Boys, Hickeys, and Rolling over Rover

Do you ever feel incredibly busy, yet also feel like you are not getting anything done? That describes my life the past couple of weeks. The boys are doing great, but there is just so much more work with two. A friend described it this way: with one child, the parents are able to employ a “double coverage” defense; with two you go to “man to man”; and once you have three or more you go straight to a “zone/prevent” defense. Really, we’ve been doing great, but it just takes us twice as long to get anything done.

Dad was able to make it out for a long weekend a few weeks back (you may recall me saying something about the Eagles!!!)

We had a great time relaxing and explored Lookout Mountain a bit. We took a ride on the Incline Railway, the steepest passenger railway in the world. Jonathan loved it (surprised?) and everytime we drive by it at the bottom of the mountain he has to look for “that new fun train.” He’s really been quite a trip lately. Though he is going through a bit of a whiny/needy phase, he just says and does some of the funniest things.

We’d really like to video some of the things he does, because they are much more hilarious when they are caught in the act, rather than described in words. Just yesterday I gave him a little bag of Cheezits and he offered one to me. Then he kind of held his hands out, palms up, and said in an apologetic voice, “They’re all squares, Daddy. There aren’t any rectangles.” I tried not to be too disappointed, as rectangular cheesy crackers do taste much better than the boring square ones, but I managed.

Jonathan is also starting to give up his afternoon naps. Which he is not allowed to do, because afternoon nap time is also known as “halftime” in the aforementioned game of parenting. We’ve told him that if he doesn’t want to sleep that he can bring some books into bed to read, but he needs to be in there by himself for a while every afternoon. Normally we’ll hear him playing with some cars or trains on the bed and telling one of them not to be mean to the other one or they will have to go sit in the naughty spot. I took the following picture when I went in to wake him up from an actual nap.

He had gone down from his bed, went over to his bookshelf and then brought his piggy bank, bulldog paperweight, and a stone polar bear back to his bed, presumably played with them for a bit, and then lined them up looking at him while he took a nap. Seriously, our child is the strangest kid I’ve ever been around. It’d be great to have an invisible camerman just follow him around to capture everything, because he turns into such a ham when we turn the camera on him. He gets loud and starts speaking gibberish and wants to see the video played back on the screen. (Aside: isn’t it unbelievable that kids under 10 don’t even understand the concept of taking a picture, and actually having to wait several days/weeks until finding out what it looked like?) Anyway, he’s a really good big brother and helper.

Gabe is doing great, he just went for his month/six week checkup and was a whopping 9lbs, 12oz. Jonathan was 9lbs, 3oz at 2 months. We’ve got a porker on our hands. The picture to the left is of Gabe snoozing in Mommy’s arms shortly after giving himself a hickey on his arm. He’s definitely going to be a thumb sucker when he has the brain power to actually remember where his thumb is and take it out of his fist and get it to his mouth. He’s been such a good baby though…sleeping pretty good, rarely fussy, eats well. We think he’s starting to smile, which is encouraging. When you have a 3 year old who won’t stop talking (seriously, he talks in his sleep), it sometimes feels like nobody’s home upstairs with Gabe. But he’s starting to interact and it’s fun.

Ahhh. And Rover. So, I was on my way to WalMart with Jonathan the day Dad was leaving to go get him the new Eagles CD (since, you know, we saw them two days earlier), and as I get down the mountain and am driving on the 45 mph highway, a dog darts across right in front of me, ran into the drivers side door and got clipped under the back tire. I didn’t know what to do-Jonathan asks me what happened, I said there was a bump in the road, I see the dog rolling around on the road before getting up and limping off. I couldn’t bear the thought of stopping to scrape the stupid mutt off the highway with Jonathan there, unforgiving because I killed a dog, so I kept going. I ended up going back–there was actually a Sheriff Deputy right near there (not the nicest part of Chattanooga) who heard from someone who saw it that the dog went home and the owner took him to the vet with what looked like a broken foot/leg. Sheesh. No fun. What would you do-traumatize your son or leave the dog with a death wish to suffer the consequences of his foolish decision?

Anyway, Renee’s mom came down here for a week because I leave tomorrow to go to a Student Development conference in Cedarville, OH. It will be a great time of hanging out with our staff, being challenged with new ideas, networking, and being around other folks who truly do understand what your job is-even if you can’t succinctly sum it up in a two sentence description. I’m looking forward to it.

New pictures were added here.