Excessive Celebration

The video that you are about to see features my oldest son David doing some excessive celebration that probably puts to shame Chad Johnson and Terrell Owens, at least it would if either of those guys were capable of the emotion of shame. So that you can better appreciate the video allow me to set it up for you. David and Graham (red shirts in video below) had been sitting on the sidewalk watching in awe as the bigger kids played basketball down the street. After almost a half hour of watching they finally got an invite to play, they were thrilled just to get an invite and to have a chance to take some shots. David’s first shot missed, but his second shot... well... the video below is his second shot. I LOVE his reaction.

Be sure to click HQ for best quality.
Sometimes a shot is so good that you just have to leave the game, run all the way home and tell your mom that you made a basket. I suppose eventually that will wane a bit until it becomes the standard “hi mom” into the camera that you see from college and professional athletes.

After he went back to the game he made 7 shots in a row, and that’s when I started jumping, celebrating and running up and down the street like an idiot. Cut me some slack, I had just found out that I could stop saving for retirement, you know, since my son is going to be a pro basketball player.

Thanks to those of you who have left DLTC in your reader waiting for me to resume posting, even though I know you probably intended to delete it but never got around to it. I’m lazy like that too. This is the spot where I apologize for not posting more regularly and promise to do better in the future but I think that we can both see through that façade at this point so I won’t lie to you again. I will however tell you that I gave Candis (my wife) posting permissions here and she might provide some updates too from time to time, in fact, that last post down there about the pinkie, that was her.

I Know My Pinkie

This is Graham's new song he learned at preschool.

It's the cutest song I've ever heard.

There's just one minor detail...

That’s My Boy

I was sitting at my desk trying to look busy the other day when I received a text message from my wife, although calling it a text message is a little misleading because it did not contain any text whatsoever. Instead it contained a picture of Graham, my youngest son, at the department store making some new friends. It instantly caused me to burst into laughter at my desk, because... well... you just have to see for yourself.

“Hey there tootse, mind if I sit here?”
Imagine that, he shares the same interests as his Dad, although I was never brave enough to actually go up and talk to the manikins, let alone stare so brazenly or touch them.

In the moments before my wife answered her phone to explain the picture I imagined her wandering around the department store looking for the child she had misplaced, and then finding him chatting up some lingerie models just as cool as could be. “Oh, hi Mom. This is Amber, Cinnamon and Tiffany, they’re working their way through med school. Hey, can I offer you guys some chocolate milk? Maybe a goldfish cracker?”

My wife answered and informed me that no, she hadn’t misplaced our child and then found him in the lingerie section. Well, excuse me. I guess I’m still the only one who loses children in this family. It turns out that this lingerie display was situated right next to the cash register, and while my wife was paying the cashier, Graham wandered over to the models, ignoring my wife’s pleas to “get back here,” and “stay close to me.” When I was a kid the only thing that we lusted over at the cash register was the candy display, now they’re tempting kids with all kinds of new things.

Upon leaving the store Graham looked up my wife and said “Mom, those were girl’s underwear, right?”

Yes Graham. Those are most definitely girl’s underwear, but again, it’s good to know you share the same interests as your Dad.

Bath Time

I’ve never really cared much for baths. It always seemed to me that once you have washed all the dirt and sweat off, you were just left sitting there brewing in your own filth. That can’t be sanitary. Needless to say I don’t take baths, I take showers, and at least once a week. My kids however, absolutely love bath time, and it has provided me with a great number of stories to tell, none more amusing than the following one.

This incident occurred a couple of years ago when David was 3, and like many of the incidents here on DLTC is being recorded for posterity material that I will include in my speech at his wedding. My wife had David in the bath, which you probably saw coming thanks to my incredible foreshadowing skills. Graham was in bed and I was watching SportsCenter doing something sophisticated in the living room. All of a sudden there came a shriek from my wife, “Iaaaaaaannnnnnnnn!” That’s my name for those of you who don’t know me. I jumped up and ran to her assistance, without even waiting for a commercial break (please hold your applause ‘til the end). “Look,” my wife exclaimed pointing at the tub. It took me a few seconds to see it, but there it was, a small chunk of poo floating in amongst the bath toys. It was trying to disguise itself like E.T. in a closet full of stuffed toys but it stood out like the luminous finger that healed a sore thumb. “Watch him, while I go get something to clean up with,” my wife said. I stood at the bathroom door as instructed, but my attention had wandered back to the highlights that I was missing. I could almost see them down at the end of the hall. If only I’d waited until a commercial break. Curse these good husbanding skills of mine.

This wasn’t David’s first time pooping in the tub so he knew what was about to happen. Bath time was about to meet an abrupt, sanitized end. The HazMat Team were already on their way, bath toys were about to be bleached, sterilized, and disinfected before being burned and then hermetically sealed in a biohazard bag to be disposed of in an ecologically unfriendly manner. My wife’s a germaphobe. Had it been me watching over David I’d have probably fished the offending poop out of the tub, flushed it, and added some more soapy bubbles to the bath to make up for it. David wasn’t ready to be done with bath time, so he decided to solve the problem himself. If that last sentence didn’t just scare you to death, then you’ve probably never experienced first hand the problem solving acumen of a 3 year old boy.

My wife returned with bottles and wipes stacked chin-high that were labeled with more warnings than a nuclear missile silo and David began pleading his case. “No, Mom!” Alas, David’s protests were to no avail, the contamination was already more widespread than the Exxon Valdez catastrophe of 1989 and my wife was in full cleanup mode.
“Out of the bath please David,” she said. And then he responded with the scariest thing he’s ever said.
“No, Mom... It’s gone!” The house started spinning. The momentary silence that engulfed the three of us in the bathroom was as barren as the bleachers at a Marlins game on a rainy day. He was right. The little floating nugget was nowhere to be seen. The possibilities of what had happened to the chunk of poo washed through my head and they were not pleasant, especially since it had happened on my watch. My first thought was that he’d scooped it into the toilet, but then I realized that this was the logical solution and I knew that he would not have chosen the logical solution. What did he do with it? Was it stuffed into a bath toy? Stuck underneath the soap dish? What does the mind of a 3 year old think is a logical solution? At this point I was just praying that he’d tell us where it went so that we didn’t discover it six months down the road. “David, what do you mean it’s gone? Where did it go?”

“I smooshed it!” His face beamed with pride, my wife’s face beamed with a look of repulsion, and I left the bathroom so neither of them would see me laughing hysterically. Somewhere in his mind the best option for dealing with poop in a tub was to ‘smoosh it’ until it dissolved into the bath water. If you can’t see the poop in the tub, then there must not BE poop in the tub, right? Needless to say bath time was over and if I remember correctly, my wife was considering putting the house on the market because it would never be clean again.

Spank Me

This video doesn’t really require much of an introduction, but I’d feel lazy if I just put a video up without typing anything at all. This is Graham a couple of nights ago. He doesn’t want to eat his hot dog. In fact he doesn’t want to eat his hot dog so much that he’d rather have... well... I’ll let you watch it to find out for yourselves. (Sorry about the quality of the video, it was filmed on my camera phone.)

For those of you who don’t have young kids and are therefore not adept at understanding constant whining I’ll go ahead and post the transcript of the video below.

Me: What do you want Graham?
Graham: [Crying] A spankin’
Me: You want a spankin’?
G: [Still crying] Yeah.
Me: You want one now?
G: [Still crying] Yeah.
Me: Because you don’t want to eat your hot dog?
G: [Still crying] No.
Me: Can you eat your hot dog please.
G: [Still crying] But I don’t want to.
Me: What do you want?
G: [Yes, still crying] I want a spankin’ now.

Perhaps someone told him what they make hot dogs out of, or maybe there are just some days where you’d rather have a spankin’ than eat a hot dog. Some things never change.

Also, I’d like to point out that nothing says “loving father” like videoing your kids crying and laughing about it on your blog. It’s OK though, I really think that this will be one of those things that we can bond over and laugh about later on in life... probably during an extended therapy session.