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The baby is several months old and has been sleeping through the night for a while. It was rough those first two or three months, but we made it and have been enjoying solid night’s sleep every night. Or had been enjoying.

The kids recently coordinated their efforts to interrupt my sleep. Friday night (also known as Saturday morning) it was the middle child around midnight, the oldest around 1 AM, the baby at 5 AM, and the oldest again at 6:15-ish.

Although it was rough, I must say the kids were off their game Friday night. We had a stretch from 1 to 5, a whole 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Back in the day, when those kids were in their prime, we had nights of no more than 2 hours of sleep at a time. I think they may have miscommunicated, and whoever had the 3 AM shift didn’t know it was his turn to wake us.

But I must commend the baby for bringing his A-game. Whereas the other children just needed to be accompanied back to bed, where they quickly fell back to sleep, the baby did not want just company. Nor did he want just to be held. No, he held out until I was carrying him and walking around the house before he stopped crying. When I gave up on that, he refused to go back to sleep until he was fed. Baby 1, parents 0.

I’m sure that, when the kids are older and cannot be roused from bed easily, I will look back on these days with fondness.

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday, I am posting a Not Mine Monday (which she has since also done).

• My children did not yell “Let’s put on our party hats!” and then run around the house with underwear on their heads.
• My child did not avoid going to sleep, and try to stay up with the adults when we were playing board games in the dining room. And if that child complained that his bed wasn’t comfortable enough and I asked how he would be comfortable, he most certainly did not respond with “by sitting up and playing something“.

And here’s a Not Me to round out this post…

• I did not discover that the baby sits quietly in my lap while I play 1080 Avalanche on the Game Cube (snowboarding video game for those of you who didn’t understand the last half of that sentence). And I definitely did not offer to take the baby when he was fussing around bedtime, because that meant I could get in a few games. (Note to wife: if I did do that, it would be only for the baby’s sake.)

In cooperation with LaanyKidsMom, here are some entries for this week.

• Quotes
  My 3-year-old has some fun misquotations. What made me smile this week was when, after a trip to the sand dunes, he told me “Your sands are all feety.”

  Another one of my favorites is when I drink something cold, he warns me that I could get “freeze brain“.

  Also, he doesn’t wear tank tops. He wears “none-sleeve shirts“.

  What else has brought me joy this week?

• More Quotes
  My 5-year-old was watching his cousin, who is about a year older than he is, play Mario Kart Wii. She was in last place, 12th, and my son offered her some encouragement: “It’s good to be in 12th place because then you get all the specials!”

  One more

• Finally Settling
  After playing Settlers of Catan with my brothers and brother-in-law a few times this week, I finally won a game! Since that was the last game we played during our vacation, I shall remain the defending champion for about two more years.

“How the city of praise has not been deserted,The town of My joy!”
– Jeremiah 49:25

You can tell, from very early in the life of a child, how he will be later in life. Of our kids, one does not mind collared shirts and the other one never wants anything touching his neck.

I have met some people in life who hate neckties. I have never minded ties and have often thought that those people who do not like ties are tying them too tight and that’s why they don’t like them. I mean, if you tie them right, they should not constrict or restrict your breathing at all.

But then our second child started talking. And picking out his own clothes. And overruling mom’s clothing choices. And vetoing anything that touched his neck. Anytime we approach him with a collared shirt, he starts insisting that we do not button anything near his neck. He doesn’t need to object, because he is so ticklish around his neck that it is impossible to get him to hold still enough to fasten any buttons anyway.

At our vacation, we had to wear wristbands. The facilities are open to registered guests only, and the wristbands are the means by which they can tell the registered guests from the unregistered guests. I think the term should really be “unregistered people”, since “unregistered guests” would not be guests.

Our child’s objection to restrictive clothing is not limited to his neck, or to clothing for that matter. As soon as we got back from any activities, he took off his wristband. That became something we had to check whenever we left the room: “sunscreen? towels? wristband?”

I expect that, when he gets to be an adult, his career will not be one that requires him to wear either a suit and tie or a wristband.

“thus says the LORD to me–‘Make for yourself bonds and yokes and put them on your neck,’ ”
– Jeremiah 27:2

On the 4th of July we went to a parade, as some of you may recall. When we came home from the parade, we were greeted by a visitor at the end of our driveway. More specifically, a visitor hanging on the side of a tree near the end of our driveway.

He was rather conspicuous, so much so that I am pretty sure he was not there when we left. But there he was, not moving, just waiting for us to find him.

Here is his picture:

As you can see, he was the friendly sort. Didn’t say much though. His type doesn’t come around our house much either, so it was a big deal to meet one of him in real life. I stopped the van at the end of the driveway and had the kids get out to look at him.

I pulled him off the tree. Well, I saw that he was clinging to a piece of bark that was pretty loose on the tree. So rather than actually touch our visitor, I just broke the bark off the tree and held that.

One of the kids didn’t want to get close to him, so he just watched from a safe distance. Our oldest, however, took the piece of bark and inspected this strange creature.

As you can see, he had a bit of trepidation about the whole thing. I suppose “he” could apply to either the human or the moth. Shortly after this picture, the moth fell off the bark and into the lawn. After a couple of fruitless attempts to get him back on the bark, I just left him in the grass. I didn’t want any well-intentioned rescue attempts to damage him.

At first, since we never see this kind of moth, we thought that we had found some rare breed, an exotic species that had escaped from someone’s collection. Instead, I found out that these moths (Luna moths, AKA Actias luna) are common, just not usually seen because of their short lifespan (a week at best).

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him?”
– Psalm 8:3-4

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday (via Four Now’s Not Me Monday), I am posting a Not Mine Monday.

• My child did not try to persuade his brother that the new bottle of bubble bath that we bought earlier that evening was his new toothpaste. And when I said that it was bubble bath, the first child did not then tell his brother that I was trying to trick him.
• My children did not make a new game in the minivan, and this new game did not involve throwing footwear from the back of the minivan to the front of the minivan in an attempt to get them in the trash can that’s between the two front seats. If they had played that game, I’m sure they would have been accurate and would not have kept hitting the back of my seat by repeatedly missing the trash can. Oh, and this definitely would not have been on a trip that was only 10 minutes long.

And to make things official, here’s a Not Me entry:

• I did not catch the 4-month-old with my foot when he fell (more like slid) off the footstool on which he had been lying somewhat squirmily. My foot had not been placed next to him in case he moved, because my child would be placed in an approved baby station only, with appropriate guard rails and safety features. Oh, and if I had caught the baby with my foot, it would have been about halfway between the top of the footstool and the floor, which was only about 15 inches anyway.

“and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, ‘ Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men.’ ”
– Luke 5:10

For those of you who thought Yahtzee was just a game – it can also be a math lesson! You don’t make it into a lesson, of course. You just play Yahtzee and help the child add the numbers as you play.

The box says “Ages 8 & Up”, but our 5-year-old likes to play. He does not know all the addition tables quite yet, but I have found that Yahtzee is a good way to teach them to him. He knows some of them, and I figure that after a few more games he will have learned all his addition combinations.

Then we can start using Yahtzee to teach multiplication. And then probability and statistics.

Since he is still learning how to win and lose sportingly, I was trying not to win.  If we’re playing Mario Kart and I’m winning, he asks me to slow down so he can win.  Of course, his younger brother has the same problem of not liking to lose, so I am trying to teach them to take turns winning.  I hope that each of them will be able, eventually, to be able to lose the game without losing composure.  I don’t want to suppress the desire to win – I just want them to handle losing.  And to be nice to their siblings.

Back to the main thought here: I was trying not to win the game of Yahtzee that I was playing with the 5-year-old.  But I was also demonstrating the rules and reinforcing how to play the game correctly, so I was making sure that I matched what I got to the correct category and added the points correctly.  It’s not like Mario Kart racing where I can ease off the throttle.  When I play Yahtzee with my wife, she gets the 5-of-a-kind Yahtzee roll of the dice and wins.  I cannot seem to get the 50-point Yahtzee.

Until now, playing against the child…  I was able to keep it kind of close until then.  He did seem to handle the loss rather well.  I suppose the concept of winning a numbers game might be a bit abstract, not the same as a race, so maybe it didn’t affect him the same way.  Or maybe he has learned to blame the dice already.

“They cast lots for their duties, all alike, the small as well as the great, the teacher as well as the pupil.”
– 1 Chronicles 25:8