Father's Day 2011

It’s been a good Father’s Day. I slept in a bit later than I probably should have. I ate a responsible bowl of Wheat Chex, but topped it off with a Svenhard’s cinnamon roll. We went to church and I remained surprisingly positive through it all, even when kids were getting a bit out of control. I came home and let my wife pour me a tall glass of Diet Mountain Dew. We baked a margherita pizza (yum!) from Costco for lunch, and we ate it while streaming Teen Wolf Too on Netflix. (A horrible movie, but more or less family friendly. I hadn’t ever seen it before and wrongfully thought at least one or two of us would enjoy it.) I started a new book that I’m reading just for fun and not for any academic purpose, which can be rare nowadays. And now we’ve just gone on a drive where Melanie and I actually got to talk for more than a few minutes without interruption. Quite a lovely day, I’d say.

To celebrate Father’s Day, I’d like to take a brief moment to appreciate publicly each of my children.

Edison

Edison is such a big kid nowadays. I’m loving it, especially his creativity, which has changed a lot over the last little while. He still doesn’t quite get jokes. About a month ago, I read him some jokes out of a kids’ magazine. He picked up on the general overall tone of them, but puns are still beyond his ability fully to appreciate. As such, I found myself in hysterics when Edison recently performed a bit of stand-up comedy for Melanie and me. He really did, too. On our way out of church a few weeks ago, we stopped by the primary room, which everyone had left, and Edison stood at the podium and talked into the microphone, telling us jokes. Here’s a bit of his routine:

What do doors like to eat for breakfast? (Pause.) Pianos.
What do chairs like to eat for breakfast? (Pause.) Doors.

I couldn’t stop laughing.

Edison also fancies himself a photographer. A couple of months ago, he took this disturbing photo of a firefighter who bravely gave his life in the line of duty:



And finally, I was really impressed by this drawing that Edison made for me today. The red people are he and I. The thick red blur going out of my (the person on the left’s) head is to show that I’m thinking about Eddie and me going on a rocket into outer space. You can see the sun (obvious enough) and Mars and Neptune (on the left side of the page, in brown and pink, respectively). The blue above the red line is of the rocket blasting into space. I was sincerely impressed that he would draw me as thinking about these things and capture that in a visual way. Pretty cool.



Peter

Peter is barely into being three years old, which I learned with Edison is a much more difficult age than two. Fortunately, there have been a lot of sweet times between Peter and me lately. It wasn’t long ago that I was feeling bad about my relationship with Peter, feeling like he just wasn’t very playful with me. But recently, this has improved a ton and we seem to play around together a lot. It’s been really wonderful for me. We even have our own special little game, where we talk gibberish nonsense to each other, sometimes rather extensively. And I love that Peter is always quick with a drawn-out “I love you, toooo” whenever I say “I love you” to him.

Creegan

Creegan and I have gotten a lot closer lately, even though we’ve always felt close. I love tickling his belly with my face or head, which he always laughs a lot at. Recently, I’ve done a lot more putting him to sleep at night, too. He can be fussy, but miraculously he’s been content to let me pat his back and bounce around with him while he falls asleep on my shoulder. Most of the time, he just wants his mom, so it’s nice that I’ve been able to do this with him. And the other day, we spent a little bit of time playing with toys together—or at least he quite contentedly watched me play with toys in front of him. It was some nice one-on-one time, and it happened right after we danced around together to some really great music. It’s fun having him around.

To finish this post off, I’ll share this video, which Melanie made of Edison and Peter just a few hours ago. Peter gets a little behind, but he catches up at the end.