This evening my wife and I were joking around with son #1 (currently 10 years old). He was asking about whether or not we were planning on having another baby, and we responded with an emphatic “no.”

His response?

“Well, if you don’t want to have any more babies, you should get Mirena. It’s 99.9% effective, and it’s also reversible in case you change your mind.”

Hmmm… I think somebody has been watching too much TV!

…before you became a parent:

“Get your hands out of your pants and finish your lunch.”

“Your buttcrack is not sanitary. Go wash your hands.”

“Either sit on the toilet or go to bed. This is not a game.”

“I saw you pick and eat it. Go wash your hands — I don’t want them on my computer.”

I remember back when I was a kid. We had school pictures once a year, and they were a pretty big deal. Everyone got dressed up, our moms combed our hair extra well before we left for school, and then our pictures (no matter how goofy) ended up being displayed throughout the house.

Well, it’s still a big deal, but… It now happens twice a year and the packages have gotten much bigger and more expensive. It seems that the new expectation is for us to buy pictures during both the fall and the spring.

On top of this, our preschool takes pictures twice a year, as well. The real bummer for us this past week is that they sent the proof home and Son #4 (three years old) promptly snatched it off the table and lost it. Not a huge deal, right? Well… For whatever reason, the proof costs far more than a regular picture, and we’d be on the hook for it if we didn’t return it by today.

The real bummer of this is that the proof has a big watermark across it declaring that it’s the property of the photographer. Thus, even if it eventually turned up, it would be of no use to use.

Thankfully, under intense questioning, he had a moment of toddler clarity and told us he had slipped it under the carpet in the living room (we have a large area rug over hardwood in that room). Ah, yes, of course… We looked high and low, but not quite low enough.

One of the first signs of spring has visited our house… Three out of four of our boys are once again sporting buzz cuts. It’s not secret that I cut my own hair, and in the summers we buzz the boys as well.

The lone holdout right now is our six year old, whose hair has recently garnered compliments ranging from people telling him that his hair “looks like gold” to someone saying that it’s “delicious.” As long as that keeps up, I suspect he’ll want to keep his hair. The good news is that his hair grows the slowest of the four, so it still hasn’t gotten shaggy.

What this means in practical terms is that we now only have to worry about one case of raging bedhead before getting the boys out the door to school. And guess what? The boys love this as much as we do. No more combs running through scraggly hair, much less of a rush in the wee hours of the morning, etc.

As you know, we have four little boys running around the house — though I’m somewhat hesitant to use the term “little” since they’re growing so fast. Anyway, with that as a backdrop, I thought I’d share some thoughts on the transitions from zero to one child, one to two children, etc.

Zero to one: Monumental. Having your first child results in an infinite increase in the number of kids in your house. Life will never be the same again. But that’s a good thing.

One to two: Doubling the number of kids in your house. A major change, but not as big as the first one. And you’re still not outnumbered.

Two to three: Thus is a smaller proportional increase, but now you’re outnumbered. In basketball terms, you now have to switch from a man-to-man defense to a zone defense.

Three to four: Life is so out of control at this point that you’ll hardly notice the change. Not really, but kinda. Having a new baby with three other kids running around is a challenge, but by this point you’re sorta used to the chaos.

Four to five: We’ll never know…

It’s 7:11 AM, and the “Miracle Bus” just came and went. That’s how my lovely and talented wife refers to the school bus that ferries our kids to and from school everyday. Somehow, some way, they board the bus as little hooligans, transform into absolute angels for the duration of the school day, and then morph back into their old selves by the time they step off the bus at the end of the day. Amazing. While we love the fact that our kids are perfect little angels all day long, we wouldn’t mind having the bus run in reverse every once in awhile.

Overheard at our house this past weekend…

Our three year old: “Mommy, mommy, I have ammonia.” (He meant pneumonia.)

My wife: “Ammonia? Well, then you better clean the house.”

Our three year old: “No! I’m not a woman.”

Wow. I’m not sure if we should laugh or hide our faces in shame.

Oh, the irony… Son #3 recently arrived home from kindergarten carrying a t-shirt declaring him to be a member of the Class of 2020. This for a child that has been wearing glasses since age 3, and has anything but 20/20 vision. It’s also a bit difficult for someone who graduated in the the Class of 1989 to imagine a high school graduation 31 years later in 2020. And to think that Son #4 will be a part of the Class of 2023!

This is just a quick note to wish you all a (slightly belated) Happy New Year! We just returned from a trip to visit family (where we got a much-needed dose of snow) and are still recovering. All in all, things went very well.

We had actually planned to stay home for the holidays, but I snagged a great deal on airfare, so we decided to go visit the grandparents (on my side). And we actually managed to keep the nature of our trip a secret until we pulled into the airport!

We live about an hour and a half from the “big city” (and the airport) and the boys only knew that we were going on a fun trip to the city. They were under the (mistaken) impression that we were going to drive in and spend some time away from home doing semi-local stuff. Imagine their surprise when we ended up pulling into the airport and jetting of to visit family…

The outbound trip was uneventful, but tiring. We flew Christmas evening after having gotten up early for the usual festivities. But the return trip was a snap. We even managed to turn it into a nap flight for Son #4 (we didn’t push the sleep thing on the outbound trip since it was an evening flight and we wanted them to sleep when we got there).

So there you have it… We’re back, the trip was great, and we’re now settling back into our routine.

When it rains it pours… After discovering that we have H. pylori in the house, we decided to scrap our Thanksgiving travel plans and stay close to home. Our plan was to celebrate close to home, get well, and perhaps even recover a bit from the recent havoc brought on by a major home renovation. And since yesterday was our youngest son’s third birthday, we figured we could have a nice family birthday party. [more]