a girl, he said "I don't know that's hard. Maybe... "Jet Girl"?")

Actually, there's a lot of pressure on naming your kid "Jet." If he doesn't have sweet black hair from the 50's, isn't super fast, or isn't generally cool, he can't pull it off and is essentially cursed with letting people down whenever they meet him for his whole life. Since this child will be my offspring, there's really no chance he will be cool or super fast, so we'll probably have to stick with Tham for a boy, Thara for a girl.

Once we finally got to hit Wy with the news, some great things happened. For example, he made it REALLY clear to us that he understands how a C-Section works.

Sheesh, that killed me. He was going to show me the scars that Cara has from her C-sections when he turned and showed me his belly. He's asked once or twice "When will they cut the baby out of mom?" and I think he has no idea what a natural birth is like. But then again, does anyone?

And if you were wondering, Link spent that whole video saying "Cheese" because there was a camera on. It's basically the only word he can say.

So, yeah, baby's coming. Things are pretty exciting around these parts. Wyatt's so excited that while I was skyping with a friend a few nights ago, he said "Hey Rj guess what! I got a yo-yo! And my mom's having A BABY!"

Hopefully Cara starts feeling better soon and then we can start eating meals again, because it's getting pretty hungry around here.

My mood: excited but hungry
Wy's mood: super excited, praying for the baby all the time
Link's mood: not wanting to talk
Cara's mood: unhappy
Listening to: Pearl Jam

Soccer!!

   You guys it's tough being such a perfect dad all the time. Here is Exhibit K:

   When Wyatt turned two, his papa and he and I were driving by a park and saw some kids playing soccer. He got really excited and wanted to go play. It was tough for me to convince him that soccer isn't actually fun, so instead his papa told him he can play soccer when he turned five. All of a sudden, I was held to a promise three years in the making.

Believe it or not, this was a tough defense to score against. #coaching

   You might think that a two-year-old would forget this over the course of three years, but it turns out Wyatt can remember pretty much anything. Roughly 10 months before his birthday he asked me to get him a Paw Patrol cake for his party. I told him I would, again thinking he'd forget. The day before his birthday he says "I am so excited for my Paw Patrol cake tomorrow! I said "Me too!!" as I dialed Dairy Queen, knowing they were closed. There was no Paw Patrol cake, but we did have pretty great Paw Patrol napkins!!

 ...   Where was I going with this? Oh, right, 5-year-old soccer. He'd always ask "How long until I'm five?" and I'd have to say "Never" and he'd laugh and sigh and say "Oh dad..." and it was all really quite precious. Well, I was precious. He was just kind of cute.

   When it came time to look at soccer signups, we realized something: We don't want to spend $80 to have our five-year-old kick a ball a few times with strangers at places we don't want to go. So for maybe the second time ever, Cara had a great idea: We will start our own soccer league.

   I know this sounds like the plot to a bad Disney movie, and that's probably because it is, but it worked out really well. Instead of paying $80 to watch five-year-olds not play soccer while standing on the sideline with strangers at a place we didn't want to go, we invited all of our friends with five-year-olds (sorry if you didn't make the "friend" cut) to come to a park by our house, at times that were convenient for us, and watch our kids play soccer for $0.

These were simpler, sunnier, warmer times.

   About once a week, give or take, a group of 5 or 6 families would get together and the kids would play soccer. The first week there were probably 8 families, but those numbers quickly dropped. I guess when you don't drop $80 on soccer, you feel less committed, I don't know. I was the coach, with help from some other parents, and it was great.

   Cara looked up some drills for us to give to the kids. One of the most important things they stress for this is age is to not have them practice using their head because it scares them. I, however, am not trying to raise (or field a team of) pansies, so the first practice was only headers. It went really quite poorly.

This was shortly after I told Wyatt "None of the other kids
can use their hands but you can because you are special."

This was honestly the most organized and behaved they were all season. Also, it's pretty great how hard I was working to coach while all the other parents hung out on the edge and talked about stuff. Probably about me, actually.

Seven kids!! This must have been one of our earlier practices. This was moments before I berated the girl in the pink for using her hands. "YOU'RE NOT WYATT YOU DON'T GET TO DO THAT YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL!!" I yelled at her without punctuation.

These were the siblings of the kids playing soccer. But really, everyone wanted to spend all their time at the playground instead of being forced to plank for two minutes at a time with me,

   We did drills of walking dogs, running around trees, slaloming between cones, kicking backwards, even kicking the balls really hard at one of the dads who deserved it. Everyone loved it. At the end of each practice we would have a scrimmage. This was by far their least favorite part. They would rather play "tunnel tag with soccer balls" or "sharks and minnows with soccer balls" or "go get water" or "lay on my back in the wet grass" then play an actual game. What's worse is since we always played ourselves, our record for the season was a miserable .500.

   Something really fun: Wyatt has been coming to Marist, where I coach ultimate, to help with practice a few days a week. He's been doing this for years, but all of a sudden he got real excited to start calling me "coach." He has a huge grin when he says it, and then always says "Because you coach your students and you coach me and also you are my gad." All very true statements, Wyatt.

   When the season was over we went to Papa's Pizza for a party. I am proud to say that at the Awards Ceremony I cleaned up by winning "Best Coach" and "Handsomest Dad," while Cara won "Least Present at Practice" and there were no other awards at all. I told the kids "None of you earned one, especially you Silas." Silas cried but he'll be better for it, eventually.

   Speaking of Papa's Pizza, I've realized that there is no amount of money I wouldn't pay to have bad pizza and kids far away, playing. I went in to the play room to grab Wyatt when the pizza came and basically wanted to tear my ears off, it was such mayhem. One of my students was working in the play room, wearing a referee's striped shirt. I asked her how she liked working there (she gives me a look of "oh it's not the best") and I finish with "because it sounds miserable." She nods and then goes to tell Johnny to stop eating the padding around the playpen.

   I think soccer was a great success. Looking back I wish we'd found a few more drills to do and kids to play, and I really wish I'd charged everyone like $30.

My mood: glad it's over
Wy's mood: sad it's over
Link's mood: unaware it's over
Cara's mood: didn't even know it had started
Listening to: Miley Cyrus