Your toys suck!

So, as stated in the previous post, you got several noisy toys for Christmas. Not just toys that make a little noise... Annoying toys that make lethal amounts of noise.

Anyways, that's not the main thing that makes them suck... It's actually something far more sinister... The music that they play is full of poor technique.

Take for instance the driving toy you got... It has a steering wheel and countless buttons that trigger awful sounds of varying sorts. Anyways, one of the buttons is a radio button that plays a couple different songs. One is the ABC song... And the vocals are somewhat off pitch. The other song is "Dina won't you blow your horn"... And it is so repulsively off key. Granted, it sounds like a little child is singing, but I really don't care... Get a kid that can sing well. The other song that plays occasionally is "Are you driving"... not a famous song. But it is set to the music of "Frère Jacques"... The pitch is decent, but not great. But what is really bad is the tempo... The vocals are half a measure off at the end of the song.

You also got this bear that sings the ABC song and some numbers song that I've never heard. It's cute, and you love it, but again, I give it an F for technical proficiency. The ABCs song ends a half step higher than it starts... And the numbers song is just stupid.

We got you a set of instruments for Christmas... It had a harmonica, a tambourine, castanets, and a wooden xylophone. For the most part, it's good... Except for the xylophone. It out of tune... It is supposed to be a major scale, and it is, except for the 3rd... It is a half step too low, making the scale sound minor at first, and then finish major.

Big deal, right? It's just a kids toy...

WRONG!

I don't want you learning improper technique during the most formative years of your life! That's just setting you up to be tone deaf... Or to have tempo problems... Or a bass player!

I don't appreciate it. Not one bit. Maybe I will remove that one key from the xylophone... Or the batteries from the other toys... I don't know. But something needs to be done.

I love you!

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Hey little man... It's Christmas time! Let's be glad!

Actually... Christmas has come and gone... We are down in Florida right now, visiting your Grammy and Great-Grandma. Having a great time so far! (Although, we really wish there was a separate room for you to sleep in... anytime we roll over in bed you wake up and scream for an hour or so... Makes for a very unrestful night.)

The time has finally come. I knew it would happen. I dreaded this day. Always said, "No, that's not gonna happen here."

But it has happened all the same.

You now play with LOUD toys.

It sucks. People gave you all these super loud "learning" toys for christmas... You know, the ones with the little girl/puppet voice that is easily the most annoying, abrasive voice ever... And the toy's decibel level could rival the sound system at most arenas.

But, you love them. Especially this one Sesame Street guitar. It has Elmo on it and it plays through a few songs and has buttons to make various "Guitar" sounds. You shake that thing around and walk around with it and dance like a crazy man when the music plays. It's pretty cute...

We got you some wood instruments from King Arthur's Toy Store and you REALLY like them... Especially this stick tambourine and xylophone set. You walk around with the mallet, shaking it around and hitting it on the couch and everything.

It's pretty cool to see you loving music so young... Actually, VERY cool! You're pretty much the coolest.

I love you!

Cliff Notes from the last 7 months

As I said in the last post, I have been pretty much a slacker when it comes to this blog. 7 months have gone by, and a LOT has happened! So I am going to give you the quick version.

• You have been SUPER alert and active right from the beginning. At a week and a half old you were really aware of things going on around you... And you were strong! You started trying to hold your head up.

• At 3 weeks you could hold your head up for a while.

• At a month old, your girlfriend, Lily, was born. She is precious!

• At 3 months old we had our first family vacation. We went down to Florida for a week during the 4th of July, then we went to Gatlinburg, TN, then we went to a cabin on a lake in KY with our friends.

• When we were in Gatlinburg, we took you hiking a couple times.

• On our first hike with you, we were hiking up to see this waterfall. On our way back down a baby black bear started walking down the path in front of us... It was pretty cool! We started following it, and we got pretty close to him.

As we got closer, I turned around, and literally 20 yards behind us was the Momma bear, following us as we followed her baby. Needless to say, we were kinda freaked out! I mean, bears are known to be VERY protective of their cubs, and if she thought we were trying to harm the baby, she could have gotten aggressive... And you were strapped to the front of me!

So, we freaked out for a minute as we kept working our way down the trail... Finally, we were able to get past the cub, and made it back to the car just fine. So, feel free to tell everyone that when you were 3 months old, you stood up to a black bear.

• The next day we hiked a VERY difficult trail with you strapped to me again. Feel free to tell people that at 3 months old you hiked The Chimney Tops. I even left our families mark on the mountain top.

Someday, you and I will hike that mountain again, and you will see where that is!

• You have been developing SO quickly! At 2 months you were holding your head up all the time. 3 months you were rolling over. At 4 months you were sitting up. At 5 months you were starting to crawl. At 6 months you were standing, and at 7 months and 4 days you started walking... You beat me by a whole month!

• Today we took you to the Emergency Room for the first time. Yesterday morning you were over at a friends house while your Mom was babysitting their children. You were walking in the dinning room, holding on to a chair, when you fell backwards, pulling the chair with you. You hit your head on the hardwood floor and the chair landed on top of you, pinning you to the floor. You cried and cried and cried and cried. So your mom took you to the DR and they said you looked ok, but if you were still cranky the rest of the day that we should call back. You hardly slept last night... You cried a lot. I held you for 2 hours so you would calm down, and you slept for a bit, but we took you to the ER in the morning. You have an ear infection. Thankfully though, you aren't hurt from the fall.

Well, that is it for now... If I think of any other major things that happened I will add them later.

Your mommy and I love you SO SO SO much! (And we both REALLY hope you sleep all night tonight.... We are tired.)

Here we go again...

OK, so it is November 14th. It has been 7+months since you were born and I last posted on this blog. Life has been busy... But I should have been better about posting on here.

SO, I am hereby declaring that I will be MUCH better about posting on here.

And away we go!

This is an adventure...

Welcome to the outside world Hendrix! We have been waiting for you for so long, and now that we have finally met you I see that you were worth the wait!

It has been almost 8 months since we first learned about your imminent arrival... And each day brought with it excitement and questions and even more excitement... And now that you are here and I can hold you and listen to you breath and grunt and cry, I am overwhelmed with the love that I have for you... Each time I walk past your bassinet and see your adorable face, it's like I am seeing you for the first time... My heart skips a beat and is flooded with so much emotion that, were it not for both my hands placed flat on my chest, I am sure that it would spill out onto the floor! And I know that when you cry it usually means that you are unhappy about something, but I can't help but laugh at the way your chin shakes and your face gets so red... So I pull you close and assure you that everything is in fact OK... But I guess that doesn't quite express the situation... Because, ever since you got here, life has been irrevocably wonderful! Not to say that it has been easy, because it hasn't, and it certainly wasn't easy getting you here... But it has been undeniably and inconceivably wonderful! Which leads me to what I want to tell you.

This is an adventure.

On Saturday, me and your mommy... who, by the way, is the most amazing, caring, sincere, loving, truly beautiful person ever! You will learn this for yourself soon enough... I have always known that she was incredible, but this weekend, and in fact this whole pregnancy, has been a shining example of how brilliantly beautiful she is... She is so full of grace and love, that I am daily humbled by the incredible blessing of getting to love her and be loved by her. Anyways, I got sidetracked... As we were in the hospital waiting for you to show up, your mommy and I watched a movie... One of our favorite movies: The Life Aquatic. It is such a beautiful movie about love, and relationships, and the destructive nature of selfishness. Plus, Bill Murray is in the movie. You don't know who he is, but you will one day learn of his genious... (Also there are some pretty cool animals in it too.) I have seen this movie so many times, yet I was struck by the final scene of the movie... Struck in a way that I had never felt before. In the final scene, Steve Zissou, a washed up movie producer with no real friends and no real family, sits on some steps with a small boy. Throughout the movie he is so selfish and conceited, but by the end, he is changing. As he sits there, he says with the clarity that only comes when you feel loss and love and grace:

"This is an adventure."

As I watched the movie Saturday with your mother, in a chair next to her bed, waiting on you to arrive, I realized two things: First, I realized that that was something that you should know... As you begin your life, you should realize that it is an adventure. Sometimes life is amazing! You feel the sun on your face, and the sand between your toes and you know that happiness is warm and wonderful! But life isn't easy... Sometimes it's messy. Sometimes, it is actually quite awful. You will have times when you feel scared and alone. But in those moments, you will see that I love you... That your mommy loves you... That your friends and family love you... And, together, we will all come around you and love you. And in those moments, you will know that joy is real and lasting... It helps you through the dark, scary times in life. It doesn't run away from challenges... It pushes through.

And, Second, I realized that we (you, me and your mommy) are setting out on an adventure together. I doubt that it will ever be easy... But I KNOW that it will be incredible! I know that there will be times where we are frustrated with each other... I know that there will be times when you fall... But know this: we will always be there to pick you up when you do... There is nothing you can do to make us love you any less than we do now.

"Excited" is an inadequate word to express how I feel about this opportunity that your mommy and me have been given... You are our beautiful boy.

This is an adventure.