Hehehe...umm...what?

The other day we were sitting down to dinner and I had Meyer on my lap. The boys were clowning on him a bit, laughing at the things he was doing. He had the chubby cheeks and double chin going pretty hard, and Jill started laughing at him too. The boys were trying to come up with funny names for him, and mostly just being silly. Jill was trying to keep things at least civil - "he looks like a chunky monkey!" "He's a chubby cheeks!"

Logan was laughing and then said "No, he looks like a sheriff."

"..."

"From California!"


Coming soon...the costume that redeemed the great 2009 Pinewood Derby Fiasco!

I Don't Know if We Have a Cleaner for That

So Jill and I were watching the KU-CU football game (a brilliant second-half performance was not enough to overcome two inside-the-10 turnovers by KU) when Logan comes downstairs to inform us that Liam is upstairs crying.

OK.  While cause for concern, that's not an unusual occurance.

He then tells us that he also peed in the fan.

That's definitely a first.

So I get upstairs, and Liam is hiding under his covers, stark naked.  His clothes are a wadded up bundle in the bathroom, and there's obvious wet spots all over the carpet near the fan.  I check a little closer.  Yep, pee all over the fan.  Also all over the dresser.  Oh, and hello, pee all over their Batman laptop and Lego boxes.  I'm wondering what else has been soaked in a finely vaporized spray of urine.  

I asked Liam what happened to his clothes and why there's pee all over the fan.

"I don't know."

Well, that's understandable.  It'd probably take a momentary bout of amnesia for me to pee in a fan, too.  I asked Logan instead.

"He was standing in front of the fan, and he unzipped his pajamas to cool off, and then he just started peeing."

"Is that what happened, Liam?"

"I don't know."

The amnesia's also handy for dealing with the pesky questions in the aftermath.  

So apparently Liam decided to cool off, then decided that what he really needed was a little homemade cooling setup, like those big fans on the football sidelines or at summer festivals that blow misted water all over you too cool off.  It's rather innovative, really.  I mean, that's some pretty quick on-the-spot thinking.  

Still, bleah.

I just know at some point in the future, either Logan or Liam (or Meyer) is going to ask me to take the oscillating fan down from the dresser and put it on the floor, and I'm going to say no.  And they will ask "but why?", and although I never would have imagined it, ever, I'm going to get to say "Because the last time I did that, someone peed in it."

Cub Scout Campout! But without the camping, or Scouts.

This weekend was supposed to be the Cub Scout Family Campout for Logan's scout pack. Well, it was, I guess. We weren't planning to do any camping yet, but I was going to take him down to the campground for some of the activities going on during the day.

Apparently, a scout family camp weekend is far less organized than I expected, although based on pack meetings I'm not sure what I should have expected. We never actually found any of the scouts, so it turned into an impromptu Father-Son Hiking Day. Which was, arguably, even better.



The campout was down at Klondike park, a newish park in St. Charles county in the heart of Missouri wine country. It's built in the midst of an old sandstone quarry, and there's silica sand and huge bluffs all over the park. There's a central lake left over from mining days that we walked around, and I took the opportunity to try to teach Logan how to skip rocks. It was sort of tough, because there weren't many good skipping candidates, but I managed to find a few. I tried to explain what to look for, telling Logan to look for flat rocks that are smooth on both sides. I showed him some not-so-good rocks.

"See, these are more square and kind of chunky. They're not good for skipping."

"What do you mean, 'chunky'?"

"You know, they're not flat. Sort of chunky-looking, with jagged sides."

"I thought they looked more like rectangular prisms."

Uhh, okay.



We hiked a few other trails around the park, walked through a birding area, had some snacks, and found a lone swingset to enjoy for awhile. It was nice just having the one son to share time with for a change.



At one point I asked Logan if he liked having some time with just the two of us.

"Yeah, it's fun."

He thought for a minute, then said "I wish Liam was here, though."

"Why is that?"

"I just know Liam would really like hiking with us."



He never stops surprising me.

Apple Picking ~ Centennial Farms (Augusta, MO)