Wisdom

Some say a wise man learns from his mistakes, but I prefer the saying that a smart man learns from his mistakes, but a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. This is not an orginal quote, but I'm not sure who to credit it to.

That's all I have today. Admittedly not very corny.

Singing songs with Daddy

This is the part where Daddy comes out and sings a silly song.

I made up a new song for Nathan today about his Penguin. It is to the tune of "Five Huge Hippos Hopping on a Hill".

Oh little penguin you are a flightless bird,
Oh little penguin tell me have you heard,
Oh little penguin you live where it it cold,
Oh little penguin that Nathan loves to hold.

He kept saying again until I was literally out of breath.

The facilities are conveniently located

Today we were at a Birthday pool party for one of my son's cousins. He wouldn't swim much at all because he wasn't very comfortable with the big pool and all of the kids in it. After a while quite a few people had left and it was getting calmer. He said he needed to use the bathroom. His aunt asked his uncle to show him where the boys "outdoor potty" was. His uncle Mike led him to a spot in the yard and walked away to give him some privacy.

A short while later he walks up to me with his pants down around his ankles and says "I poopied daddy". I asked "you poopied?", and he replied yes. I asked him to show me where he poopied and he led me right to the spot on the grass where his poop was lying under a nice sized swarm of flies. I guess we should have been more clear about what the outdoor potty was for.

I knew there would be lots of cleaning up poop when I had kids, but I didn't know I would be scooping it out of my brother and sister-in-laws yard at a party. It's amazing that a kid who isn't comfortable swimming in a pool with a bunch of noisy kids doesn't mind dropping his pants and pooping in the yard with them. The most impressive part was that he didn't get anything on him. Apparently there is something to be said for instinct.

Let me be your hero

I love how easy it is to be a hero as a husband and a father. I don't have to save the world or cure some disease, I just have to smash the occasional spider or pick them up when a large dog approaches.

My most recent heroic event occurred when my youngest decided to drop his stuffed penguin out the car window. I turned the car around and parked in the McDonald's parking lot. I ran through the very large ditch as I watched the poor penguin roll around from the wind from the passing cars. Once I got up the other side of the ditch I had an opening in traffic and I dashed out and grabbed the penguin and ran back to the car. Penguin was saved. I then informed the boys to never ask to have the windows down again.

It worked!

I had always heard that if your headlights have that yellow haze on them you could polish it off with tooth paste. I was told that gel wouldn't work and it had to be the regular tooth paste. Today I washed and waxed the car and figured I'd try to fix the headlight haze. I only had gel but I figured it couldn't hurt anything. I have to say that if regular tooth paste works better than the gel that wasn't supposed to work then the regular stuff must be unbelievable because my headlights look almost like new now. Not only are they very clear they also smell minty fresh :)

I Love Having Boys

I know I could do all of the same things if I had girls, but then I would probably get static from some people for making them tomboys.

If it isn't obvious this is a picture of my almost four year old son helping me sand a board for a shelf to go above the TV in the basement. The focused look on his face is just perfect.

A few days later on the day after his fourth birthday he helped me jack up the car to change the oil and the fuel filter. He could work the jack all by himself. He is four years old and he already lifted a car. He even looked at the jack while he was using it and said "Daddy this is a lever, a lever is a simple machine." He's absolutely awesome.

I taught him all about safety and how important it is to put new oil in the car. I also told him how important it was to put your tools away when you are done, but I didn't learn that until I was about 25, so I am not holding out hope that this lesson will stick for some time, but I have plenty of time to teach it to him.

It's Been a While

I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I would talk about why. It's because 90% of the things I think to blog about get forgotten. I have a very bad case of CRS. If you don't know, that stands for Can't Remember Stuff or something like that. I am going to start trying to have a picture for everything I think of to blog about. This should help spark my memory. I'll dust off the old digital camera and keep it with me. Any good photographer should always have a camera with them anyway. I'm not really insinuating that I am a good photographer, but if I don't have a camera with me my chances decrease dramatically.

The main reason for my affliction is that with the exception of maybe ten nights I don't think I have slept more than 5 consecutive hours in about 2 or three years. I am one of those people that really needs 7 or 8 hours a night. They say lack of sleep is cumulative and you never make up for it unless you sleep those missing hours. So I'll be conservative and say I need 7 hours of sleep a night and I get 5.5. We'll also limit it to a 2 year period or 730 days. That means I am down 1,095 hours of sleep, so if I could just sleep for 45.625 days I would be all caught up. Oh, wait I forgot to add in the 7 hours of sleep I would have gotten anyway for the 45 days of sleep I am catching up on. Can you miss sleep while sleeping? The math is starting to hurt now. Okay a train leaves Seattle at 6:00 am traveling 65 MPH . . .

One monday after some of those three day weekends I had I was pretty well rested. I know I slept at least 7 hours straight on the Sunday night before. When I got to work I felt as though I had super human abilities. Solutions were clearer, I remebered things that were told to me, I was able to sit at my desk without having that 2:00 am and I've driven all night head snapping motion I sometimes get. It was a very productive day. I'm not saying there aren't days that going through a work day in a haze has advantages, but clarity is a good feeling when you can get it. I imagine many parents can relate.