Do Midgets eat their vegges?

While surfing some channels yesterday, I came upon that reality show about a midget....(cough, cough..must be politically correct)... little people family. Who doesn't like to watch little people? My friend Taylor once said that you'll always get laughter if you can include midgets and/or farting. When I was watching the show some, Caleb, 5, asked if those were kids on TV. I told him they were actually grown-ups, but they weren't very tall. He told me it was because they hadn't eaten their vegetables and drank their milk. That's right son, now got eat some broccoli! Whatever fear-monger tactic works, right? By not explaining to Caleb that they were little people because of DNA and not telling the truth about eating vegges, just saved me a week of begging him to eat all his dinner. I'm either a great dad or a hell-bound liar.

Independent Children becoming Chefs

Since age 2, our kids have been able to make their own breakfast. Some may call it "lazy parents who won't wake up and fix their kids' breakfast", but we prefer to see it as teaching our children to be independent and taking care of oneself. Yesterday, I was awoken by Caleb, 5, saying, "Dad, the microwave is smoking". This phrase ranks only a few behind, "Dad, I may have wrecked the car", "Dad, I thought I was wearing a condom", and "Dad, this is the only call I'm allowed". I got up to find out what my son was talking about. Guess what? The microwave was smoking. He even opened the microwave door to show me a puff of even more smoke. "See Dad". Yeah Caleb, I can see, despite our kitchen full of smoke, I can see. Seems that he cooked his frozen preservative-filled pancakes (the breakfast of champions?) a little too long. Long enough in fact to burn a hole through the plastic plate. Ahh, the building of independent children, it's no easy task.

Pissed at Pee

Just when I think my kids may actually become lawful citizens, they turn to primates on me and start flinging their own feces at each other. Literally. My cutie petuty Abby, 3, wouldn't be so foul would she? Caleb came running up to me this AM yelling something about Abby throwing her pee on the wall. What does it mean when a 5-year-old says throwing pee on the wall, you ask? It means taking a piss-filled diaper and throwing the diaper at the wall until the gel-like sacs filled with pee start to explode out of the diaper. For those of you who aren't diaper-knowledgeable, diapers absorb liquids into what looks like small gelatin capsules. But even those can absorb too much liquid, like the first time your kids wears a diaper into the pool or bath tub. As these capsules are maxed out they can burst out of the diaper and become the biggest mess of tiny little jello junks you've ever seen. It seems, my little Abby had thought it was a brilliant idea to take off her diaper and throw it against wall. Though, by the looks of the the wall, that damn diaper had been thrown many times, causing little pieces of pee jello to land throughout the room. I'm not sure Bill Cosby endorsed this flavor of jello. I was so pissed (no pun intended). To make matters worse, Abby was laughing as I was yelling at her. Nothing gets parents more upset than little twerps laughing while were attempting to show that we're mad as heck. Hopefully, the stench of pee will leave Caleb's room before we decide to sell the house. That may lower our selling price some. My cute little Abby throwing pee all over, what is happening? How can she be a princess and still throw pee? I should be thankful she doesn't crap in her diaper anymore.

The Blue Stuff that Helps Sunburns

After getting fried under the So. Cal sun, we picked up some Aloe vera gel with lidocaine at the store on the way back to the Condo. We had a great couple days at the beach with record highs in temp. But despite tons of sun screen, our kids would be learning about 'sun burns' the next couple days. After showers for all, where we filled the tub with sand that had come home with us, I started to lather the kids up with the aloe vera gel. I noticed that the stuff was more sticky than usual, even after it had been on my chest for awhile. I had just gotten both kids covered with the stuff, when Mon asked where the aloe vera was. "Ahh duh, it's right in front of me, your stud husband, the same husband who cares enough about this children that he's covering them in pain-relieving gel". She looked at me funny and asked if I was putting that gel on our kids? "Yes dear, do I need to explain this again". In her ever-sweet voice she pointed out that I had just coated the kids in hair gel. Dammit! They look exactly alike. Shouldn't the FDA make these two gels look different? We all got another bath that night. I hope some day my kids appreciate the effort I go through.

They look exactly the same from behind!

Who reads labels anyway?

Disney Land at Last!

We finally did it. We took our kids to Disneyland, we have succeeded as parents. Can we kick them out now? We had a fantastic day, and the kids were great the whole time. We got there around 10:00, after waiting in line for Disney's Adventure for 15 min, then getting to the right line for Disneyland and realizing that we had to purchase the tickets in another line. We finally got it right and got in the park, it took a little while to figure out a plan of where to go and figure out how to use the FastPass program to our benefit, but once we did, we only had two lines of around an hour, the rest were resonalbly quick. Those longest lines ironically were the first and last lines we stood in. Our first ride was AutoTopia, were we drove small cars a long a track. Caleb was not too impressed, remember he rides a 4 wheeler at home. I think he started to think Disneyland was not worth the hype. Abby loved the ride. During our hour wait though, we made a plan and figured out that we needed to always have a FastPass working for us. We made our way around the park, we avoided the rides that we could ride at any county fair and focused on Disney-unique attractions. Abby's highlight was probably as we were walking near the Princess-land area and they were about to start a story-telling show. Abby and Monica spent some time there listening to the all the princeses. She was in heaven. Caleb and I went to get the next Fastpass. The food was as good as advertised, it was also as expensive as advertised though. We shared meals, saving money for munchies, which helped the time pass in long lines. We saw the parade sitting next to the Matahorn ride, a roller coaster that is much faster then either of our kids had been on. We ran to the ride after the parade and had basically no line. The kids were in a little shock, but I think they liked their first adult roller coaster and the rode all of them the rest of the week. In the evening the kids were still doing well, but they were getting tired. We had rented a stroller and they were taking turns, but after dinner one was in the stroller, and I was carrying the other on my sholders. Just about 9 PM, while waiting for the fire works show, both kids crashed. But we still had one more ride to go on; Finding Nemo. The longest line in the park, but we had hoped if we waited till night the line would go down. The line was shorter than usual, but we still waited for at least an hour. In all we had a great time. Both kids loved all the rides and we had a wonderful day. As soon as our 2nd mortgage is paid off, the one we took out to visit the park, we look forward to returning.

Lego Land Pic

It seems at every ride these days they take your picture and hope you fork down $15 for their $.05 picture, but we had to buy this one. This was one of the first 'adult' roller coasters that Caleb and Abby, 5 and 3, rode. It's very similar to one of my favorite rides as a youngster, 'the wild mouse' at Lagoon in Utah. It has a small car with fast drops and turns, and even had the switch-back on the top of the ride. But the first drop is a high and fast one. By looking at the picture,I don't think Caleb and Abby knew what they were getting into. The good news is that we rode this ride three times that day. So despite the look of horror on our kids, I guess they were having fun.

Elephants have huge privates

Our first day of our So. California trip was spent at the San Diego Zoo. The highlight of the day was watching the elephants. The trainer had the elephants do some amazing tricks like lift up a leg and sitting down on command. And during this awesome display of coordination, one of the elephants decided to take a leak. One could imagine the size of the elephant's unit and the amount of water that comes out of said unit. Needless to say, the kids were struck in awe as the elephant urinated. While leaving the elephant area, Caleb kept asking us if we had also seen the elephant pee all over. He also noted, "the elephant's privates are HUGE". Hopefully he'll remember other parts of the zoo also, but I doubt it.