“Tyler, do you remember touching a snake when we went camping with Grandma and Grandpa?”

This led to us watching the snake video… which led to us watching a few videos of Tyler when he was a baby.

Take this video, for example. It’s only 57 seconds long, so be sure to click play:

Not playing? click here

As he cried in the video, I asked him about it.

“Tyler, do you know why you’re crying here?”

“Yeah. I cryin’ uhcause I have no teeth.”

I love my son. I swear I do. Every day, I tell myself that I could not possibly love him more than I do at that particular moment. Then the next day, I realize that I love him more than I did the day before.

But he can really annoy the hell out of me sometimes.

Over the holidays, I was off work for two weeks. Sarah and I alternated sleeping in and waking up with Tyler. We spent entire days just lounging around, playing, and relaxing. Interspersed with these times of zen were periods of chaos, which is to be expected during any holiday season. Me being at home gave Sarah the opportunity to have a bit of a break from full-time, non-stop parenting. A break that she needed and deserved. A bit to her chagrin, Tyler also thoroughly enjoyed my sudden availability. On a few occasions that Sarah felt the overwhelming desire to give Tyler a hug, or read him a book, he shunned her in favor of me. So, while I know that she loved having me around, the flash of green that sparked in her eyes a few times did not go unnoticed. Quite the contrary, because I can relate.

My return to work Monday was an adjustment for all of us. Although I talked at length with Tyler about it on Sunday, telling him that I had a great time but that I had to back to work the next day, and although he said “yeah” at all the appropriate moments, signaling that we were on the same page, I get the impression that my eighteen month old little man didn’t fully grasp what I was conveying to him. Maybe I should have just said “Daddy work morrow byebye luh-loo.”

It also didn’t help that, due to both work and treacherous roads/weather conditions, I had to spend a night away from home on my first week back. Tyler hadn’t seen me in forty-five hours after having me at his disposal for two weeks. That’s like 8 months of separation, in toddler-years, right?

When I got home – after six hours of white-knuckled driving, mind you – and had given Tyler my undivided attention for the better part of ninety minutes, I made the mistake of thinking I could talk to my wife for a moment or two. Tyler turned his attention to driving his little police car on his road-rug, so I started to tell “HI” Sarah about “HI” my “HI” long day “HI” when Tyler decided that “HI” he absolutely HAD to “HI” talk to me “HI” again. I tried to “HI” talk over him “HI” and continue my “HI” conversation with “HI” Sarah when I finally “HI” had to “HI” bend to Tyler’s will.

“Hi, Tyler. How are you?”

“Ashdin.”

“Oh, did your truck get into an accident?”

“Yeah! Figgst.” He jumped up and ran to his toybox, returning with a tiny toy wrench.

“Are you going to fix it? Yes, good job, Tyler. You are fixing the truck.”

“Yeah,” he said as he pretended to tighten a bolt on the tire. When he finished, he went back to playing. Me, unable to be the better man, unable to just let things go and attempt to finish my conversation with Sarah, waited until he was well into playing with his car. Then, I decided to poke the sleeping bear.

“HI HI HI HI HI HI HI HI,” I said in my best try-to-be-as-annoying-to-Tyler-as-he-was-to-me voice. It worked, too. He turned to look at me.

“HI,” I said again.

Tyler replied flatly, without even a hint of humor, “Done.”

Why you little shit, I thought. Before I could even make an attempt at a reply, Sarah broke into laughter. I joined her. It was good to be home.

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.

Tyler’s got a bunch of green goo coming out of his nose. He isn’t acting sick, at all, so we’re operating under the assumption that he’s teething. Since babies are essentially in a perpetual state of teething for the first few years of their lives, I could be both right and wrong in our diagnosis. Unfortunately, Tyler HATES getting his face washed. More than that, hate is a severe understatement of how he feels about getting his nose wiped off. He screams until there isn’t an iota of oxygen left in his tiny lungs. I sometimes wonder if he’ll forget to breathe. It’s around that time that he sucks air in, and repeats his lung-draining yells for Child Protective Services to come and save him from the evil, nose-cleansing washrag of doom.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Tyler LOVES the blue bulb that I call the "booger sucker". It resembles a turkey baster in both appearance and function. The two primary differences are that the booger sucker is much shorter than a turkey baster, and the booger sucker sucks boogers out of a baby’s nose, whereas a turkey baster has no affiliation with boogers… unless you’re using it incorrectly. As a side note, our turkey baster has served other purposes than just squirting turkey juices on a cooking turkey. It is currently stained a shade of red, because Sarah used it to make Jell-O shots at one point for a work-outing that I attended a few years ago.

The origins of Tyler’s love of the booger sucker are unknown. When I’ve previously used it, I would make weird noises and laugh in the hopes that Tyler would tolerate its infiltration into his nostrils. It worked, to an extent. Recently, while, uhh…. expelling Tyler’s nose treasure onto a paper towel, it make a very sickening slurping noise. Hearing it makes Sarah’s stomach turn. I’m not a fan of the noise, but I can handle it. Tyler started laughing his little butt off at the sound. Since then, I’ve made quite the ordeal of blowing the snot onto a papertowel. The level of joy in his laughter is directly proportional to the amount of drama I put into the action. The best responses come when I act as if it takes every ounce of strength in my body to dislodge the yellow-green blockage from the neck of the booger sucker. If this results in the nasty slurping sound, Tyler is even more joyed and doubles his laughter. It’s now at the point where he starts laughing as soon as he sees the mucous evacuation device in my hands.

My current goal is to try to get the same reaction from Tyler while washing his face. And why not? I like taking on the impossible tasks. So far, not so good. Try as I might, the evil, nose-cleansing washrag of doom is just as evil as it ever was. Sound effects be damned, Tyler hates the rag monster.

Note: After typing this post out and before pressing the “Publish” button, Sarah informs me that she’s got a sore throat and a runny nose. So, it looks as if Tyler’s less-than-awesome attitude and his green goo situation may have indeed been due to being sick. Sorry, little one; we honestly thought you were teething.

Second note: See the medicine in the background of the booger sucker picture? Yeah, Tyler’s right ear was in really bad shape when he went to the doctor. His left ear looked great, but the doctor "winced” when she looked at his right ear. The words “red” and “bulging” were used. He’s got three weeks to get better. After that, she’s referring us to an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) Specialist.

I can say, with absolute certainty, that nothing in my life has ever compared with the joy and warmth that fills me when I hear Tyler laughing. Tyler takes after his father in the sense that he is quite easily amused. If I’m watching a movie and see Matthew Perry run into a glass sliding door and crash to the ground – all this because he’s trying to dissuade his assistant and Jimmy “The Tulip” Tudeski from murdering his wife – I will laugh every time. Sadly, I don’t own a copy of this movie, so I can’t be a hundred percent sure of the details of the scene.

One of Tyler’s toys is an orange plastic tiger that is holding a purple plastic basket. On the basket it a blue plastic bird. The accessories to this toy are three – you guessed it – plastic balls. Tyler received this toy as a Christmas present from his Aunt Jillian. When you put a ball into the basket, it plays music and says things like “woohoo”, “good job” and “you’re grrrrrreat!” I find it a tad interesting that this orange tiger toy says “you’re grrrrrrreat” in a very similar way that another orange tiger – which is not owned by the same company – says “they’re grrrrrrrreat”, in reference to the yummy qualities of a certain breakfast cereal.

Playing with this toy with Tyler entails ME dropping the balls in the basket while I say “daddy puts the blue ball in the basket.” Tyler usually watches with mild curiousity for a few moments, before crawling away to find a power cord to chew on. Sometimes, Tyler would pick up a ball with each hand. I would then giggle madly (to myself) when I told him what he was doing. “Tyler is holding his balls.” *snicker* A few days ago, Tyler seemed to finally “get it”. He picked up a ball and dropped it in the basket. I was so excited that I almost jumped up and performed cartwheels. Almost. My worries that maybe it was just a fluke were whisked away when he made 9 more baskets.

Last night, after dinner and before bed, we found ourselves playing with the tiger toy while Sarah took some alone time to unwind and read the paper. Tyler picked up a ball and swung his arm towards me, like he wanted me to have it. I said “can daddy have the green ball?”, as I pulled it from his hand. I couldn’t tell you why I did this, but instead of dropping it in the basket, I made a chomping noise and put it in my mouth. Tyler grinned a little. I aimed down a bit and shot the ball from my mouth, popping Tyler in his leg. He laughed, hard, and handed me another ball. “Can daddy have the red ball?” Chomp. Pop. Laugh. Honestly, I have never heard Tyler laugh this hard before. A baby’s laugh is quite infectious. Sarah put the paper down, laughing, to watch Tyler. I laughed everytime he did.

After a few minutes, I lay down on my back and started shooting the ball in the air, and catching it in my hand. Tyler started laughing even harder. If we weren’t having such a great time, I would have grabbed the camcorder. I don’t know how much that toy tiger cost, but it was worth every penny.

And if you were thinking of something entirely different when you read the title of this post, then shame on you. If that never even crossed your mind (liar), then shame on me.

It’s been awhile since I’ve watched Fright Night, or read ‘Salem’s Lot, but I remember that if a vampire is invited into your home, they can come and go as they please. I also remember, in ‘Salem’s Lot, that you can revoke an invitation.

Grandpa Bouse (Pa-pa, to little Tyler), I revoke your invitation into my house. Be gone with thee.

Sarah’s dad, Pa-pa, had been storing a 1950-something Spitfire in our garage for a few weeks. He was able to sell it on ebay or craigslist, or some other online venue, and had a carrier coming in a few days to pick it up. He came by on Sunday to get it ready. Before he arrived, I charged the battery and started it up for a few minutes, and repositioned it in the garage so it would be easier to get to. Because I’m a nice guy.

Since I was already in the garage, and it was shaping up to be a very pleasant day, I vacuumed up the spiders and their webs with my new (cheap) shop-vac, and started cleaning the place up a bit. Just as I was getting ready to cut some 2×4′s up so I could make a base to get our freezer off the ground – in case water were to collect in the garage – Pa-pa showed up in his 1969 Fiat Spider (top down, of course). So, I decided to forego the base building for the moment.

As we were talking in the garage about the car, the selling of it, and general garage talk, Sarah came out of the house, holding Tyler, to say her hello’s. The last time Pa-pa was down, Tyler was being a grumpy-gus, and started bawling whenever Pa-pa held him. It’s very discouraging when the cutest baby in DeKalb county (the vote was tampered with, more on that later), whom you love very dearly, wants nothing to do with you. Sarah and I can both relate to the rejection, as it’s happened to us too. On Sunday, Tyler was in a good mood, and this pleased Pa-pa very much.

This brings me to the reason Pa-pa’s invitation to our house is being revoked. He started doing the cute gitchy-gitchy-goo crap that all baby’s love, and Tyler had the most adorable, gummy grin ever. That’s perfectly fine with me. I’ve seen that smile a thousand times. A couple seconds later, though, Tyler started cracking up. What blasphemy is this?!

I’ve made Tyler laugh before, loads of times. So has Sarah. But he was cracking up this time. I usually get a “AHHH Ah AhHH” laugh. I’m not sure what Sarah gets from him. I don’t think I want to know. She’s with him all day, so I’m sure she can make him laugh pretty heartily. But Pa-pa sees him less than me and finds the ability to extract full on laughter, while I can only elicit giggling? Luckily for everyone involved, I don’t own a chainsaw. As a matter of fact, the only thing within arm’s reach was the hose for the vacuum, and I wouldn’t have been able to cause much pain or dismemberment by flogging someone with a rubber hose. I made the decision to stay the violence.

I am supposed to be the one to make him laugh, to teach him to crawl, walk, and run. I was being more than generous when I gave permission to let Pa-pa teach Tyler how to fix cars when he gets older. I gave permission for Pa-pa and Tyler to get a Jeep or Miata or something when he’s 8 years old, and they would spend the next six to eight years fixing and restoring it on weekends. This is how I’m repaid? Stealing MY milestones?!

I’m sending a letter via certified mail to him with the imprint if a giant red stamp on the paper. It’ll be positioned at a 45 degree angle, for dramatic effect, and it’ll simply read “INVITATION REJECTED”. I may even go the extra step to get the letter notarized and delivered by a local sheriff. I’ll pay him an extra hundred dollars to say “You’ve been served.”

I don’t know why I don’t use the camcorder more often. Whenever I want to record a video, I’ve been doing so off the digital camera. Well that just sucks. The resolution is not good, and the framerate leaves something to be desired.

I got the camcorder back out this week (it hadn’t been used in about a year or so, for some strange reason), so I’ll be posting lots of videos, I hope… and probably much to the chagrin of my loyal (heh) readers.

I might switch over to Vimeo as well, since they accept and display higher resolution videos than YouTube does.