First Christmas Performance

 

My boy getting some words of encourgagement before his pre-school christmas concert. 

Christmas 2005

 

A great day in November walking by the river to get a picture for our christmas card this year. 

Morning Person??

My son is now in grade 1 so he has a little longer days at school and has to get up early each morning to get ready. Neither of the boys like to go to bed and they both seem to only have the ability to get up before 7am if it is a weekend.

So they other day in an attempt to get my son up I had gone into his room and turned on the light. When this only promted him to pull the covers over his head I went over to him and gave him a big hug. At this point he stuck his head out from the covers and told me. "Dad, do you know that parents are sometimes a little annoying to kids in the morning?"

Dynamic Duo

This is a picture of my boys on my youngest's 3rd birthday. For some reason he had the idea that he wanted a Batman party and that he would be Batman and his brother would be Robin. You can imagine that my wife was thrilled with this as she doesn't really sew. but I think she did and awesome job and the boys thought it was pretty cool. The only thing is that now my other boy wants a Spiderman party.

Moose Country

A few weeks ago we were returning from our usual Sunday evening dinner at my in-law’s house. To return to our house we have a choice of two routes to take. One is your basic city route and the other is through a forested area that acts like our university endowment lands and is notorious for having moose on the side of the road. For whatever reason we had not gone the university route for several months but this evening as I approached the intersection of the two routes I asked my two sons if we should go through moose country. Our 3 yr old immediately began shouting “Yes, Yes! Moose country, Moose country!” Our 6 yr old then said “No, don’t do it. Don’t listen to him, he’s just a baby!” I told him that his brother had called moose country first so we were going to go that way. At this point I should also mention that the next day at work I had a big interview first thing in the morning and as we passed through the intersection heading into “moose country” I began thinking that maybe we were tempting fate by taking a route we haven’t been on in so long. Almost immediately as you move through the intersection there is a sign on the side of the road signifying to watch out for moose. As we passed this my wife said “Alright, everyone keep your eyes peeled for moose.” She had barely finished her sentence when I was staring the huge hairy belly of a moose wondering across the road right in front of us. I slammed on the brakes and the moose kept moving across the road. Just as I thought we might actually miss the moose the front corner of our car clipped the back leg of the moose and it's big butt bounced off the hood of our car and it ran into the woods. As we sat in the car in silence for a moment my oldest son burst out "I'M A LITTLE SHAKEN UP BACK HERE!" My wife and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. We asked if everyone was OK and my youngest son looked at us with his eyes wide as saucers and began chanting "Moose country, moose country.” As everyone was OK and the damage to the vehicle was minimal we began driving on. With the chants of moose country continuing our oldest yelled out “I told you not to listen to him! He’s just a baby! Why are we listening to him?” All in all for hitting a moose it was one of the more hilarious things that has happened to us for a while and on top of that it made a nice ice-breaker for my interview the next day.

Don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Walk Like A Woman....

I was driving my son to Kindergarten the other day and Lola by the Kinks was playing on the radio. We were just quietly driving along when the song came to the part "Girls will be boys, boys will be girls". At this point my son perked up and said "He said boys will be girls, that's weird", I responded that it was a little funny. A few moments then passed and my son added "you know dad, if I lived in that world I would want to be a girl, so I still be a boy".

RRSPs kid style

The other day I was driving my son to kindergarten and he asked me if we would have a day off tomorrow. I said no and that we still had a few days before we could have a day off and he asked why didn't we just make a day off? I must admit at this point I started to like his train of thought and though inside I was saying "ya, let's make a day off", it came out as well, "you have to go to school so you can learn things and mommy and I have to go to work to make some money. "Why can't you just be retired like granpa" was his response. To this I answered that I didn't have enough money yet to retire. My son then said, "Dad, don't worry you can have some of my money."

Don't you wish you could be five again?

Hark the Herald Angels

A little clip of our oldest boy in his first Christmas Concert.

Christmas Concert

Next Stage...

Well, it looks like my wife and I will be moving onto a new stage of parenthood, life without diapers. Yahoo!! Our little guy finally decided that he would get on board with the whole potty training thing and has actually gone three days without an accident. Sure it took some Tonka trucks and a little bribery but hey, when it comes to potty training the end does justify the means. We have been changing diapers continuoualy for nearly 6 years now and it is nice to move on. Anyways, as much as it is nice to think about not changing diapers there is some sadness in looking at my little boy and thinking about the part of my life as the father of a little baby being over. However, then the memory of runny pooh comes back to me and I think, Yahoo, no more changing diapers!!

That's my boy

Like Father .....

Nothing makes you realize what goes around comes around like fatherhood. I was picking my son up from Kindergarten today and I happened to be waiting with a mom who attended the same school elementary school with me years ago. It is kinda of neat that her daughter and my son are in kindergarten together and can look at the old school pictures and see their parents as little kids in the same class. Anyways, that is another story. While I was waiting for my son I was peaking in through the window and I see all the little kids coming out of the room, single file, neatly spaced, until there is a large gap in the line. Suddenly, I see my son appear. He takes a few steps and then stops abruptly so all of the kids behind run into him. He goes a few more steps and stops again. The kids all seem to find this hilarious, as 5 year olds tend to do, and I begin shaking my head. The mother standing beside me, who's daughter of course was walking very nicely in line, laughed and said "What do you expect don't you remember what you were like?' Suddenly it hit me, it is going to be a long 13 years until graduation.

Priorities

Do you ever just stop and think "Man, how the hell did I ever get so lucky"? Well, thanks to my wife and my two boys I do on a regular basis. It is amazing what being surrounded by people you love more than anything in the world can do for a persons priorities.