Category Archives: Family

Clean Shaven

Lincoln definitely has a thing with touch. He has to touch every surface he walks by and he’ll sometimes pet me and Becky.

He has been a bit of a demon about going to sleep at bedtime so one night, instead of sending him back to bed for the 14th time, I let him watch me shave. He was full of questions and just chatting away.

A few days later, while we were reading a book, my face grazed up against his. The stubble must have felt kinda neat because he just started starting in my eyes and rubbing my face. Over and over and saying “Daddy, you sooo smooth” (you have to imagine it in his voice).

It’s just the cutest thing…and it means so much to me because of this story….

My Dad was not around when I was supposed to learn how to shave. I hadn’t yet met the friends whose Dad’s would become surrogates to me and help make me into who I am today. It was mostly just me, my sister and my Mom. 

Freshman year of high school was tough. I went to Germantown schools all of my life but high school brought together kids from different middle schools. The social statuses of kids with fancy houses and those with less fancy houses were starting. And because we lived out of district, I could no longer ride the bus. 

Around this time, i started to grow facial hair. Teenage boys think their facial hair is cool. No matter how awful it looks. Peach fuzz that doesn’t quite grow in right or in full.

I…..had my first hairs grown on my cheeks. Big curly hairs on my cheek. I had a littttle goatee (that I was super proud of) And then whiskers.

Looking back at pictures makes me almost shudder. A Dad would have told me gently to cut it off. Or how to shave. I don’t remember anyone making fun of me for it. My Mom (or Grand-dad or Uncle) probably told me something in such a way that I got a razor and cut it. But it’s one of the many things about not having a main male figure during those last formative years that I think define so much of the younger generation.

But it will not affect my son…

More Lincoln Sayings…

1)

Sometimes, Lincoln sounds like a kid whose learning how to speak English. One of my favorite recent things – he repeats words in sentences.

Example. Daddy, I accidentally did XYZ on accident

But even better is when he betrays himself.
Example: Daddy, I accidentally did XYZ on purpose.

Almost hard to get mad at….almost 🙂

2)

He still gets the meaning of certain phrases backwards. He asks for the car window to be rolled up (when he really wants it down)

He also uses “un” in the wrong setting. he wants to play unfreeze tag. If he wants a show restarted after taking a break, he’ll ask for it to be unpaused. Every dang time. Cracks us all up and just adds to this little dude’s charm.

Sparkle Lucy Williams

We are officially a pet family (no, I will never call us a family of 5). Sparkle is Emerson’s first pet, a Galaxy Koi Male fish. We got her for her upcoming 6th birthday and kinda sped up the timeline a bit with this extended now 3 week spring break thanks to COVID-19.

Seeing her face light up when she first saw it…priceless. She was jumping up and down and had to share him with Lincoln. She called me  “the best daddy”. About the best reaction I could have asked for. She’s already checked on him before her own bedtime and gave him his first meal of pellets. I’m going to get her a little magnifying glass because even with her head pressed up against the glass, she can’t “see him close enough” 🙂 

Side note: thank god for all the technology in the world today. I can set Alexa to remind me to change the water and  feed the dang thing.

Welcome to the family, Sparkle!

Tacos?!?

When I’m being silly with the kids, I often use the word “tacos”.

Like “Lincoln, if you don’t clean up your toys, I’m gonna put your cars into some tacos”

Or “Emerson, get your flash cards or I’m going to make you sit on some “tacos”.

I don’t know why I do it. I don’t necessarily love tacos more than any other food. It’s just…what I chose.

Do you have anything weird like that that you do with your own kids?

Around the House

Sometimes I try to decipher what Emerson’s kindergarten lessons must be some days. She came home today and wanted to write down words she saw naturally around the house. And I had to do it with her.

The words we found are above (mine is the less messy writing :)). What stuck with me…is how many positive words we have around the house.

Surround yourself with what you want….

“Just the Two of Us”

This is mine and Lincoln’s current bedtime jam. In the most softest of voices (and when he doesn’t want to go to bed when I want him to), he’ll mumble “Can you play ‘Just the Two of Us?’. How can I resist this?

It’s the only song in my Will Smith category so it will play over and over again. BUT close to the end of the first play, Lincoln will look up at me with these big eyes and just smile.  And then he’ll immediately tell me that the song is over and climb into his bed.

It’s one of my very favorite things and something I want to always remember from this period of time.

The Bird is the Word

I’ve been trying to explore our little town more lately with the kids. There are so many small things we drive by every day that are probably fascinating them but we just pass by as adults. Linc has been into vehicles for the past 2 years and Emerson noticed the traintracks through the trees on our way back from soccer camp EVERY day the week before. There are train tracks in Thompsons Station right by a local restaurant called Circa so one evening before sundown, that was my chosen adventure.

I chose well! They loved walking on the tracks (which I am not 100% sure are inactive) and there is an old train model that you can climb onto (and down and back on and down as they had me do). I had to include a little bit of safety like what to do if the signal DID come down and we got a few practice rounds in (also, Mom was NOT present for this adventure as she probably wouldn’t have approved and I only told her about AFTER we were home safe and sound).  Anyway, the kids probably did a 1/2 mile walk on and around the tracks each direction. That’s an eternity for kid attention span in my house.

I’d be remiss to skip past the subject of this story. There was what I assume was a family of birds by the tracks – a mom and two of the smallest birds I’d ever seen. The kids were not TRYING to torture ther birds but they have always wanted to catch a bird and hold it. I do not know the reason but no bird has been willing so far. I wonder why…One of the baby birds was a few feet away from the kids on the rocks by the track when the kids decided to chase after it. I was nearby when the little baby bird was running, lost its balance and toppled over. And then was still. Completley still. Had my kids inadvertently caused this bird’s death? Had it small little neck and bones broken by falling just right onto the rocks? The bird was still still. And I swear the momma bird a few yards away was singing a tune trying to call her baby. And my kids had killed it…The bird was still and the kids thought it was sleeping. “Yes”, i said. They tried to get closer but I used my “Dad” voice to keep them back and then prodded them back behind this little area behind a vehicle. I don’t know what I expected to see.

The momma bird coming over and seeing that her baby was dead and doing detective work and having a vendetta against my family forever?

We sat and watched for a few minutes as the kids sang lullabies to the sleeping bird. Eventually, I got them distracted by something else and we walked the other direction. Then, Emerson remembered the bird and we turned around. The bird was gone. Gone! It had been playing dead after falling (didn’t know they did that). I did not see the bird again (the reunion with the family must have been AWESOME and I bet he/she chirped out the entire ordeal).

So crisis averted…we wont’ be having a remake of “The Birds” at my house anytime soon.