ONE!

Liam's first birthday was lots of fun! We spent the weekend in Lenexa and celebrated with Jason's homemade pizza (which Liam loves) and turtle shaped birthday cake (yellow cake, caramel and chocolate frosting).

A few pictures of the festivities...

Driving Mr. Logan, Part II

So Logan and I went out to Home Depot this afternoon to pick up some more landscaping stuff. On the way home we had a very animated conversation. A brief synopsis ensues.

As we get into the van, Logan decides to play the Guessing Game, in which he pretends to be someone and it's up to me to figure out who he is. As he climbs into his seat, he says "Hey Dad - who am I? I'm from a movie. It's your choice to guess who I am."

"Hmm...Buckaroo Banzai." It's the first movie character that pops into my mind. Which gives you some idea of the average state of my mind.

Logan is baffled, of course. About two decades before his time. "Who's Buckaroo Gone Guy?"

"Buckaroo Ban- you know what, never mind. Can you give me a hint?"

"Sure - I'm red!" he says, as if this is practically giving it to me.

We go back and forth. I guess Darth Maul from Star Wars. "What's Star Burst?" he asks. I try to clarify - "No, Star Wars".

"Star Wurst". Images of interstellar sausage conjured up, I try a different track. "Logan, I'm completely baffled. I have no idea who you are."

He replies as if I'm the four year old, needing an explanation. "Dad, of course you don't know. That's because I'm hard tricky people."

I never thought of Logan as Hard Tricky People, but now that he's laid it out, it makes perfect sense.

----

So a few minutes later we're driving along, and I honestly have no idea what we were talking about, but Logan had a hard time hearing me, apparently. I asked him offhand if he was deaf.

Logan: "Who's Deaf?"

Me: "No, I mean are you deaf?"

Logan: "Who's Deaf?"

Me: "No, it means can you not hear me."

Logan: "What?"

Me: "IT MEANS CAN YOU NOT HEAR ME."

Logan: "Deaf means I can't hear you?"

Me: "Yes."

Logan: "Oh, no I can't hear you."

Me: "So you are deaf."

Logan: "What?"

Abbott and Costello, meet the new generation.

----

Logan was quiet for awhile, then I heard him start playing his little toy harmonica. He blew a few notes, then yelled out excitedly "HEY DAD, DID YOU HEAR THAT? I JUST PLAYED THE HARMONICA IN MY SHORTS!"

Beauty Secrets of the Preschooler

Ever wonder how young kids manage to look so...young? You might think it's their lack of age, but in fact we discovered today that there's a whole regimen of activity most people don't know about. Logan was examining some rough patches on his knees, and let slip a closely guarded secret.

"Hey Dad, see these? You guess what I do? I think what I do is get some slobber from out of my mouth, and rub it in there real nice and good so it doesn't get dried out."

So now you know. Next time you're salivating over a brownie sundae or bag of chips, just get a finger dab of that stuff and apply where needed.

Liam Learns to Read

Well, okay, not really. But he is starting to take more of an interest in some of his little board books. He even has the concept of pages down. Next step will be trying to explain which way is up.

Hey - it's better than not being into books at all. Jill and I are both pretty big readers (even if it is a nearly perfect soporific for her) and I'm sure we both want to instill that in both of our boys. So far Logan's still pretty big into the bedtime stories. I'll be excited to see how much more that increases when he learns to read for himself. He's starting to show the inklings of reading ability already.

Liam obviously needs more practice.

Driving Mr. Logan

I took the boys to get haircuts last night, which meant 20 minutes or so of Logan being cooped up in the back of my car. I'm not sure what it is, but whenever I take Logan anywhere the confinement of my smallish backseat seems to bring out the philosopher in him. Perhaps there's just nothing else to do.

Anyway, it's always interesting to see the kinds of things he comes up with. Just a random sampling of our conversation:


"Hey Dad, do you like giants?"
"I don't know. I don't think I know any giants."
"Well, I don't."
"Why not?"
"Because. They're GIGANTIC."


"Daddy, do you think you could drink a house?"
"How would I even drink a house? Besides, they're pretty big."
Logan thinks about that for awhile.
"Daddy, do you think you could drink a wheel? A wheel is small."

Sometimes this kind of question is obviously just him goofing off. But he sounded quite serious.