See, one of my pals– Marine, family man, tough guy and High School compatriot– threw out a Tuesday night Photoshop challenge: “If you could PhotoShop a picture of you crane kicking Chuck Norris in the “nether regions”, all the while perched atop a tiger shark and wielding a trident would kick up Tue awesomeness a notch.” And when it comes to Photoshop challenges, I’m like a moth to the flame… or even better, an enemy’s loins to Chuck Norris’ mighty steel-toed boot.

So, late last night I delivered the challenge and because I don’t want that hour and a half of being hunched over the computer to go unseen, well…what’s up now, Chuck?

So here it is, the official Vintonville family ala pumpkin. Heyo!

Every year, Cache Valley hosts one of the premier antique/pimped out/”my loins are bigger than yours” car shows in the known universe (I dunno if that’s true, but a little hyperbole never hurt anyone but the NBA). We’d been out of town living it up in the woods on Southern Idaho making S’mores and setting off mouse traps meant for invasive chipmunks with Little Sis’ curious hands. As we were driving into town and ran into a closed off Main Street lined with arm chairs, cop cars, coolers, umbrellas and fearsome farmer tans and facial hair, Little Dude took note of the annual shenanigans and as we took a left yelled out the window to a traffic-directing cop:

“What’s all the hubbubalub?”

Little Dude is a pretty honest guy. Sure, he might fudge a little to save his can when things get hairy and the look of “Dude, you’re in trouble no matter what” comes calling but he’ll usually fold pretty quick. I can’t remember the circumstance (probably an “I went to the bathroom and flushed the toilet” type deal) but I was a little skeptical.

“Are you lying?”

Little Dude was not havin’ it:

“I never tell lies– and when I do, I never do!”

So there, Me.

I threw the photo up on Facebook but we recently hit up a family cabin in Island Park. The joint’s all wood and rustic and has wood beams supporting a really cool loft above the kitchen and living room. Truth be told, this piece of timber has a lot of anatomically correct knots in it. Even Little Sis, on her first visit, immediately took notice and pointed to the largest knot:

“Mama… bum-bum!”

Then, pointing to a smaller knot:

“My… Bum-bum!”

Little Dude has

an uncanny knack for logically thinking through dilemmas and coming up with solutions. Like the time I was waiting for Lady-Friend to pop out of a class so we could go get ice cream (yes, I do indulge on occasion) and Little Dude suggested we bag that, go get the ice cream NOW then get Mama her own tub from the store so she wouldn’t feel left out. It was a long-shot but there was desperate logic to it all…

Me: “Man, I love the way you’re always thinking. That’s a decent plan!”.

Little Dude without skipping a beat:

“It’s what I do.”

Sometimes getting Little Dude into the car is a chore. He’d rather be at home playing, playing or playing. So, sometimes I dishonestly creatively spice up our visit to the store… and this time I fluffed it up just because I was feeling extra…. well… talky. Enter: 5-year-old FAIL: “I’m going to produce for you and adventure of adventurous proportions.”

“I have no idea what you’re even talking about.”

I work out in the mornings. Usually to P90X or Asylum because they’re fun, awesome and make me not embarrassed at the pool or when I’m posing for “You’re Gonna Be 40 Way Too Fast” magazine. So I come upstairs fresh off the workout after depositing roughly a pint of perspirational DNA on the basement floor. Little Dude is awake and runs up to give me a hug– which I could see he instantly regretted by the disgusted look on his face.

“Ugh. Did you do Insanity?”

I know some of my friends view it as low-brow, bread and circus stuff but America’s Got Talent is a pretty fun unwind. In the past we’ve allowed Little Dude to watch some of it and mostly not the rest of it–pole dancing dudes in glitter, lipstick and high heels… I’m not really ready to explain that one quite yet. Still, the stuff he did see he’s excited about seeing and asked:

“When are we gonna watch America’s Got Skills?”

We’ve established Little Dude can get fiery. Especially if he’s hungry. Or tired. Or awake. Lady-Friend was prepping for her Ragnar Relay Wasatch Back a month ago and had just laid down the law and sent Little Dude to his room when, before slamming his bedroom door, he cried out:

“I hope you lose your shoe in the race!”

Lady-Friend and I have come to a point of… let’s say, friendly ambivalence toward diaper changing. We’ll kind of hold back and hope the other takes the initiative while poor Little Sis just happily jumps

and smiles around with a steadily crustifying poop diaper. Don’t judge us. Eventually one of us takes charge and gets business done. Such was the day on a truly nasty surprise. After countless diaper changes, I’ve developed a cautious immunity to poopy diaper changing but this one brought all my years of hard-fought resistance back in a hurry. To make things fun for Little Sis, I amped up the drama, “Gak, gak, gag, ORF, ACCCCHHH…”. From behind holding up her legs, Sis’ little head pops out to the side:

“Ooh. Ok. Papa?”

The other morning Little Dude joined me for some P90X action. Later, as I mentioned it to Lady-Friend she mock-offended asked “Why didn’t you work out with me?”

“I only work out with dudes.”

Little dude is still phonetically sounding out his written words. The other day he wrote me a note and proudly handed it over with the loaded, slippery-sloped:

“What does it say, Papa?”

“Umm… yeah- those letters look really good but I can’t read what it says.”

“I wrote it in Italian.“

We have chickens. Compared to all the other friendly neighborhood chickens we’ve met, they’re idiots. Still, we take care of them and let them live their wide-eyed, expressionless, garden-busting dream come true. Little Sis still calls them her “Babies” despite the fact they won’t give her the time of day any more so, as I went to clean the coop and change the water, I spitefully tried to amuse myself with, “C’mon, Sis. We’re gonna eat some chicken!” thinking it was for me to smirk at while it whisked over her head.

She stopped:

“Nom nom Babies?”

We’re slowly realizing we’re kind of sloppy. Why pick up today what you can spend a Saturday picking up a week from now– that’s our new motto. So after a short trip, we came back into the house to find (just as we left it), piles of laundry, toys and blankets strewn all over the living room.

“Holy Moly. We gotta clean this place up. What happened to our Living Room?”

Little Dude had the answer:

“Maybe a hundred cart bombs came in through the window and blew it up!”

I still don’t know what a “cart bomb” is.

We have a few rocks around the house, which is fun as the local garter snakes enjoy them, which gives Little Dude stuff to do when he’s catching them.

“Papa- what kind of snake is this again?”

“Garter Snake”

“Oh yeah– they’re the black ones. They guard the other snake holes. They’re the Gaurders.”

I didn’t tell him otherwise.

If I could make money the way I see Little Dude conspiring to make money, I’d be a happy man. I noticed Little Dude and his cousin tramping through the grass in the field behind our house after scouring the neighborhood for bugs. They were loaded with Tupperware boxes, tubs and jars and weren’t just wandering– they had a mission.

“Suppity Sup! Where you going?”

“I’m going to tell Ella we’re selling pet bugs!”

Little Dude is growing and man… the kid wants to EAT. Which is cool, especially when he keys it up like this:

“I’m so hungry I’m gonna eat my flip-flops!”

Little Dude is a sensitive little guy. And while I may have used “little” twice in that sentence, I’m pleading with you not to turn me in to the grammar police. Back to point– he takes things kinda hard as he toughtfully illustrated when telling me about a bad day with his friends at school:

“They treat me like… a deer. Like you know how a deer is going along and having a good life and a hunter comes and BAM– shoots the deer  dead? That’s how I feel.”

Little Sis is getting pretty good with the talking thing- and she’s also kind of a genius of invention. If she wants both Mama and Papa’s attention, she doesn’t mess around with “Papa!” or “Mama”! She just combines them:

“MAPA!”

We haven’t quite taught Little Did and Little Sis the joys of clean-faced eating. If we didn’t wash their faces, by days end you’d have a chronological reference of everything they’d eaten. Still, we try. As I pointed out to Little Dude he had ketchup on his face, I got this:

“It’s OK. I’ll pretend it’s my special beard.”

Some folks may not like having their kids tail them all over the place but man, when either of them wants to follow me around, I feel all loved and appreciated. Little Dude’s usually the leader in the “I wanna be with Papa” category… but conditionally. The other day as I was leaving to the grocery store, Little Dude announced:

“Wherever Papa is going, I’m going. Except work.”

I’ve got a military aviation geek streak that’s run through me since I was, like, young and stuff. I’ll run outside at the sound of anything with a throaty jet engine or heavy propeller and about aged Little Dude a year or two when I urgently screamed for him to run outside when we saw an ultra-new and ultra-rare V-22 Osprey floating overhead a few weeks go. By way of parental indoctrination and manipulation, Little Dude is a fan of as well and owns quite a few metal miniatures. The other day he was naming off all the planes and came across a cool-looking Russian jet called the Mig-29.  Not being Russian, Little Dude couldn’t quite remember the name:

“Papa, this is a Booger-29, right?”

Little dude is an unbelievable bone magnet. Our deck looks like Leatherface’s front porch– which is good for scaring away frisky, unwanted teenage intruders but kinda grisly at the same time. Kid finds them everywhere and, apparently they’re more than just “bones”. They’re currency:

“One day I’m gonna be the bone richest man. I’ll have money and bones. And I can buy bones from all over.”

If that last quote isn’t convincing enough, I’ll close by laying this one out for good measure: We were cruising through the canyon at 70 mph (62 mph if you’re a UHP officer reading this) and Little Dude SWORE he saw bones. We weren’t’ about to turn the boat around and back up the highway to check it out so Little Dude was pretty disappointed:

“I would have a better life if I could just turn around and get those bones.”

Needless to say, I was a proud Papa when I saw Little Sis embrace my “camping-is-by-definition-dirty” theory with two-year-old enthusiasm and run away with it. Luckily, Lady-Friend snapped this pic as we found Little Sis “dirtying it up”… and I’m pretty much unequivocally in love with it.

As the Swallows built the nest, we were told to bust the thing down as it would become a 24/7 crap-factory… but our bleeding hearts got the better of us and we left it up. After months of sweeping and a “spotty” porch, the Swallow family hatched their babies and were off. Or so we thought.

Lady-Friend says:

Poor little birdies got the wrath of my mood today– that and I was sick of a poop-filled porch!  Sorry little guys, didn’t realize birds were like bunnies…didn’t you just have babies?

Yeah, so apparently Swallows just keep repopulating ad infintum and were going for Mr. and Mrs. Swallow “Generation III”. Now we’re beating ourselves up as murderers and will probably go cry ourselves into two equal pints of liquor (and by liquor I probably mean milkshakes) over destroying the circle of life cutely playing out on our front porch.

Of course, Little Dude was sad but figured since they’re going to die anyway, why not throw the eggs so he’s grinning at the prospect. Little Sis, of course, decided to give them a send-off smooch– illustrated in black and white down there for somber and dramatic effect.

Nature…. Man! Why you gotta do us so wrong?

On every technical level these are all wrong… but I LOVE them.  Maybe it’s the secret rebellion in me that loves technically wrong pics or that they capture the tender moments of my growing-WAY-TOO-fast Little Lady.  I am so behind in posting family pics it’s almost sickening…more to come.

So Little Dude’s lower tooth has been “wiggly” for the last few months, which for him has been a pretty big deal. Last night the dream was realized as he came running up to me: “Exciting news, Papa!”

“You landed a child acting gig and all our financial worries are over?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Did your tooth pop out?”

“Yes! Yes it totally popped out but now I can’t find it!”

After some bedroom floor scouring, Little Dude dug his “central incisor” out of the carpet and straightway threw it under his pillow. Apparently, dude wasn’t messing around. Dude was ready to make some MONEY.

Since I’m not real practiced on the Tooth Fairy* side of things– I was a pro at the receiving end, after all– after Little Dude fell asleep I tore the house apart looking for cash and stressing about the going rate for teeth these days. I mean, I got .25 a pop back in the day but there’s inflation, cost of living and the stress of fairy tale payout parity when Little Dude compares his haul to other kids. I settled on 12 shiny quarters from the change jar and if I’m counting right, that’s about $3. (C’moooon educated guesses… No Whammies!)

So this morning Little Dude comes down the stairs as I’m huffing out a sweaty pull-up with P90X: “Papa! The Tooth Fairy Made Me Rich!”

Jackpot, Baby. Three bucks it is.

*SPOLIER ALERT: The Tooth Fairy is on my short list of “fanciful creature” lies we tell our kids I’m pretty sure should be abolished– along with the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns and Hanna Montana.

Lately, this heart has has been pretty apparent as Sis is the first to rush me when I get home from work or yell “Mamaaaaaaaa!!” when Lady-Friend comes back from a class. She bolts, arms outstretched, into big fat hugs. If anyone’s around, she’ll bring them into the fold for a group hug. You can see her love for her “babies” (IE- chickens) right here and any time she decides to strike out on her own, you can bet she’ll be blowing you a kiss. In public, she’s always crying out “Hi!!” and trying to get people to play with and talk to her and at home she’s always protecting Little Dude (or calling out to him with a beckoning hand: “C’mon! C’mon, Jaw-Jaw!”) when he’s stuck in a “wrestling” match. At two years old the little girl, for lack of a better word, is magic.

And it’s all in the eyes.

Little Dude had a bad day at school yesterday. And you know as much as it sucks to hear that as a parent, that’s just part of being a kid… and if I can remember those kids on the bus making fun of my drawings and grow up to talk about it without having served time and still thinking I’m awesome, I know he can too. So I relayed my bad day experiences in Elementary school to make Little Dude feel better, including the time Some fro-headed kid named Jamie beat my head against the pavement and pushed me into a ditch like a sissy. Little Dude wasn’t down with that:

“If someone tries to hurt me where I’ll be in the hospital I’ll definitely knock them out. They won’t even wake up for 10 days because I’d definitely knock them out.“

Little Dude likes a little time alone when he wakes up. I’ll usually hear our door shut very quietly and a minute later hear a chair sliding across the kitchen floor as Little Dude raids the “treat cupboard” for cookies. Unfortunately for him, the other day Mama was up before he’d had his fill of wandering the house unsupervised.

“Mama! I didn’t want you to wake up! You just give me rules and I want to be Free!!”

Whenever I’m about to drop the new hotness (aka- some movie scene, trailer or new song) on Little Dude, I usually tell him I’m about to let him see/hear something that’ll blow his mind. I’ve been on a Hans Zimmer kick lately and both Little Dude and I bob our heads and pretend we’re AWESOME to “Retreat and Revielle“. Still, I snuck in a little of Michael Kamen’s “Band of Brothers” theme song to even out Zimmer’s swarthy machismo. While the BOB’s theme moves me to chills virtually every time I hear it, Little Dude wasn’t impressed. At all.

“How can this song blow my mind when it’s a church song?”

Little Dude’s been on a carrot kick. On a recent drive through a low-cloud covered Sardine Canyon, he let us know why; Dude can see what the normal human eye can’t:

“I can see super good because I’ve been eating lots and lots of carrots. I can even see the mountains through all that fog.”

Spring soccer season is in full effect. In a recent game, Little Dude was battling another player for the ball and went down. As he got up and trotted away he was limping and wincing in pain. The coach called out, “Hey- you OK?”

Little Dude’s diagnosis: “Shew! Yeah, I just popped two blood vessels.”

The other day I was sitting in the living room doing something (probably) totally important as Little Dude went off to use the potty when I hear this man-sized thunderclap come out of the bathroom “TRRRRRRRRT!!

Me: Holy Cow! Was that you!?

Little Dude: “Yeah! And it bumped me up and down!”

Little Dude wants pets. Before the chickens we’re now raising, Little Dude would take ANYTHING. Caterpillars. Wasps. Spiders. A few days before taking on chickens, Little Dude was chasing a fly around the house.

“Papa! I caught the fly. I’m going to turn it into my pet. A fesity, fesity, feisty pet. It’s name will probably be Joshua.”

Pause…

“Yep– Joshua.”

Five-year-old sassafras continues. Lady-Friend asked Little Dude to use the bathroom and he refused. “I’m gonna stand out here in the hall until you turn into a Gramma!”

Getting ready for church at 8 in the morning isn’t fun. Especially when you have to put on a cold “church shirt” that’s been hanging in a closet: 

“It’s like it’s made out of straight snow and sewn into a shirt then icicles were broken off and rubbed all over it!”

Spring has been rainy. And cold. And rainy. And floody. Still, there’s a positive spin for almost anything, so I tried to throw a little positive action in on a cool and rainy day with the “April showers bring May flowers” line. Which was great and all, but Little Dude is a realist:

“April showers bring may flowers and and April thunderstorms bring scared people!”

Little Dude sometimes likes when I come home from work. The other day he was playing with his planes and wanted someone to play with… so he tried some enticement:

“You might want to come home right now, Papa… because there’s a huge airplane battle going on here.”

When I was a kid, I never got to sit in my bed and read (not that I wouldn’t sneak it out anyway). So by crap… when it’s bedtime around our house, it’s bedtime! At least in theory. I usually cave. So on nights where I stand firm, it doesn’t keep Little Dude from trying: “Papa I’m as bored as a person can get. I’m stuck in bed here doing nothin’.”

The other night we were saying prayers when Little Dude sent this gem out: “Please bless the rich people to share their money with people who don’t have anything. And that they can get a job and buy stuff so they can be rich and share. And please bless everyone. Except the bad guys.”

Every night before Little Dude hits the sack, we “talk”. It’s about five minutes where he asks questions about four categories he’s officially chosen: bones, airplanes, movies/video games (not that he plays any) or science. The other night, I got this one: “Hey Papa– are turtles reptiles or Februrarians?”

Little Dude has a weird phobia of two things: obese and old/wrinkly. I’m not sure where it came from as I was pretty “fluffy” for his first four years and as a baby he used my moobs as a pillow on too many occasions. That and we don’t make comments about weight in our house– especially about others. Maybe it’s his Mama’s skinny hotness– I dunno. But the other day we were talking about girlfriends and I asked if a heavier set girl I saw him hanging out and talking with would be a good girlfriend. “What? Why would you want a fat girl friend? A big fat girl would take up all the space in duck, duck, goose.” Oh.

I’m a sucker for mushy proclamations and tell my kids and Lady-Friend what they mean to me. Maybe too much. The other day I told Little Dude “Man, I’m so glad you’re my boy.”

“Yep- I am everything you wished for.”

So after working out in the morning I came upstairs to see Little Dude dutifully playing with his Star Wars guys. It’s great that he can happily play by himself, but sometimes I feel guilty and realize I need to be taking moments to get in there with him. His response kinda drove that point home:

Me: Wanna play a game?

Little Dude: “I’d LOVE to. Why wouldn’t I want to!?”

Of course, for every bit of cuteness that springs from the mind of Little Dude, there’s also a fair amount of crankitude.

“Want some pancakes?”

“No.”

“Ok, wanna make your own breakfast?”

“Are you kidding me? I don’t even know how to MAKE breakfast!”

As Lady-Friend was adjusting her light settings and settling into studio hang-a-sheet-ghetto-fab, Little Dude decided a cross between a P90X side-plank move and a, well, I’m not sure what– would be a rockin’ pose.  Apparently wanted to show he could dominate the ab work.

As for the rest, well, here you go.