Paul and the Family

Excerpt from a conversation this morning:

• Brian: Can we go to McDonald’s for lunch?
• Kelli: You’ll need to get a job so you can pay for it.
• Brian: What’s a job?
• Kelli: It’s where you go to work, and they pay you money, like daddy does.
• Brian: But daddy already has money from his work.
• Me: Yes, but we already spent that money buying food for you.
• A minute passes…
• Brian: Dad, can I borrow some money to go to McDonald’s?
• Me: If you borrow money, that mean’s you have to give it back. If you spend the money at McDonald’s, how will you give it back to me?
• Brian: But you will just earn more from your work!

I have to admit, I never would have dreamed my three-year-old would be asking to borrow money from me…

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — Brian is one clever kid.

In my family (i.e. my siblings and me) we have quite a tradition of wordplay and punnery, often quite elaborate puns involving multiple levels of multiple meaning and “had to be there”-type in jokes. Yesterday Brian proved that he is indeed one of the family.

He was playing with some legos. He really likes playing with legos, especially the mini-figures (the ones that are for ages 6+ or older) and has played with them literally for years. His favorites are the Star Wars sets. Completely off the subject, I don’t know where they get those age estimates from — we just got him a 200+ peice Star Wars spaceship lego set and he built it almost entirely by himself — I would dig out the appropriate pieces and show him which step he was on in the book, and he would put the pieces on.

Anyway, he not only likes the pre-built sets, but he also loves to take them apart and rebuild them into different spaceships or things. Yesterday, he was holding a battle droid mini-figure in one hand, and in his other hand he had a window from a spaceship set. He had attached a mini-figure’s lightsaber to the window and was making the window “chop” at the battle droid.

I was a little perplexed by this — he likes to do creative things with mini-figures, but I had never seen him use a window like a person, so I asked him about it:

• Me: Is the window fighting the battle droid?
• Brian: No dad, it’s “Mace Windu”

(In case you aren’t as big a Star Wars fan as Brian, Mace Windu (not “window”) is the Jedi Master played by Samuel L. Jackson in Star Wars episodes I - III.)

A couple of days ago I got Adam out of bed and needed to change his diaper. Lately he has been running and hiding behind furniture in his room every time we try to change him. Usually I have to find some toy or book or something that I can use to lure him out of hiding.

So I grabbed the closest thing I could reach, a toy stuffed tiger that is pretty big (over 2 feet long nose to tail). I pretended to make it walk around and growl. Sure enough, Adam got interested and came close enough that I was able to wrestle him down and change his diaper.

A funny thing happened after I finished, though.

First an aside. When Adam was about two months old, I had been driving a toy car to entertain him, making appropriate “boy noises” as Kelli calls them — rumbling engine noises and so forth. I set Adam down, and the first chance he gets he grabs a toy car and says “vrrroooom!” (Of course, it wasn’t actually “vrroom” — it was really more like “mrrmmrmmm” — but for people reading this I’m sure “varoom” looks more like a car noise.) Since then, Adam has continued to make car noises when driving toy cars etc. — Kelli has declared that it must be innate for boy children to make such noises.

Anyway, back to a couple of days ago. I had just finished changing Adam’s diaper, and he got up and grabbed the tiger. Since I had been making the tiger walk and growl, I sort of expected him to do something like that. He had different ideas, though. He started pushing the tiger sliding along the floor, at the same time making engine noises “vrrroooom!” as he drove the tiger around his bedroom.

I guess maybe animal noises aren’t innate knowledge for boys.

Well, the day has finally arrived. Our baby daughter, tentatively named Sarah Elizabeth (no middle name yet), was born at 5:15 p.m. Bloomington, IN time. Kelli and baby are both resting and doing well. Kelli was hurting a lot and having fairly regular contractions all day. She called me and I left work early and got home just after 4:00. By that time she was in a lot of pain. As she was preparing to leave her water broke, so we hurried to the hospital. They checked her and she was dilated to 9 cm — unfortunately she was too far along for an epidural, so she just had to suffer through the pain. Not fun.

The baby came fast though, and Kelli did an incredible job of pushing — much quicker and more effectively than with our other kids — I guess practice has paid off. It was nice to have the baby early enough that she was actually able to get to her room at a decent hour.

Since for some reason I can’t understand everyone always wants to know the vital statistics, here they are:

• Weight: 8 pounds 3 ounces
• Length: 20 inches

So she is kind of short and chubby, at least by our children’s standards. (By way of comparison, Adam was 8 lbs. 2 oz. and 20.5 inches; Brian was 7 lbs. 11 oz. and 21.5 inches if I remember right.)

I took Brian and Adam up to see mom and baby tonight. While we were there I took several pictures. Here are a few — the rest will be available (hopefully) soon when I finally get all my photos up on the site.