Parental Ninga-ness

Some may look at this face and think, "How cute", or "Awww", or the like. We enjoy him as well. However, three times a day he becomes our mortal enemy. We devise a battle plan which requires precision timing, careful distractions, swift movements, practiced stealth, and dogged persistence.

What is this battle plan for? Meal times. Our little Adam is just that - little. A mere 2% in weight, in fact. And so we employ our tactics and strategies in order to maximize caloric intake at each meal. "It's for your own good!", we say. But he doesn't seem to be impressed. He flaps his arms, turns away, whines, and exercises his own resistance in our never ending war of wills.

But we always prevail.

In fact, not only do we prevail, we do our job so well that he feels as if nothing happened when our battles have run their course. Not only does he feel this, but it all ends with a smile. We are in, we are out, our opponent does not notice. He smiles.

It is the way of the ninja.

Halloween & Me

This year our kiddos had an average, run of the mill Halloween. That is, except for the costumes. It was a little over one month ago when Melissa asked them what they wanted to be. Ethan wanted to be a Pirate (to be expected, I guess).

Mai thought for a minute and said, "well, I either want to be a princess or a cow." Two very different ideas. We laughed it off and thought it was a cute moment, until we realized that she was serious about wanting to be a cow more as time went by. But that's what she wanted. Melissa took this idea, and, inspired by a recent visit to the Utah State Fair, made her into a blue ribbon cow (the blue ribbons were in her hair). No regular cow costumes for us, no sir.

To add to the theme, Melissa made little Adam, our young and defenseless little boy, into a chicken. Not just any chicken, mind you. That's right, a blue ribbon chicken. Let's face it, he is
about the cutest little chicken we ever did see. In our estimation, he deserves a blue ribbon. We even have video with him flapping his arms (like babies do) when he became excited about something. This footage we plan to use as leverage for keeping Aaron & Melissa into the nicest convalescent homes at his expense when we become old and decrepit. Sorry young fella, it's what desperation does to a couple of otherwise respectful parents.