Father's Day Q&A

Noah gave me his Father's Day present this morning.  Part of his gift to me was a questionnaire that his teacher at his preschool helped him fill out earlier this week.  Noah's answers are underlined.  These are Noah's own, original answers to the questions.

MY DADDY.....

My Daddy is 5 years old.
My Daddy's name is Clayton.
He weighs 60 pounds and is 11 feet tall.
My Daddy has brown hair and blue eyes.
My Daddy's favorite food is chicken.
My Daddy's favorite clothes are shirts and pants.
My Daddy's favorite color is red.
My Daddy's job is a new job.
Daddy gets mads when I fight with my brother.
Daddy is happy when I do good things.
My favorite thing to do with Daddy is when we eat candy.
The best thing about my Daddy is that he has a superhero body.

That's all I've got to say about that.

I Cleaned Your Phone

Friday morning Noah came into the bathroom while I was getting ready for work and handed me my cell phone.

"here daddy, I brought you your phone"
"thanks Noah, why did you have it?"
"I was cleaning it for you?"
"Cleaning it?"
"yeah, i licked all over it and dried it off with my shirt. here you go"

I love my kids.

I'll Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap!

Noah has begun using the word "stupid." It has gotten worse despite our best efforts to curb it, so B went to washing Noah's mouth out with soap in order to deter him from using it anymore. The problem came when we realized we don't have any bar soap in our house. B, being quick on her feet and all around better at this parenting thing than me, grabbed the liquid soap and made Noah put some on his toothbrush and brush his teeth with it.

Needless to say, Noah HATED it and it deterred him from using the word for the remainder of the day. The next morning though B and I began to brush our teeth and realized that our toothbrushes tasted soapy.

Noah had snuck into the bathroom and soaped both of our toothbrushes without us knowing it!!

Hey Babe!

"Hey Babe!"
I heard B say from the kitchen.

BABE! BABE! BABE!
And that was Noah's name for me the rest of the morning.....

Things Have Changed

What can you say? I mean really, what can you say? People said, "oh, having your second will be like such-and-such" or "y'all will be doing such-and-such."

Well, Nathanael is 3 days old and all of us are still here. In some ways nothing has changed. In some ways, everything is different! Nathanael, when he isn't eating, just sits in his chair by the window and looks at.... dirt, yeah, basically just the dirt blowing around (sandstorms the past week, the whole house is caked in dirt). Noah is his normal self just with one more baby to play with.

Noah loves Nathanael. So our role towards Nathanael is really more of a guardian as to a parent. We spend a lot of time protecting him from his loving big brother! However today for breakfast Noah and I went out to catch food for the women and children and Noah discovered powdered donuts!

How things are definitely different:
* Getting 2 boys to sleep at the same time is harder than just 1.
* We have 3 times the diapers as before
* I am taking out the trash more
* Sleep is like that pot at the end of the rainbow: you chase it, but never find it.
* We fill up a car. No more giving people lifts. We are full. Full of kids, toys, car seats, strollers, and diaper bags.
* We spend alot of time changing clothes and doing laundry.

With all that said we are very happy and doing very well.

Why Children Shouldn't Sit Next to You

We moved Noah's "little boy" highchair from the end of the table between B and I and turned it into Noah's "big boy" booster seat that now sits next to Daddy. That was a good idea.

Then today Noah decided to paint my dress shirt's right sleeve with Domino's pizza sauce as he was digging into his own slice.....

Big Boy Schmig Boy. Need to get that kid a straight jacket while eating!

The "Why in the Heck isn't Nathanael Here" Ultrasound!

If you are familiar with ultrasounds, then you know that reading them can be tricky. The first several months you don't know if what you are looking at is, in fact, your child or just a dope-head's black & white stab at modern art.

Then you move to the middle months where you've had some practice at it, you actually can see a developing baby, and you can actually nod your head in agreement when the doctor says, "oh, look the feet" without lying through your teeth.

Oh if only that was the case with Nathanael today! Nathanael is so big that we've reached the stage where all we see is part of a leg, or part of his head. It was like looking from the other side of a one way mirror when some fat kid smashes his face up against it on the other side. Extreme close-ups! Our kid has officially moved into needing a wide screen ultrasound just to see him!

The good news is that B and Nathanael are both very healthy. Doc says that if Nathanael doesn't surrender and come out with his hands up by next Sunday the 8th, then we're sending in the search and rescue team.

The King and Rocky

What does the King and I starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner and Rocky Balboa with Sylvester Stallone have in common? Very, very little, save the fact that Noah sat through and watched both of them.

Now the guys reading this will of course ask, "you let your son, whom you love, watch The King and I? Do you want him to grow up and be a dancing fairy?" And of course, the girls will say, "Rocky Balboa? Then he will learn how to hit and be violent!"

So my answer to both of these groups is, "heck yah! He is going to be an athletic dancing fairy with a mean left hook!" Don't mess with Noah "Bone Crusher" Bullion.....starring in the Broadway Musical..... :)

Noah learned two extremely important things from both of these movies. If you remember in The King and I every body had to bow before the king. It was the part of the movie when all the royal children come and are being presented before Ms. Anna. We looked over and noticed Noah was bowing every time one of the kids came in and bowed before the king. They would come in and bow, Noah would bow down. They would get up, Noah would get up. Next kid...same thing. On this went through the entire movie. The king comes in, Noah bows.

From Rocky Balboa he DID learn how to throw a jab much to my cheek's dismay, but during the credits they show all these fans running up the steps in Philly and raising their arms cheering. So Noah can now raise his hands like Rocky and cheer.

Bowing in humility, hands raised in triumph. Sounds like he is ready to worship.

What A Day This Is Going To Be!!

Noah was only up two hours today before he had already flushed his toothbrush down the toilet and dumped Noah's Baby headfirst into the dirty diaper bin.

What a day!

Noah's Baby

THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT BABY NATHANAEL'S BIRTH, because well, HE ISN'T HERE YET!!!

Just like the lady from American Airlines informed me today as I was trying to buy tickets to come home in July, "Well, sir, we can't really issue a ticket for the infant because we need a name and a birth date and as of right now your son has neither."

Thank you so much.


Noah's Baby is different than Baby Nathanael. Baby Nathanael will be cute and warm and have fluids shooting out of him (.....er... TMI???). Noah's Baby is small and plastic and is cleaner and sleeps through the night.

Noah, as we all have, has gone a bit baby crazy these past weeks. This has manifested itself in different ways: Noah making us read the "I am a big brother book" over and over and over again, Noah chasing after strollers in public places screaming "BABY! BABY!! BABY!!, or our personal favorite, Noah kissing mommy's tummy. We realized the pinnacle of this baby madness last night when we were at some friends house who have 2 girls. These girls have dolls. Noah LOVED the baby dolls. That is right. My son is in to baby dolls......you wanna take this outside? Back off.

Anyway, we thought since Nathanael is dragging his feet that we ought to get Noah his own baby in this "pre-Nathanael tension" we've been living in so we could practice being nice to the baby and loving the baby and, when Nathanael finally gets here, Noah will have his own baby.

So we went to the store and picked up a very nice, masculine baby doll. NOAH WAS TOTALLY STOKED!!! The cashier took it out of the package to give it to him, because Noah's attachment. The whole way home all Noah did was kiss his baby and pat his baby and love his baby. His baby doll's name is Noah's Baby.

Then we got home. We rode up the elevator and got to our door. Noah then turns and chunks Noah's Baby down the flight of stairs!!

Then later today we found Noah's Baby face down in the dryer with the door shut!

Nathanael is doomed!

However tonight at the mall Noah and Noah's Baby were in the mall and Noah kept showing Noah's Baby to all the women that passed.

So Noah is a very proud, but very abusive parent.

Kitchen Disco-Rave/ Ambush White Man Party

So the Pwoods have been here this week. Very cool. That needs to happen more often. Pwoods, family, whoever. Come on over.

But I was in the office and I hear B yell that I need to come and discipline our son, so I walk out into the living room where I can see the entrance into the kitchen.

The lights are flashing on and off.....and Noah is giggling. I am not sure if you know this, but 2 year olds aren't usually able to reach up and turn lights on and off. Noah, naturally, isn't an exception to this rule.

This can only mean that Noah has climbed up the dryer and was probably sitting in the washer (which does happen quite a bit actually) and found out he was able to hit the light switch from there.

So I put on my "you are so dead" face and walk into the kitchen to practice the art of "spare not the rod." As I entered the kitchen however, I did not find Noah in the washer as expected (meaning I would be taller and looking down on him) but instead he had closed the washers lid and was standing on top of it, meaning that I came in and was eye level with his belly button and then had to lift my gaze even higher to peer up into my two year old son's face who is standing triumphantly higher than me. Slightly intimidating....might I add.

What comes next is most disturbing...
he gives a Comanche War Cry and jumps off the washer onto me. I mean, it was more he jumped and I caught him, but to his credit he jumped and then I freaked out and reacted and caught him just in time.

So Noah basically ambushed me from higher ground as I walked into his boobie trap!!!

Dude, it is going to be an interesting next couple of decades......

Cheap Babysitting

Tonight we were walking through a mall and went into their big babystore. You know, the ones with baby clothes, baby toys, baby stuff, and baby furniture. As we were cruising through the playpen section we noticed that one of them had a baby in it. She wasn't old enough to crawl yet, but she could sit up and hold her own.

She had a couple of toys in there with the tags still on them. The only thing she was missing was her parents. Her parents apparently dropped her off in the playpen and threw in 3 or 4 toys for her to play with and, I don't know, were still shopping.

The girl didn't seem to mind. I guess I don't either. I'm just jealous we didn't think of that earlier.

When Noah wants you up......

This morning I woke up on my side facing the edge of the bed. You know that freaky sensation where you "feel" someone there. I open my eyes and Noah is staring at me eye level smiling. I smiled back politely and roll towards the middle, leaving my back facing Noah.

Thats right, I turned my back on my poor, defenseless son.

I doze back off and in a few minutes I "feel" someone staring at me again. This was coupled with the feeling of a certain small body climbing up the foot of the bed and crawling up the bed between B and I. Then that "feeling' that someone was staring at me was coupled with a "certainty" that someone what slapping me on both cheeks. I open my eyes and Noah (and you thought he was poor and defenseless) is laying there smiling at me. So I did what any loving father would do.

I pushed him over to his mother and turned my back on him again. I slept very peacefully too...for about another hour.

At lunch today B and I were talking about this morning's adventures and I got the rest of the story. Apparently Noah was desperate to have someone to play with this morning, so when I rolled him over to B, he then began punching her face. Then played the same game of running back and forth between her bedside and the door trying to get her up.

That was our morning. :)

No, No, NO!!!

Noah understands what "no" means. You say "no" and he immediately, temporarily stops what he was doing.
The other day we went looking for Noah (he has a tendency to run to other rooms and get quiet, which is when you really worry). Noah loves to play with our oven (you see? really worry!!) He likes to click on the electrically light button that sparks so you can light the gas stove top. He runs over there and pushes it and listens to it click. We tell him "no" and swat him, he repeats, we swat him harder, he repeats, blah, blah, blah ....vicious cycle.

Well we heard in the kitchen...
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK (Noah playing with the oven)

Then we hear...
NO! NO! NO! NO! (Noah telling himself that it is wrong)

CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!
NO! NO! NO! NO!
CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!
NO! NO! NO! NO!

Finally when we walk in there, Noah looks up and immediately drops his arms down to his side and walks away like nothing just happened.

My son is living proof of the doctrine of original sin.

Ba Ba Bala La Ba

Today I came home from work and Noah was very excited to show me something, so I followed the waddling young tike into his room. He turned and picked up a picture book in another language that some friends in the Far East had sent him back several months (L&A, thanks for the books and stuff, he still doesn't fit into the outfit though. When he does you will be the first to know) But Noah loved the back cover. Ba! Ba! Ba!
Okay, Noah what is it?
Ba! Ba! Bala!
My son was pointing to the "ball" on the back of the book and was saying the word he knew.

That's right, no short bus for this baby bull, he's on his way to GT!!

Yogurt Foot

Today while I was feeding Noah yogurt for breakfast I turned my back to him to get something.

When I turned back around he had stuck half his foot in his mouth. He then pulled it out and saw that it was now covered in yogurt and commenced in licking the yogurt off his foot before sticking it back in his mouth...... then repeating the process.

Noah eats my money

A quick funny story about Noah:
Two nights ago we walked into the dining room and Noah had spotted my change on the table and I told him NO and moved it towards the middle away from the edges where he can grab it.... went into the kitchen to get something

came back in and he had

pulled the chair out,

climbed up in said chair,

and was eating my money!

We are pretty sure he didn't swallow any of it, but time will only tell.

Spaghetti Sauce Stains..... Children

We all have it.

You know, that one Tupperware container you stored your leftover spaghetti sauce in. It's still sortof clear, but its got that red tint to it and no matter how hard you scrub it just never returns to its original color.
This is what I picture when I look at my son, wondering if he will ever be back to normal again.

It went something like this....
We shipped his high chair last week so insha'allah it will be there by the time we are in our new home. This makes feeding Noah fun to say the least. Because of this conundrum, I have heard B say more than once my favorite quote from her about Noah.

Child, you don't need a bib, you need an eight by ten tarp!

Tonight was no exception. We had spaghetti, and the noodles and the sauce were problematic for both child and parent to remain semi-clean during the process, so we just set Noah down on the floor and filled up his bowl with spaghetti and sauce.

By the end of the meal, Noah, the floor, his diaper, and the chair next to him were all a pretty shade of spaghetti sauce red. It was AWESOME!!! He looked like he had donned himself in warpaint and was on his way to global domination.

In the end, B took our little Indian brave straight to the bathtub and I took to scrubbing the floor, chair, table, and everything else to get the red off. My job went well. B came back in though with our happy, smiling child and he had a redish tint to his chin, neck, arms, legs, and the top of his round, little belly. Priceless.

Yup...that's going to have to wear off.

We have a system here...

Noah is 10 months old today!

Over the past couple of months I've noticed a pattern in mine and Noah's relationship.

He wakes up around 6 and spends the next 14 or 15 hours pulling things out of drawers, scattering DVDs all over the house (we found two yesterday in the bathroom, YIKES!!), taking his toys and shoving them into places they don't belong or leaving them in the main thorough ways of our house so daddy steps on them.....
Then after he goes to bed we put the house back together so when he wakes up in the morning he can have a fresh, clean slate to start with and do it all over again. This happens like clock work everyday. He trashes the house, we untrash the house.

I am not sure if he knows that it is us that cleans up after him or if he thinks, by magic, the "Clean-Up My Junk" Fairy comes in each night and waves her little magic junk reducing wand and sings "A Spoon Full of Sugar Makes the Medicine Go Down" and it all marches back to its nice little space.

This by no means is a complaining post. I love it. Noah can trash our house anytime he wants. He's got my vote. I love it.

مشاكس كبير

مشاكس كبير [mushaakis kabiir] - a very big "gets into everything" kind of person, used in describing little boys especially.

Noah is everywhere!!! This kid is all over the place!! He brings chaos to order, loud to quiet, and broke to non-broke.

I love having a little boy! This morning he was crawling across the floor chasing his ball and he finally cornered it by the bookshelf at the end of our couch [a place he had never seen before]. He looks up and sees all the books that we had been hiding from him. Instead of just tearing into them and throwing them all over the place, he stops.......

he looks at me with this "ohhhh...now I know" face, he smiles really big, and then rips into them scattering them all over the floor!! He had nearly digested half of one of my old journals before I got to him!!!

If he is crawling by something and they are stacked up, he knocks them over. If there is something on the table when he is standing next to it, he throws it off! He is going to destroy our house!! I love it. I spent most of the morning excited about building forts and playing Cowboys vs Indians, or Bedouin vs Turks, or Homeland Security vs Terrorists.

*the pics are meandering through some Roman ruins yesterday. We saw the place where Jesus cast the demons into the pigs, Lake Tiberius, and the church built by the Jerusalem Church after it fled persecution. My favorite pic is Noah with his police hat on.