I am here at Olympic Gymnastics where Xander is having a birthday party for one of his school friends. Basically, you rent the whole place for two hours. When we first started coming here about 3 years ago, we hit upon the idea of having a party here so Xander wouldn’t spend his whole gymnastics class crying. It worked, though now he takes karate lessons instead of gymnastics. They are not the highlight of his week. Life’s tough, kid.

Had a nice evening with the Ls last night. We brought over some Costco food and Wendi’s award winning casserole * and that seemed to go over well enough.

About 10:00, we left bringing J with us. It was terribly cute. When J decided he wanted to go, he immediately started packing his backpack. Don’t know what all he brought but he seemed happy.

The time: 1972 or 73

The Place: 101st North, Seattle, WA

One Larry Hardy, young father with 4 fine young sons, is engaged in a bit of home improvement owing to a bit of toilet trouble. After much work with various tools and much colorful language, he manages to extract one Granny Smith apple, with one tiny bite taken out of it. Though this was years before “CSI” introduced America to the exciting world of criminal forensics, Larry decides only a 4 or 5 year old would: A) have such small teeth, B) be dumb enough to try to flush an apple. Young Brian feels the consequences both immediate (a swat to the rear) and long term. Though he’s too busy crying to realize this, he has also been saddled with that most awful of burdens: The Father’s Curse!

Yesterday, June 29th, 2008, for the first time, Alexander Hardy went to a movie: Pixar’s Wall-E. I figure it was a sure bet. Pixar? Rated G movie? Air conditioned theater? Who wouldn’t be fascinated by the adventures of a plucky little robot trapped in a dystopian Earth, 700 years into the future?

(Just for the curious, Wendi’s first movie going experience was with Bambi and mine was Blazing Saddles. One of us clearly married up but I still don’t know who.)

He’s been quite the traveler of late. Especially late at night. Over the past few evenings, after being tucked in, Xander has “feeled” (his word) my contacts, dropped my contacts, “cleaned” my contacts and has now gorged himself on water and rubbed my Axe Deodorant Stick all over himself.

Well, this weekend went well. Xander and I got to the Ranch early Friday evening. Our first boys’ only trip. Xander very much enjoyed feeding the cows, saying hello to the cows and saying goodbye to the cows. Harold may have a future reliable ranch hand one day. Certainly more enthusiastic than his lay-about son-in-law.

Of his sleep sac, that is. Lately, Alexander has been showing a delightful habit of taking everything off BUT his sleep sac. He’s quite the little Houdini. Thursday night, I went up to check on him and there he was: asleep on his bed. Sitting right next to him was his diaper. Almost like it had been teleported off of him.

Well, Wendi’s in the living room playing Nintendo, Xander’s upstairs absolutely not taking his afternoon nap. In fact, he seems to be jumping off his bed which is very loud in the office below which is where I am. Ah….domestic bliss.

Speaking of the little imp, he’s into the “running into Daddy at top speed” phase of his life. Okay, he has been in this phase for quite some time but he’s bigger and faster now. (He needs to slow down or I need to start wearing a cup if he has any hope of siblings.) He further likes to finish his sprint with a sleeper hold around my neck and an enthusiastic “Ug! Ug! Eeeze!” shouted into my ear. At least he’s polite.

Okay, so maybe “awefullest” isn’t a word but you get the idea. We just got back from Winthrop a few hours ago. The previous 5 days in Winthrop were not fun. Why, you ask? The number one reason was a stomach flu which first hit Xander at 4:00 AM on Thursday. Either fortunately or unfortunately (your call) his sleep area was only a few feet away from our bed in Wendi’s room so we were right there when it happened. You’ve never seen a kid look so startled to vomit.

I didn’t know one could sleep on one’s head but if you’re tired enough, anything is possible.