Spummer time!

Well I've been doing alright,

Getting good grades,
My future's so bright,
I gotta wear shades!



There's a local weather personality in South Central Kentucky that is walking, talking, weather predicting goofball. His comedic sense is only slightly better than that of Rosie O'Donnell.

For example, he coined a phrase when the spring temperatures didn't reach their normal highs. That word, "Sprinter." I know what you're thinking. "Sprinter" is already a word and it has nothing to do with weather. I know that too. Apparently, he does not.

This week the "cold" spring has been replaced by a "hot" spring (not the ones in Arkansas.) Which in conjunction with the weatherman's word invention has inspired me to new levels of stupidity and the invention of the word, "Spummer."

I tell you all this for two reasons. My wife thinks it validates her claims that I'm a big dork. And it gives me an excuse to post the picture of Aiden in his sun glasses.

Hope you all had a great weekend and hope you enjoy this fabulous Spummer!

Doing the Dishes

I don't know how much of an individual's personality is inate. I'm not sure if they are born with a goodness or badness, although I suspect we're all born somewhat good and innocent as Freud presumed. I'm also quite sure that my bias when looking at my son retards my objectivity, but I'm just going to go ahead and say it.

My son is a sweet and good person.

I'll give you an example. He loves to help. Ok, he's 17 months old and he doesn't know the difference between chores and work. But I can still pretend that he's dilligently trying to help me and his mother do things because he wants to. He even helps do the dishes. No, we don't let him touch the knives, so put the telephone down and stop hitting your Child Protective Services speed dial.

He started doing this out of the blue the other day. And for probably the first time ever as parents, we managed to catch something like this on camera. This all got particularly funny because as he set about doing his task of taking the dishes from the dishwasher and handing them to Dada, he never smiled. He was just working on a task. I couldn't maintain that same composure, as you can see.

So there you have it. Proof, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that my son is 17 year old Ghandi with hair. And to think, you probably just assumed this was going to be yet another silly blog I wrote bragging about my son doing some medial task that amounted to nothing near what I claimed. Shame on you.

Coming Soon: My Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades

Vocabulary Lessons

Aiden's vocabulary is growing. Its fun hearing him try to say words. His penchant for imitation seems to be getting larger every day. Here are some words he's tried to say recently:
1. Bubble - sounds like= buhbuh
2. What's THAT?!? -sounds like=What's THAT?!?! (add some serious voice inflection there)
3. This-sounds like= this
4. Moderato-sounds like=mod-a-bahbah
5. More-sounds like= moh
6. Mama
7. Dada
8. Ducks-sounds like= duh
9. Banana-sounds like=anana

Those are the few I can remember off the top of my head. Hey since the last post on this blog was titled, "Happy Easter" I had to come up with something.

Coming soon: Aiden helps Daddy unload the dishwasher.

Happy Easter

Reports in the news today didn't say anything about the Easter Bunny suffering from hypothermia, but I wouldn't have been surprised. So there were no Easter egg hunts for our family this year due to the cold. We're not real certain our son would have been able to grasp the concept, but maybe he would have.

Liz had picked out an adorable little outfit for him that was blue and yellow. Unfortunately it was short sleeved with short pants. Mother Nature put the kabosh down on the idea of that outfit, so we opted for this one:The shirt is by Ralph Lauren. The pants by Dillard's. The shoes are Payless. The Easter Egg is Dollar General. The look is pure Renfrow.

After a long day of church service and doing a little dance on the catwalk, on the catwalk yeah, Aiden was all tuckered out and so was Liz:

We hope everyone had a great Easter.

And as an update, Aiden will turn 17 (months) this week. But we're still not letting him date. And he can't have the car out past 10.

He's Gotten Stealthy

Recently our son has become quite stealthy. Not that he's sneaking into things or hiding things. He's become a stealthy pooper.

Last night is a prime example. He'd napped from the time he got home from the babysitters (around 5) until he ate dinner at around 6. After he ate I changed his "wet" diaper and lo and behold, he had pooped. I don't know when. He never gave any indication. It just sort of happened.

The same thing had happened when I picked him up early on Tuesday. When I got him home I changed another "wet" diaper only to discover he had poohed some time ago. I don't blame the sitters either. They've always done a great job. I just don't think they knew anymore than I did.

This marks quite a change. It always seemed you knew when he was pooping becuase he would grunt and stop doing whatever he was doing. Now, he's so at ease with it he can do it without any physical indication. Well, he can't make it smell good. So there's ONE physical indication.

A Father's Confession

I have a flaw.

I was just as shocked as you are, believe me.

My flaw is simple. I'm a heavy sleeper. Let me explain the dynamic of a bedroom that houses a heavy sleeper and a borderline insomniac. It can become a little tense.

1) There's the genuine sense of envy and even jealousy on part of the sleep deprived. My wife fits this category. When I ask how she's slept in the morning, I usually get a "Not very well." Response. When she asks me, I say I slept well. She replies, "OF COURSE YOU DID." (She doesn't really yell...that's just there for effect.)

2) Heavy sleepers tend to stay asleep. Even when we wake up in the middle of the night, its more of a middlesleep state. We're awake, but we're not thinking with all of our usual well rested faculties.

Herein lies our problem and my subsequent confession. When our son wakes in the middle of the night I tend to take the lazy way out. It's not intentional. It's really not. I want to be SuperHusband/SuperDad all the time. But I end up laying in bed thinking, "He'll go back to sleep." "I'll just give him a few minutes to cry it out." "Its just a small fire." Thoughts like that.

So here's me last night:

And this is my wife last night, this morning, and probably today too:

And I take the blame for that one. It's something I really need to work on. Last night I was honestly listening to him cough (he's had a mild chest infection) and it didn't sound awful and he didn't sound awake. So I was hoping it would pass. However, I laid there too long. When Liz started to get up, I didn't move.

So today, this is me:

Sorry Sweetheart. You deserve better.

Mowing With Daddy

The picture of a small child helping his/her father mow the lawn should look like this:

Instead, I have a push mower. I'm one of only two guys on my block that does. The other guy is in much better shape than me, and thus, so is his yard. So the picture of me mowing the lawn with my son would look more like....

And that's just sad. And unsafe. Actually, I'm not sure the whole "mowing with daddy" thing is a good idea at all.

But I digress. Today I picked up our wonderful son from the babysitters because he was running a fever. He's had a minor ear infection and some sort of infection in his chest which is not nearly as frightening as it sounds. It just means he coughs quite a bit at night and he's feverish.

So today I waited unti he took a nap, then I hooked up the monitor outside (always, ALWAYS have the monitors with the red lights) and set to mowing the yard and breaking a land speed record. The yard is pristine, the land speed record remains elusive.

As I walked into the house, the toddler was just waking up in time to ruin Daddy's plans to take a nice long shower. Daddy instead took a combination shower/land speed record attempt. Long story short, the yard is mowed, the baby's fine, Daddy smells like Lever 2000, and the land speed record remains, still, elusive.

P.S. Oh, and if anyone wants to give me a very special present, I like Cub Cadets.

P.P.S. I'll bet the other blog fathers are wondering why they're pictures are on our blog.

P.P.P.S To follow P.S. [post script] P.P.S [post post script] is proper.