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Whoa, how the heck did this happen?

In case you are wondering, his shirt says “Community Nursery School.” Roughly translated? Preschool. Yup, little dude started preschool. I’m way to young to have a preschooler. But here we are. With a little dude who is so ready for preschool that his teacher has already told us “he was born for this.” I mean, I knew he was social, and good in new situations, but did he have to be this good?

Let me give you the play by play of the beginning of his first day of preschool. We take a bunch of pictures of his goofy mug like this one:

Then we walk up, and take a few more pictures, and walk up to the class, my son walks confidently past kids screaming for there parents, opens the door, and he’s gone, no goodbye, nothing. This isn’t one of those things where he was expecting us to stick around, nope, he knew we were leaving, and it didn’t effect him one bit. Now, part of me thinks, hey, doesn’t he care about us, why doesn’t he care that we are leaving him in this strange new land. But the other part, the other part is proud papa, proud that my little man is so independent, that he is ready to take on the world. Because, well, that’s the point of parenting right?

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So I’m starting to video blog more (I’m not going to say vlog, because I can never figure out how to pronounce it, is it; vee-log, vah-log, what?) I do have a subject though, Dad’s Day out, and this one is from the Discovery Science Center. (P.S. I promise I was not drinking when I shot this, really)

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…When my son told off the bully? Yup, my 3 year old did it, he stood in the boy’s face, wagged his finger and said “Don’t you ever hit me again.” That’s. My. Boy. This is what I think we all hope our kids will be able to do, to have the confidence to not allow themselves to be bullied. To look that kid who is trying to make them feel like less of a person, and tell ‘em to shove it.

Yup, that’s my boy, he stood there in the big multi-colored bounce house and told that kid off. Told him that if he tried it again, he’d have him to deal with, told him to back off. Maybe it’s just proud papa talking here, but really, how many three year olds could do that? This one can:

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Forgive me, I know it’s be like, oh, four months or so since I last posted here on the old blog. But, really, it’s not my fault. Okay, it is, but I have a good reason, er, excuse. I’ve been a wee bit busy, and trying to find a balance that involves being able to write, hasn’t been what I would call easy. You see, in the past 4 months, a lot has changed, and I mean a LOT. Did I tell you I quit my job? (Of course not, I haven’t blogged in 4 months.) But I didn’t just quit one job for another, I quit one job for two jobs. Two jobs, that I happen to love, which is a nice change in itself, you should try it sometime. Now though, I’m working roughly 70 hours a week, doing sometime I love, but it does tend to take time away the whole writing thing. You can imagine there isn’t a whole lot of time outside of that, especially when you add in family milestones.

Take for instance this barrage of cuteness:

And that’s just the cuteness. We’ve also had some firsts. For example, the first bike ride with both boys in the trailer at the same time (it’s harder than it looks:)

First movie for mini-dude (Kung-Fu Panda 2 good, but really, the 3D is pointless:)

We participated in Race for the Cure, where mini-dude was cute, ad little dude, was a rock climber:

Oh, and HELLO! Little dude started pre-school, here’s a teaser of a post from another day:

So, I think that’s a lot, and quite frankly has kept me on my toes. But, I think i’ve got this thing dialed in now, so, I’m on my way back to the land of regularly scheduled updates.

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Jami got us tickets to an Angels game for my birthday, not bad seats, prime fly ball territory!: http://instagr.am/p/OaXwF/

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So we love our new community. It is the most family friendly area I’ve lived in since, well, I was a kid. There are always things today, monthly movies in the park, 4th of July parades, even a camp out next month. There is one thing however that brings both Beautiful Wife and I back to when we were kids. That thing is the community swim teams in Irvine. You see, we both grew up in the pool, daily practices, weekly swim meets. In fact, we were actually arch rivals, her swimming for the Greentree Gators, me for the Deerfield Bluefins. Fast forward, oh 20 years, and we are back pool side, this time with little dude, on a pool deck that I might add, we were both on at the same time, more than 10 years before we met.

Now, Little dude, seems to have inherited the fish gene that his Mom and I have and he has picked up swimming very quickly. He did have a lot of help from a little one on one time with some private lessons, but it made our hearts soar to hear his coach at the local pool say “So, Little Dude can swim, good to know.” We weren’t sure how he was going to do in a big group setting, turns out though? He’s a bit of a ring leader, we think it’s the goggles:

His coaches are great, in fact they are the same ones that beautiful wife had when she was a kid (somehow perfect preserved, probably from the chlorine.) The best part? The sense of community that we get, the same one our parent felt, and all of a sudden I realized how important it was not only for us to be in the water, but for our parents to be on the pool deck. We’re looking forward to the summer.

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For father’s day I received a couple of T-shirts and a polo shirt as presents from my boys (and wife.) Which is great because it really is time for me to replace the late 90′s Von Dutch and target brand shirts I’ve been wearing (what you don’t wear your shirts for more than a decade?) But the real gift I got was time to be with my boys. I mean let’s face it, if it weren’t for them, I would be celebrating Father’s day no would I?

I used to think of Father’s day as a time to celebrate my Dad (which it still is by the way.) But now that I have my boys, I actually see it very differently. I now see it as a time to celebrate my relationship with them. The bring so much joy to my life, I sometime need a day to remember that they do, in fact, complete my life. That’s why I actually find it hard to understand those that for Father’s day, want to spend a day, well, not being a Father, getting out and playing golf for two or three hours, and being away from the reason that they even have something to celebrate. I suppose it might be different for a stay at home Dad, then, I might want a break. Even then though, I’m not sure I’d feel that way.

Because of the weather that day, we didn’t get to do some of the things I was hoping, but you know what? We got to hand out as a family. I played cars, and ran around the house follow by cries of “I’m gonna get youuuuu.” We cuddled, I got lots of kisses and hugs, and had a wonderful day. Why would anyone want to miss out on that? Or hanging out with these two:

You know, I’d be interested in hearing what you think about Father’s day? Share in the comments!

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The fact that the two dudes birthdays are less than two months apart means we get to have quite a bit of fun around our house in April and May. Pay no attention to the fact their Birthday posts are only a week a part, shh, I’ve been busy throwing birthday parties! Little dude was great, the weather turned out to be awesome, and we were able to use the bounce house we couldn’t use for mini-dudes first. We tend to go for more of a free flowing theme, as in, the theme is bright colors. I mean he’s only 3, he doesn’t quite get the big idea. All he really cares about is whether or not there’s going to be cake. Actually we let him pick out the type of bounce house he would have and he spent the next several weeks talking about his “bounce house party.” Good times were had by all, and we are super thankful for all that came. Ok, enough talk, here’s the awesomeness of little dudes party:

First we had a little fun in the bounce house:

Which was follow by a giant cupake (complete with look of awe:)

Then something that sounded like “Om nom nom nom” happened:

It ended with a little bad influence from his Uncle Ryan:

And of course a family photo:

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So umm, his birthday was actually at the beginning of April, I know, I know, slacker Dad right? Well here we go, better late then never. We had a little get together, that was supposed to be a bigger get together, but because it was supposed to rain (it didn’t), we cut out the bounce house, and cut a few guests. It turned out to be a lot of the fun, we rented out our community club house and locked all the kids in so they couldn’t run a muck, and had a grand old time. Mini dude, was, of course freaking cute, and enjoyed every minute of being the center of attention, see, I’ll show you:

First of all, he really is freaking cute:

Second, I think he was excited for his smash cake, courtesy of Kara Noel over at Elis Lids:

Ok, so he was REALLY excited about his smash cake:

All together it was a fun day for the family, and it couldn’t have been better: