Revealed: The Bodily Functions Of Muppets

Michael has been having fun doing role-playing, and likes to assign roles to himself and everyone else. Last night during dinner he decided he was Cookie Monster, I was Grover, Angie was Elmo, and Connor was Zoe. "Who's Zoe?" I asked. "The little brother is."

So after dinner, Michael disappeared for a few minutes, and I found him occupied in the bathroom. Even though the answer was pretty obvious, I asked him what he was doing.

"I'm just pooping"
But then he added ...
"I'm Cookie Monster who knows the poop"
And ...
"I don't eat poop because it's not cookies."

Underestimating A One-Year-Old's Sneakiness

Yesterday we were having a little trouble with Connor touching the TV. He kept flipping open the little panel on the front where the a/v inputs and some buttons are. We'd pull him away and tell him, "no," and close the panel. But it seemed like every time we turned around he was either at the TV or headed that direction.

Frankly, I think we were both a little more frustrated than we should have been by a one-year-old, but things are a little stressful as we head towards our big trip to Michigan (we leave tomorrow!). Anyway, after what seemed like the thousandth time of pulling him away from the TV, Angie talked to him, then I picked him up and put him on my lap to talk to him, too. I'm trying to look all stern and I'm telling him "You just can't do that," and "I don't want to have to fix all the settings if you start pushing buttons," and stuff like that.

Then he starts touching my sideburns and gets this really admiring smile on his face. And I start going, "Oh, do you like those? They're pretty sweet, aren't they? Y'know, I made them myself. Someday you'll have your own, and ... hey! You're supposed to be getting in trouble!"

Man am I a sucker for sideburn compliments. But I was kind of impressed with his "get out of trouble" plan. I'm going to have to watch this one.

Adventures In Unclehood

My sister and her husband have a super cool little boy named Noah. One of the ways we know what a quality guy he is is by how much he likes his Auntie Angie. Leah and J.B. are high quality parents, but are slightly less obsessed than I am about superheroes, and even less so about baseball. But it's nice to know I can have a little bit of influence still, even though we don't get to see Noah as often as we'd like.

Party Time

We got through Birthday season pretty smoothly, and both boys had a good time, I think. Angie and I had a pretty good time, too, and we certainly appreciated everyone who was here to celebrate with us. Things went so smothly, in fact, that I don't have much to share here that I thought was especially interesting, but Angie disagreed. So here's the one story.

At Michael's Birthday party, Angie made this amazing Veggie Tales cake, and Michael was pretty stoked about it. He's asked several times since if he can eat the Bob and Larry cake again. So when we set the cake down in front of him at the party, he didn't hesitate. He dove right in, face first.



And then didn't really understand what the problem was. I mean, it's his cake, isn't it?

Up, Up And Away

As you might guess, we have our fair share of superhero and comic book-related stuff in our house. Michael and I play with his toys quite a bit, I'm probably taking way too much pride in him knowing all the secret identities and catch phrases. Generally, Connor is as entertained by a cardboard box as he is by most of his toys.

But last night during our bedtime routine, Michael was sitting on my lap drinking milk while I read him some books, and Angie was feeding Connor on the couch next to us. Sometime during the second book, Connor grabbed a little Superman toy off the couch, started waving it around, and making "Woooosssssshhhhhhhhhhh" sounds. You know what I'm talking about. The classic "flying" sound effect.

This boy is a genius.