Max-lympics of the Birthdapiad in Legos

With the Olympics taking place this week, it reminded me about an event we had with Max and some friends a few months ago.

You know, Max is getting old.  Too old.  To celebrate the completion of yet another year of life, we held a festivity of ancient origin, dating back, in our family, at least a decade--give or take 10 years.  Yes, I'm talking about the renowned...birthday party with games.  And, given Max's penchant for all things Lego-related, we concluded that a Lego-themed party was not only appropriate, but also our moral parental obligation. 

After carefully reviewing the rules and regulations of each of the 400 events in the 33 Olympic sports in detail, we selected the 3 most strenuous, challenging, and age-appropriate for our visitors:

• Lego-relay
• Lego-car construction and racing
• Pankration

We start in the backyard by placing 2 large buckets or bowls on opposite ends of the yard.  The first was filled with Duplo blocks.  The second was empty.  We did the most Olympic thing we could to determine teams and counted off "one" and "two" until every kid had a team.  

Next, each team came up a with a name.  I can't remember the names they came up with, but it was something like the "Donut Heads" and "The Communists".  Probably.

After all that hard work, we started the event.  I begin by posing as that famous statue pointing the way west (as shown in the photo below).

Then, we said "Ready?  Set?  Go!" and the boys ran back and forth, filling the bucket on the other side of the yard with the Duplo blocks, one by one.  One of the teams won.  Probably.

We tried to play this game for as long as we could, until the sun went down and we were as sweaty as possible.

At that point, it was time for the second event: dumping a huge bag of Lego car parts out on the kitchen table and telling each of the boys to use their creativity to create a Lego car of their own (which they could keep) to be used in racing.

Our little Olympians thought that was awesome.  And surprisingly, there were zero fights (not even being sarcastic) and everyone wanted to show us their finished product!

(I took advantage of this time to sit under an overhead light to determine how much of my scalp you could see with light directly shining on my part.)

After constructing our Lego cars, we set up a ramp in the TV room and raced the cars down to the bottom--first in an orderly fashion to see which car was the fastest, and then in a disorderly, chaotic and random fashion to see how many wipeouts and epic wrecks we could create.

At the conclusion of the previous two events, we decided that we were all winners.

Next up was pankration, but just as we were about to begin, it was time for the kids to go home.  Well, there's always next year...

Behavioral Laws of Children

In science, math or economics, a law is generally defined as something that always holds true and implies a causal relationship.  Some good examples include the law of gravity, or the law of supply and demand.  As a parent of 5, I've discovered several laws governing the behavior of children.  If you have discovered additional laws, please add a comment so I can be enlightened further.

Law 1: Children Gravitate to the Most Recently Cleaned Location in the House

Photo from Last House

Today, I undertook the task of sweeping our entire first floor since we hadn't really had the chance to clean up much--given our house full of Spring Break guests this past week. (Thanks again for coming Eric, Lacey, Alison, Parker, Tyler, and Bennett as well as Sheila, Jessica, Grant, Gavin, Gabrielle, and Garrison!  We loved it!)

Of course, no one was to be found when I was assembling my massive pile of crumbs, dust, dirt, pine needles, and pieces to the game of Risk.  However, as soon as I had finally gotten the pile all together in the kitchen and was getting ready to retrieve the dust pan...every single one of the children came plowing into the pile and tracking it away on their feet bottoms as they "had to"  traverse it on the way to the sink, pantry or living room (as if there were no alternate routes).  I'm still not quite sure how they sensed I was almost done.

I'm pretty sure this is an actually law as I've also observed it in action when they've immediately come to create footprints in carpet I've just vacuumed or to jump on a bed I've just made.

I haven't quite been able to quantify the duration of how long an area remains clean according to this law, but it seems to be proportional to the ages and quantity of the children in question.

Law 2:  Merely Asking a Child to Perform a Task Immediately Exhausts All of His or Her Energy, Completely

Max Wearing Pajama Pants; Not Speedo

For example, at the end of the day today I asked Max to go upstairs and get ready for bed.  Although just moments before he was jumping around on the couch, using it to practice handstands and flips of all kinds, when I asked him to go upstairs he immediately and suddenly crumbled to the floor and said, "I can't move."  He was only able to make the laborious trip up the stairs with significant dragging assistance from me.

Fortunately, he was able to regain some strength once we got to his bedroom, but once I asked him to get dressed for bed, again his strength completely failed him and he fell to the floor again.  "I can't move."

I just need to learn how to harness this power for good, as in when he's running for the street without looking both ways, instead of yelling "Max! Stop!" I'll just yell, "Max, come clean your room right now!"


Law 3:  If There Is A Way To Fight Over It, They Will Find It

Stock Photo of Kaitlyn (Not Reflective of Current Short Haircut)

Every night we read scriptures as a family before bed.  Although we're reading the New Testament now, when we were reading the Book of Mormon, every night we would assemble the various copies we had around the house: Megan's extra large print version, the one from my childhood with pictures drawn in on select verses, or Kaitlyn's old red pocket military-sized copy with about 20% of the pages missing (different than the lost 116 pages).  Because every night there would be a fight about who got to use which scriptures we decided to purchase 5 identical blue hard bound copies so that they would be indistinguishable and we could spend less time fighting about the book and more time reading it and benefiting from it.  What I didn't realize is that they would then fight about who got to pass them out.

I should have learned from our experience with family prayer:  When there was too much fighting about whose turn it was to say the prayer, we typed up a calendar with assignments of who would say the prayer each night.  While that did stop the fight over whose turn it was, the fight then morphed into who got to open the drawer to look at the chart to see whose turn it was to pray, and who got announce it.

What Child Is This?

When taking photos of your children, I recommend labeling them immediately.  Let's say you manage your photo library manually and, for example, download photos from your digital camera into a folder called "Thanksgiving" or "At The Mall" and lose the date information associated with each picture.  

Then, at some later point in time you decide to go back and make a scrapbook or other memory book from the thousands of pictures on your computer taking up 142GB of your 288GB hard drive.  Would you be successful at accurately determining which child was which?

Let's take a little quiz and see how you do (answers below):

1.  Olivia or Kaitlyn?

2.  Max or Alison?

3.  Ava or Alison?

4.  Kaitlyn or Max?

5. Olivia or Ava?

6.  Alison or Kaitlyn?

7.  Kaitlyn or Olivia?

8. Alison or Max?

9.  Max or Ava?
 

10. Olivia or Ava?

Let's see how you did?
1.  Kaitlyn
2.  Max
3.  Ava
4.  Kaitlyn
5.  Olivia
6.  Alison
7.  Olivia
8.  Alison
9.  Max
10.  Ava

Congratulations!

Kids Say Things

So, I owe it to my loyal reader (i.e. Megan) to keep up the blogging this year, especially since I've gotten off to such a great start.  Now, granted, I missed last week because of that one reason and all, but I'm back to it this week.

As you know, Megan, Max wears glasses with a significant prescription.  This week, when you were looking at him you noticed that his glasses were covered with smudges, fingerprints, and other vision-obscuring dirtiness.  When you asked Max how it was humanly possible for him to see out of such dirt-covered lenses his response was: "Because I have really great eye sight."

Stock Photo: Max

When we were at Alison's basketball game last week (remember, Megan, you were there), I was trying to get Kaitlyn to cheer on her sister.  I showed her how you raise your fist by your ear in the cheerleading position while yelling out encouraging phrases at the players (or while disparaging the referees like I do).  She was finally pursuaded to give a try with a "Go Ali!  Woo!" which got progressively softer after she started.  Her reflection on how it went: "I kind of lost my confidence there at the end."



Stock Photo: Kaitlyn

Stock Photo: Alison

Avery is becoming obsessed with Just Dance 4, which, Megan, you will recall that Santa brought for Christmas, and now walks around the house singing "Here's my number, call me maybe."  Fortunately, she mixes it up occasionally with another number: "Ever ever ever ever ever ever ever, We-eee!"  Yep.  Just how Taylor Swift wrote it.

Stock Photo: Ava

Olivia doesn't say anything funny, but she now laughs when you tickle her!  (Less so when I do it.)

Why am I blogging again?  These are all stories that you told me.

Little Miss Olivia

For those of you who rely exclusively on our blog for information about our family, you'll be relieved to know that Megan is not currently 58 weeks pregnant.  Our sweet Olivia Jane was born 9/9/12 at 7:15 a.m. weighing in at 7 lbs. 11 oz. and measuring 18.5 inches.

Since Olivia is the fifth child, we don't really have any pictures of her yet, so here is a months-old photo of Ava I was able to find--which is probably what Olivia will look like in a few years.

Kidding, of course. Mostly. Here's the real story:

I was watching some football or basketball game late on Saturday night, and had briefly fallen asleep on the couch. When I came to, I shuffled up the stairs to our bedroom and found that Megan was there pacing the room and had, on her nightstand, a notebook with two columns-- (a) times (such as 10:17 p.m., 10:25 p.m.) and (b) durations (such as 45 seconds, 30 seconds, etc.). Even though Olivia's actual due date was still a few days away (on 9/11), I vaguely understood what was happening--having gone through this experience only four times previously.

We texted a great friend from church, who was remarkably still awake at midnight, and she agreed to come over and sleep on our couch to be here with the other kids while we headed to the hospital, where we arrived a bit after 1 a.m. or so. I guess we must have been watching the BYU football game because it was only when we checked in at the front desk that I realized that both Megan and I were both wearing BYU Football t-shirts (from which the nurses on duty concluded that we must be a newly married couple, fresh out of undergrad, about to have our first baby...suckers!)

After getting checked in and confirming that Megan was, in fact, pregnant...I mean, in labor...we got settled into the room, and waited patiently for the drug dealer...I mean, anesthesiologist...to show up so that Megan could tell him that she loved him (I can't remember if that was before or after he stuck the massive needle in her back or not).

As the father-to-be, I was politely offered a recliner to sleep on which, based on how well I slept leads me to believe, must have been an airline seat in a former life. Have you ever tried to sleep well on one of those airline seats? I mean, they hardly recline, and then they aren't that comfortable to begin with, and then there's the incredibly loud noise from the engines, and...wait this isn't about me. Sorry, I got distracted.

Anyways, Megan did some stuff and then Olivia came flying out and into the world first thing in the morning.

About an hour or two after she was born, I quickly went home to pick up the kids to come meet their new baby sister who were all bouncing off the walls and excited to take turns holding her.

We're so glad Olivia has joined our family.  She's such a happy baby and truly is loved by every one of her siblings.

Here are some other early-life pics of Olivia Jane--since more recent ones will be forthcoming.

Triskaidekaphobia

Even though I absolutely demolished last year's goal of blogging by an astonishing 200%, I've still decided to raise the bar this year and try to blog more than the 3 times that I did all of last year--if I can remember how to do this.  (In fact, it's been so long since I've blogged, I'm sure my audience now consists only of people stumbling upon this blog while Googling "triskaidekaphobia" and "comings and goings" in the same search string, myself, and the one of my children who keeps insisting that I publish her PowerPoint presentations here.)

So, dear two non-me "Comings and Goings of Nathan and Megan" readers, what can you expect from me this year?

1. A Catch Up on Nathan + Megan Family Activities since March 2011.  Since that was the date of my last post, you're probably asking yourself what on earth has happened to us since that time with self-inquisitions like: 

• "It's only been 10 months, but have they moved?  Again?"  
• "Have they had the baby?  (If not, Megan would be a very unhappy camper at about 56 weeks pregnant now!)  What did they name it/her?"
• "Have they gone on any trips or had any Christmas's to Remember?"  
• "Have they written any witty end of 2012 letters worth posting here?"  

(As usual, though, I'm making no guarantees that these updates will be chrono-logical, eco-logical or just regular-old logical either.)

2. A Posting of Various PowerPoint Presentations.  This will probably be one or two from Kaitlyn's fine collection of decks on topics such as music, love or donuts, but I may throw in Ali's birthday plan (despite it's lack of financial analysis), or my own POV on the state of U.S. government spending.  (I know...they all sound riveting.)

3. Long and Pointless Rants Exceeding 140 characters. Unfortunately, all my short and to-the-point rants will be found on my Twitter feed with the hashtag: #allcomingsandgoingsofnathanandmeganatblogspotdotcomshortandtothepointrants.  And, all of my observations about the things I'm about to eat and times when I'm standing on an escalator will continue to be found on my Facebook page (once I find my password).  So, that just leaves this blog as my only forum for going on and on and on (perhaps giving new meanings to the "goings" of Nathan and Megan).

So, that's it.  Sit back and enjoy the wait for these and other wonderous topics this coming year from yours truly.

Good Lines From Today

I love the things my kids say.  Here's a representative sample--just from today:

Ava (while pointing at herself and smiling big, because she knows what she's doing): "Dad!"  (I've been trying to teach her her own name, by pointing to her and saying "Ava".  She knows her name, but she points at herself and says "Dad" to be funny and laugh.)

Max: "Kate?  When are you going to get bath-tized?"  (In fairness to Max, it does look like a big bathtub.)

Kaitlyn, trying to argue her case that we should go on a family-ish walk: "Mom, how about the rest of us all go for a walk and you can stay home and watch The Firm?"  (She clearly overheard Megan earlier in the day who said that we had DVR'ed it but not watched it yet.)

Alison: "Dad, when you knocked Kate over you made child dominoes!"  (I accidentally bumped Kaitlyn into Max and they both fell over.)