*Disclaimer: This is 2 months old, but a lot of stuff was going on and I just didn’t have time to fit this into the blog.
*Disclaimer 2: I know that this kinda makes the post not “Wordless”. I’m sorry.

The scene: We’re all in the living room. Delilah is resting on her bed. Sarah, Tyler, and myself are playing with stacking blocks and farm animal toys. Tyler stands up, walks to Sarah, and gives her a hug. My heart melts at this random, unprovoked showing of love and affection.

“Dada,” Tyler says as he turns to face me.

“Yeah buddy?” My voice drips with enthusiasm, for I know that one of those delicious hugs is heading my way next. Tyler lifts his hand and points into the dining room.

“Out.”

*blink*

“Out?! You can’t kick me out. This is my house, not yours.”

Unfazed, Tyler repeats his simple, and ludicrous, command. “Out.”

In a happy, going-along-with-the-gag tone, I reply. “Fine, I’m outta here!” I stand up and storm from the room. Secretly (and irrationally), I’m crushed.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how he learned this. Tyler’s dear old dad, yours truly, says the same thing just about every night at the dinner table, including the pointing.

“Delilah, out.”

We have a “one strike and you’re out” system when we’re eating. The moment Delilah goes scavenging under the table, we send her into the other room. Sometimes we don’t notice until we hear a slurping sound as she tries to lick a piece of cheese off the floor. Or when we try to figure out why Tyler has his hand under the table and is giggling hysterically (those two are gonna be trouble). Or, most recently, when Tyler narcs her out himself by shouting “LILAA!” (that’s my boy) when she starts nuzzling and snorting around the general vicinity of Tyler’s highchair.

Delilah is a smart dog. A damn smart – and stupid – dog, in fact. When I, or Sarah, tell her “out,” she knows that the jig is up and it’s time to get out of town so that she may live to fight another day. We really don’t even need to say the word though. Most times, I can just point to the doorway and she will make her (sulky) exit. She can sit, down, shake, and out with hand signals only. Like I said, damn smart. Although I can point OR command her out of the room, I have a tendency of doing both.

Tyler picked up on it and promptly copied me. He pointed out of the kitchen and commanded, “Lilaa” pause pause pause “OUT.”

I laughed. Sarah laughed. Laughing was a mistake.

“Lilaa” pause pause pause “OUT.”

And then a few days later…

“Dada.”

“Yeah buddy?”

“Out.”

What’s that they say about imitation and flattery? I’m not flattered.

Delilah has a bit of a quirk that Sarah and I have exploited, much to our my amusement. Whenever she is introduced to something she has never seen before, Delilah tends to be wary of it. What I do, at that point, is start chasing her around the house with said object. Here, just watch this video.

It appears that Tyler may have picked up on this little “game” of mine. And he seems to love it as much as I do.

Delilah and Tyler are loving each other more and more every day. He’s finally getting to the age where he can play, and Delilah couldn’t be happier with that.

Note: The first video was shot two months after we brought Delilah home with us. She was found next to a dumpster by a couple college girls and they couldn’t keep her at their apartment. We adopted her. She was severely underweight at the time, and was still quite underweight at the time of the video. She looks much healthier (pure freakin’ muscle) now, as you can see in the second video.

One of the first questions that must be answered is whether you want to pass on a name from your family or your spouse’s family, or if you want to pick something new. Sarah wanted our son’s middle name to be "James", named after her father and grandfather. Her dad had all girls, so without a boy to carry on the family name, she thought this the next best thing. My argument against James was that it was already the middle name of one of my brothers and two of my nephews. Did we really need another James-as-a-middle-name in the family? Apparently so, because I decided that my reasons against it weren’t as great as her reasons for it.

No good parent would ever choose a name without first considering the minds of other children. Lest I wish my son’s name be appended with "the fairy", we could not pick Barry. Chuck Chuck, Bo Buck, banana fanna fo… Nope, that name’s out too.

For us, any name that began with a hard "G", like Gary or Greg, weren’t even an option. Sarah hates alliterations in names. One must also check initials. With a last name that starts with "G", we wouldn’t dare name our son Frederick Allen.
Nothing we do will prevent all ridicule, but we can certainly make smart decisions. If you really, honestly think that Rumor or Satchel is a good name, then get a dog or an iguana.

I’m not against unique names, I promise. I am just of the mind that parents really should think things through, or even get a second opinion, before deciding to name their baby "Marijuana Pepsi Jackson". And if you think I’m making that name up, think again.

Sarah and I were finally able to narrow our list down to two names; Tyler James and no-way-am-I-telling-because-we’re-saving-it-for-our-next-son. We were both leaning towards Tyler, but not so far that we were able to make the decision official. We also weren’t sharing our ideas with family, so we had to figure it out on our own. So, we asked the dogs what they thought. Sarah held both of her hands out, empty.

"Logan, sit."

Logan sat.

"Logan do you like Tyler James," she said, shaking her left fist, "or do you like CENSORED?" this time shaking her right fist.

Logan put his nose on Sarah’s left fist. We did the same thing with Delilah. She took longer to think about it but also picked Tyler. It was all the answer I needed. Our unborn son had a name that only Sarah and I knew. While Sarah’s family referred to him as Franklin (I have no idea why) and my family called him Skippy, Sarah and I could share a knowing look and a wink.

I’ve never played charades before. To get me to list and discuss the myriad reasons why this is the case, I’d need to be lying on a leather couch, talking to a guy whose name is suffixed with the letters PhD. Instead, I’ll simply say that it just isn’t my “thing”. I understand the basics of the game. A person will stand in front of everyone else and start acting like a fool, flapping their arms, hopping on one foot, and pointing at their nose. This is all done in pantomime, because the “actor” is not allowed to speak. The audience then shouts out what they think the phrase is. The actor grows increasingly frustrated that the audience can’t see that the answer is – OBVIOUSLY – Chuck Norris. Wash, rinse, repeat.

There are certain signals that the actor can make to help the audience along. If he touches his nose and points at someone, that person correctly guessed the word that the actor was working on. Tugging on your ear means “sounds like”. So, if he were to pull his ear and jump in the air, the audience would start shouting “dump”, and “bump”, and “hump”. I only know this because I’m pretty sure I saw an episode of The Cosby Show, or Full House when I was younger where the family played charades.

Here in the Gearhart household, we’ve been playing charades for the past three or four days. We made the mistake of having Tyler start the game as the actor. He’s only 7 months old, so we didn’t set high expectations for him. But he was horrible at it. Maybe we didn’t explain the game to him well enough (or at all), but Sarah and I have been yelling out our guesses over and over again, and Tyler hasn’t once touched his nose and pointed at us. Needless to say, we’re still in the first round of the game.

First, Tyler would grab and tug on his ear. “Sounds like”, I thought. No problem. Then Tyler would yell and scream. Sarah and I thought of every rhyming word we could think of. Steam, team, cream, deem, slipstream. Nothing. Bell, cell, tell, oyster shell. Zilch. After a few days of guessing, we decided that either he sucks at charades, or we suck at parenting, so we took him to our family doctor. I had to work, so Sarah took him in.

The diagnosis: Sounds like Bubble Smear Chinflection.

Tyler is now taking Baby Motrin for pain (berry flavored), and amoxicillin for the infection.

Double ear infection. *sigh*

To top it all off, we just (last week) took Delilah to the vet to get her ears flushed. She’s had ear problems and allergies since the day we got her. We have to put medicine in her ears everyday and give her an antibiotic pill with her food.

DOUBLE double ear infection. *double sigh*

It’s a small price to pay to end up with pictures like these though:

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