This weekend, me, the wife, and kids built a raised garden. Ours is 10X4. Gonna put some tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and some veggies. Any suggestions for something I might be missing? Junior wants to do watermelons.

Update: I didn’t know it was a survival garden.

Coincidentally, compost is easy to get when you share a border with a cattle farm.

In the car and they were advertising the local symphony performance of Bollero on the local Vast Right Wing Conspiracy radio show. Got out of the car, me and the kids were walking and could hear some birds. I had the earworm Bollero in my head and started whistling it. Junior looks at me and says “I didn’t know you could speak bird.”

we did Animal Kingdom today. The rugrats seemed to have a great time. Also, that’s why the blogging has been light.

Right now, the kids and the Mrs. are asleep and I’m having a Macanudo and a bourbon on the patio.

We’re going on a safari. Later, kids.

If you are an owner of a dog that belongs to a ‘dangerous breed’ category and you also have a small child please take this as a warning. Don’t leave your dog with the child unattended under any circumstances.

Only a little moment was enough for the following to happen.

From Stuff

From Guav.

When your wife walks in and says You know that one chore around the house I never do? And then you’re not smart enough to realize that the question may either 1) be rhetorical or 2) if you keep your mouth shut, she’ll answer for you. So, you try to guess. A few times.

Via Roberta, comes a book called No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society. Turns out, nannying them is probably not a good idea.

We got some snow the other day. Me and Junior built a snowman:

From Kids

You’ll notice our snow man is sheriff. We should have built him a snow gun because it seems some outlaw snow men came by with a snow shotgun:

From Kids

Junior keeps telling me my new name is Poopy Stinky Butt.

She’s also saying fart a lot. Not real bad but there are better words for it.

And we decided to let the kids watch A Christmas Story. Trouble is, a lot of it is inappropriate for a four or a two year old. Kids cussing, violence, and the F-bomb.

This from Michael reminded me of this:

For those not in the know about The Elf on the Shelf mentioned here, the elf is magic. He flies back to the North Pole every night and returns to a new location. When your kids wake up, they try to find his new location. It’s quite amazing that I can be in the car with two kids and point out a big red fire truck with it’s lights/sirens on right next to our car and they won’t see it and will keep asking where, where? But a little toy elf is found within seconds of waking up.

The power of observation.

Our kids watch a lot of Nick. There’s a commercial for Big Green Help, which encourages kids to be more eco-friendly. There’s a game shown on TeeVee that you can access at the website where you run around zapping threats to the environment. One of the threats is a big truck. And not just any big truck. A big truck that is morphed into some evil looking Transformer type of thing. I guess they’re trying to scare kids into saving the Earth.

Heh.

I did ours this weekend.

The Mrs.’s grandmother isn’t doing so well. If you’re the praying sort, send a few her way.

Jay:

The greatest compliment I can imagine – and I get it frequently – is when one of my kids comes up, completely unbidden, and tells me that they love me. I eat that up for breakfast. It makes everything worthwhile, and I hope they do it until the day I die. No matter how fast they grow, or how big they get, I’ll never stop worrying about them, and I’ll never stop loving them with every fiber of my being.

I will, however, stop doing their laundry before they hit high school…

Marko notes that since he no longer has a TeeVee, he’s suffering a near-complete pop culture disconnect. Tam is in the same boat.

I have recently became disconnected from pop culture for a very different reason. I got TiVo. See, now I only watch what I want, when I want to watch it, and without commercials. I’m not exposed to what’s hot. Generally, I have no idea what movies are out (this week is the exception in that I know Madagascar 2 is out because the kids at Junior’s school are into that). I generally have no idea who any of the people are that are mentioned in the Yahoo! entertainment blurb that pops up on the home page. I have no idea who the people on the cover of any magazine at the supermarket are. Marko suffered a disconnect from getting disconnected. I suffered the disconnect by upgrading technology.

I don’t miss it. Most TeeVee sucks. I watch very few shows. A list would include Mythbusters, Battlestar Galactica, Family Guy, The Daily Show (occasionally), My Name Is Earl, Mail Call, Southpark and The Simpsons. That’s really it, except the occasional sporting/poker event. Southpark and The Simpsons are probably coming off the list because lately they suck. Now, I also manage to watch a whole lot of Blues Clues, Spongebob, Dora, Diego, Back at the Barnyard, and Fairly Odd Parents as a function of having kids. But they’re not exactly piping pop culture into the house. Of course, I’ve mentioned before Junior’s utter shock at the discovery of commercials.

Another interesting trend is that, once again because of technology, I can’t name a Top 40 song. No idea. But, then, I’ve never been a big Top 40 guy either. I download my music and pick only what I want to listen to.

I guess you can disconnect or plug in more heavily and become disconnected from pop culture.

Conversation from a couple of weekends ago:

Me: You want to call Poppa and Honey and tell them Happy Anniversary?

Junior: No.

Me: Why not?

Junior: ‘Cause that’s hard to say.

This past weekend, The City (My The City) hosted the Foothills Fall Festival. We took the kids on Saturday and watched some live music featuring a bunch of country singers I’d never heard of and Billy Ray Cyrus, who I have heard of but only ever heard one song – and you know which one it is. It’s not that these weren’t big names it’s just that I don’t listen to country. It was a good time. Our kids’ first concert.

Then on Sunday, we left the kids with the in-laws and me and the Mrs. went at watched a bunch of country singers I’d never heard of and Kenny Rogers. At 70, that man is one Hell of an entertainer. And it helped that I’d actually heard some of his songs before.

And the food was awesome. Funnel cakes and big greasy burgers. Oh, and one place had ribbon fries that were to die for.

It was a good time.

I got home late Sunday from the trip and my kids were asleep. I went to work Monday morning and only saw them briefly that morning. I got home Monday night and, after some play time and stuff, set about catching up on the ever-increasing honey-do list. I noticed Junior was hiding behind the big comfy chair, not uncommon for her and The Second to disappear behind the chair for a bit.

A bit later, she was out and running around. I look at the Mrs. and say Did Junior get a haircut? She tells me no. I said Hmm, looks like she did. I’m assured she did not. A few minutes later, the Mrs. says Oh my god, what did you do to your hair?

Apparently, while behind the comfy chair, she had a pair of scissors and was cutting the front of her hair. Boy, was the Mrs. pissed. She could have chewed some aluminum and crapped nails. I thought fireballs were going to come out of her eyes. I briefly felt sorry for Junior.

Lesson learned: let me know when the kids have scissors, which will now be in approximately never.

A bad slogan made into law. It would be kinda neat to have a Prius that sounded like a Harley, though.

Update: And Tam: There oughtta be a law to protect inattentive morons.

Coincidentally, I had to explain to Junior what an idiot was this morning because I used that word in reference to some kid. You see, one idiot child in my subdivision was crossing the street this morning with his head buried in his cell phone or iPod or some such. My truck is much louder than a Prius and if I were as inattentive as said idiot, said idiot might be a squishy spot right now.

Junior is into gymnastics, which she calls mynastics. It’s fun for her and she enjoys it. Yesterday, she was helping the Mrs. put up the laundry and her job was to put the towels up. She decided, while she was there, to practice her mynastics on the towel rack in the downstairs bathroom. Said towel rack is designed to hold a couple of towels and not 36 pounds of mynastics grade enthusiasm. So, the towel rack came off the wall. Later, when the kids were in the tub, I noticed the broken towel rack (I hadn’t yet been told it was broken). I asked what happened and Junior said she didn’t do it. The Mrs. then told me what happened. We had the talk about lying.

So, I decide to fix it. While fixing it, I look at Junior and tell her we don’t hang on things. And she asks me why. I say because if you do that, then you break my stuff and I don’t like that. How would you like it if I broke your stuff? Rest of the conversation goes like this:

Junior: Don’t break my stuff!

Me: But what if I did? Would you like that?

Junior: If you broke my stuff, I’d tell on you.

Me: Who would you tell?

Junior: Your dad.

Me: Do you know who my dad is?

Junior: Yes.

Me: Who is it?

Junior: Poppa

She did know.

It’s kinda funny because just this weekend the Mrs. bought that exact item for the kids. She was going to take it back to the store but my son really liked it.

This story was relayed to me by my wife. It was relayed to her by my mother in law, who apparently could not stop laughing while telling the story.

The grandparents (Mommo and Daddo) and kids pull up to a red light. The light turns green. The car in front of them does not go. Daddo waits a bit then honks the horn to let the guy in front know he should pay attention. After Daddo honks the horn, The Second says Beep beep. Junior says When that happens in Daddy’s car, he says fuck and damn.

Careful what you say and when you say it.

We’ve been working with Junior a bit on some things since she should start school next year. Some of those things include getting her to learn her address, write her name, etc. Like her dad, Junior has an attention span measured in seconds. So, getting her to sit down and focus is a trying task. So, for several nights, the Mrs. would say to Junior Let’s work on writing your name. Junior would refuse. Adamantly. She’d start crying and whining about it. After about a week of repeatedly asking, the Mrs. looks at Junior and, once again, says Let’s work on writing your name. And Junior says I don’t want to. Like she always does. The Mrs. says I’ll give you a dollar. And Junior says OK and proceeds to quickly write her name.

She knows the value of a dollar and how to write her name. I was so proud.

The Mrs. is out of town. Just me and the kids. Can you tell?

In addition to the giant mess of toys everywhere, it’s one o’clock and we’re still in our jammies.

Breda told her mom about her blog.

Kinda interesting to me. See, I never really told anyone I knew in the real world about my website. I didn’t even tell my wife until after a year or so (and that’s only because she saw the domain hosting charge on the credit card). And, it wasn’t until about 2005 (when the blog was three) that I happened to mention it to a couple of friends. Then, one of those friends told another friend. He told my brother in law. And then, this year, my wife told my other brother in law. She even opined that she just thought everybody knew. And this year, my dad found out. He found out because I logged in at his house, did a quick post and didn’t clear history. He’s been reading ever since. In fact, he told me he went back one night and read the entire Notes to Junior Category. Other than that, I don’t really tell folks.

And in this post, some folks asked if I let the guy I mentioned know about the blog. I did not.

There’s a reason I don’t tell people. That reason is that if they read regularly, I’d eventually piss them off. It’s true. I have, for example, mentioned a few disagreements with folks on this blog. Now, imagine they hop on the internets and see me making fun of their position? And now that I know who knows, I can’t make fun of them anymore. It’s inhibiting.

The Second really digs the movie Cars. Like, a lot. Too much. On Monday, for instance, we watched it three times and it’s a two hour movie. And when we wants to watch the movie he starts saying the word Cars over and over.

Cars Cars Cars Cars Cars Cars

Anyway, he was saying that the other day. The Mrs. looks at Junior and says: I don’t think he knows any other words.

Junior looks at the Mrs. and says: He knows bubbles.

So, last night the kids were in the tub. I was in the bathroom with them trimming up my beard. I took the guard off the trimmer so that I could trim around my upper lip. About that time, the kids got into a fight over who got what particular bath toy and I had to intervene. I got back to the sink, took said trimmer and ran it right up the center of my beard. With the guard off because I forgot to put it back on. So, I had a nice big gap in the center of the beard. As a result, I had to shave off my beard.

Well, except our kids and dogs.

Random conversation at my house.

We got new neighbors. I met them a bit ago and they have three dogs. They were telling me about their dogs, of which they are quite proud. Seems their dogs are a cross between a Pomeranian and a Chihuahua. I was telling my wife about the dogs and what they were a cross between. But, as I told her, I couldn’t recall what they were called (other than mutt). And then I said: If I were naming them, they’d be called Pomerhuahuas because that’s just fun to say. And Chimeranian, in addition to not being fun to say, sounds like a mythical beast.

Turns out, I was wrong on both counts and they’re called Pomchis.

Heh.