Natural

So, Axl came into the bathroom this morning when I got out of the shower. He was watching me dry off and we had the following conversation:

Axl: Daddy, why are you drying your tushy?

Me: You know how I dry your tushy after the bath?

Axl: Yeah. BUt why are you drying yours?

Me: I dry it because I don't want it to be wet when I put my boxers on, because wet underwear wouldn't be comfortable.

Axl: Why are you drying your penis?

Me: Same reason.

Axl: Daddy, something funny happened this morning?

Me: What?

Axl: My penis was getting bigger and smaller, and bigger and smaller.

Me: (Hmm, I've seen his boners before, but I'm not sure if he's noticed them. What do I say?) Oh, well that's normal. How did it feel?

Axl: Okay. When it was bigger, it was hard to push it in.

Me: (Why was he trying to push it in?) Oh, well that's normal too.

Axl: Why doesn't it ever happen to you?

Me: (Wow, there are so many ways I can go with this) Oh, it happens to me too.

Axl: When?

Me: (When Mommy and I have "special time," heh heh) Oh, um, sometimes in the morning.

Axl: Oh. Why does it happen in the mornings?

Me: (Hmm, should I even try to explain?) Hey did you pick out clothes yet?

Axl: No.

Me: Okay, go get some clothes to bring downstairs while I finish getting ready.

Axl: Okay.

Good times.

Ouch

So, our air conditioning stopped working yesterday, which was just awesome. We had a guy out this morning to look at it, and he told us it would be about $3500 to fix (because, according to him, we need a new compressor). We had a second guy out in the afternoon who told us the first guy was crazy, and he was able to fix it for $215. Phew.

I stopped at Wegmans on the way home to pick up a few things for dinner, and when I pulled up to our house, I noticed that the garage door was open, The Rocket Queen's stroller was outside, and a bunch of The Boys' sports equipment was still outside. Hmm, that's strange, The Wife usually has them put their stuff away. Ahhh, I know, one of The Boys must've needed to go to the bathroom, or The Rocket Queen needed a new diaper and they all went inside.

I grabbed all of the bags from the trunk and as I walked to the door, I saw one of our neighbors starting to get out of his car. I stopped to talk to him for a second, when all of a sudden, I heard The Wife yell:

The Wife: Good Times Dad, get in here!

Axl (opening the screen door with tears in his eyes): Something unintelligible mumble hit Slash in the head with a piece of driveway!

Umm, did he just say he hit Slash in the head with a piece of the driveway?

I walk in to the kitchen, where a frantic The Wife is holding a paper towel to Slash's head (who is crying, loudly) and saying something about calling 9-1-1, the emergency room, stitches, and quite possibly reconstructive surgery.

Me: What happened?

The Wife: Axl threw a piece of the driveway at Slash and it opened up a huge gash in his head. I don't know if we need to take him to the emergency rom or not. I called the after hours number and we're waiting for the on-call doctor to call back. I have to nurse The Rocket Queen, so you hold this on his head.

When someone mentioned stitches, Axl said:

Axl: When they do stitches, they use a sharp thing, and go..

Me: (looking at Axl and shaking my head) Axl, no. Stop it please.

Axl: I'm just saying, they use a really sharp...

Me: Axl, you're not helping. Stop it. And besides, I don't think Slash is going to need stitches.

Slash: I don't need stitches.

So I start holding the cool, wet paper towel to the cut and every time I lifted it off to try and look at it, Slash cried that it hurt (not when I was pressing on it, but when I would move it off).

I spoke to the on-call doctor and he asked how big it was. I said it was pretty small, and it looked like two small cuts. The Wife said it was about an inch long (it was nowhere near that). The on-call doctor said that if we're unsure about how big it is, and if it doesn't stop bleeding, we should go to after-hours and have a doctor look at it. PLus, since it was asphalt, we should make sure there's no gravel in the wound (I could see it, there was no gravel).

So The Wife gives me a juice box as bribery material, and I get Slash into the car. He's jabbering on like a monkey in a tree (you know, like Forrest Gump) the whole way in the car. We get there and I start filling out paperwork and the woman behind the desk lets me put a show on for him (they had full digital cable, so he watched an episode of "Penguins of Madagascar"). I filled out the paperwork for his medical history, making only one joke (I checked "no" under alcohol use and smoking, but wrote "recreationally" under drug use).

THey said they were ready for us, and Slash said he wanted to watch another episode of Penguins:

Me: No sweetie, we didn't come here to watch TV, we came here so they could look at your booboo.

Slash: My booboo feels better, I want to watch another one.

Me: No, we can watch more at home, let's go.

They take us back into triage and the male nurse (I resisted every urge to call him Focker) asked SLash what kind of popsicle he wanted. Orange. So he brings back an orange freeze-pop:

Slash: He said they had popsicles, but it's really a freeze-pop.

Me: I know, I guess he was just being silly.

Slash: He lied!

So, Focker puts on gloves, looks at the cut and says:

Male Nurse: Oh, it's mostly superficial. I don't think he needs stitches. Besides, we don't do stitches on the head. If we needed to close it up, we would use staples.

I am NOT thrilled at the thought of someone stapling Slash's head. But the doctor comes in and looks at it and confirms that he doesn't need staples:

Doctor: No, he doesn't need stitches.

Slash: See? I TOLD you I didn't need stitches.

Me: I guess you were right Doctor Slash.

Slash: I told you. I told you I don't need stitches.

Me: I actually don't think I said you needed stitches. I think Mommy thought you might need them.

We get ready to leave, and they offer him another popsicle. I politely declined (Slash: Oh mannnnn!), and we went on our way.

Sadly, with two boys, I am sure this will not be our last trip to urgent care for something as stupid as "let's throw pieces of the driveway at each other's heads" or as I call it, The Great Driveway Incident of 2010.

Good times.

Friday

So, The Wife made a playdate to bring The Boys to a friend’s house on Friday. The kids they were going to play with are a brother/sister combo from The Boys’ classes at daycare. The brother, we’ll call him Donnie Osmond had been in Axl’s class, and Marie Osmond was in Slash’s class (since I know their mom reads this blog, let me say that calling them Donnie and Marie is in no way a reflection of their coolness. I just couldn’t think of another musical brother/sister pair other than Michael and Janet Jackson, and since Michael is dead, that just didn’t seem right. Likewise, pairing Tito or Jermaine with Janet seemed even less right).

However, this was one of those things that seemed like a good idea in theory but didn’t work out so well. Neither Axl nor Slash napped and they were crabby and sort of off the wall. We had dinner there, but of course, neither of The Boys ate the pizza, so of course, they were hungry when we got home.

I gave them baths and then got them ready for bed. But since Slash was over-tired, he started to fight with me. The big one was he thought it was HIS night to sleep with Bossy Bear, and not Axl’s.

Bossy Bear is a beanie baby type bear that has a big New York Islanders logo on its chest and the bear is orange and blue (Islanders colors). My mom had given that to me at least 10 years ago because I like the Islanders and she thought it would be a cool little collectable. When I was cleaning out the closet in what would become The Rocket Queen’s room before she was born, I was going through a bag of clothes that had been sitting there since we moved back in July 2006. I saw the bear and, thinking I was doing something nice, told Axl that they could play with it. Big mistake, because no good deed goes unpunished. Of course, I didn’t have TWO of the stupid things, and The Boys instantly began to fight over who got to sleep with it. We worked out an intricate and complicated system where they alternated nights, and whoever DIDN’T have him would get to choose which projector scene they saw (they have a white noise machine with a little projector, and there’s a fish scene, a jungle scene, and a night scene). Axl would try to tie who got and chose what to who had which booster on a given day (that’s a whole other headache for another time), but that got shot down each time.

The Boys asked me what the bear’s names was, so I named the bear Bossy Bear after Mike Bossy, one of the greatest Islanders of all time.

Anyway, back to Friday night. Slash was adamant that it was HIS night with Bossy Bear even though it was Axl’s night. There have been a number of times when Axl has sweetly given in and switched nights to calm Slash down (or maybe just to shut him the fuck up), but this wasn’t one of them. I told Slash it was his night with Yankee Bear (I found another beanie baby type bear that was black and has “Wells 33” on the back for David Wells). Even though we couldn’t find another Bossy Bear, that seemed to work because each one of them had a little bear to sleep with. But again, not on Friday night.

I kept asking, and then telling Slash to get into bed. Finally, I told him that I was going to count to 3, and if he didn’t get into bed by three, I would take away one of his babies (he has two baby dolls that he is mega-attached to). I counted to 3, he didn’t move, so he lost a baby.

We’ll fast forward through 10 minutes that made me feel like a monster. I finally took everything out of his bed (both babies, his woobies, his baby turtle) and he was screaming louder than ever:

Slash: GIVE ME BACK MY BABIES!

Me: No, get into bed.

Slash: I WON’T GET INTO BED UNLESS YOU GIVE ME MY BABIES BACK!

Me: I MIGHT give you ONE of the babies if you get into bed right now.

Slash: NO, I WON’T GET INTO BED UNLESS YOU GIVE ME BOTH BABIES BACK! IF YOU DON’T GIVE ME BOTH BABIES BACK I’M GOING TO CRY AND SCREAM ALL NIGHT!

Axl: Daddy doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.

Me: (wow, Axl DOES listen to some things I say) No Sweetie, get into bed first.

It went on like this for a good five minutes. I finally got him in to bed but he wouldn’t lie down and let me cover him. I finally gave up and said I was going to sing to them and turn out the lights. So I turned out the lights while the projector was going and started to sing “Lullabye and good night” to them:

(note: the dialog that follows is not a back and forth. Slash was crying/talking at the same time as I was singing)

Me: Lullabye and good night…

Slash: You’re so mean!

Me: Go to sleep Axl and Slashy…

Slash: You’re so mean. You’re a meanie…

Me: Cuz you’re sleepy and you’re tired…

Slash: You’re a meanie…

Me: And it’s time to go to sleep…

Slash: You’re the devil!

Me: (at that point I lost it and started laughing) Lullabye and good night, go to sleep Axl and Slashy…

Slash: You’re the devil! You’re the devil! You’re a big meanie devil!

Me: Close your eyes, and good night, Axl Moose and Slashy Bear.

Slash: I’m not your friend anymore Devil!

Now THAT’S how you kick off the weekend. Needless to say, I FELT like the devil.

Good times

Happy Birthday

So, today marks Good Times Dad's first birthday (or my First Anniversary of writing this blog). It's been quite a year, filled with lots of ups and downs. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this over the last year and I look forward to a new and exciting year filled with lots of good times. I've got a couple of things to write about over the next day or two, and I promise I'll get to it, but it's late and I'm tired.

However, a short while ago, The Wife was nursing The Rocket Queen and we were hoping that she would fall asleep so we could go to bed. She finished nursing and The Wife started to burp her when The Rocket Queen threw up (spit up, but considering the amount of chunky white stuff that came out of her mouth, it could best be classified as throwing up) all over The Wife. It was gross. The Wife went upstairs to take a shower and was all annoyed when she came down. As I was taking a load of white-chunk covered stuff down to throw in the washing machine, The Wife said:

The Wife: Ucch, it's So annoying.

Me: Man, get over it already.

Apparently that wasn't "sensitive," because The Wife called me a jerk and then when I got back upstairs, she said:

The Wife: Just when I was empathizing with you, you go and say something jerky.

Me: Were you saying it was annoying that I had to go throw in laundry at 11:15 at night?

The Wife: Yes.

Me: Oh.

Um, sorry.

Good times.

Inappropriate

So, this morning The Wife and I were getting The Boys’ stuff ready for camp. I went upstairs to brush my teeth and get socks. As usual, The Boys were sort of off the wall. As I came back downstairs and started walking towards the kitchen, I heard:

The Wife: Hey guys, stop it. That is inappropriate. You should NOT be doing that with your penises.

Me: (laughing) What were they doing?

The Wife: They were holding their penises and trying to hit each other, like they were having a sword fight.

Me: Nice!

She just looked at me. You know the look. The one that says “you’re an idiot,” “this is YOUR fault,” and “you’re not helping,” all at the same time.

Good times.

Star

So, I’m a rock star. Last night, The Wife went out to a bridal shower for one of our good friends who is getting married in the fall. This marked the first time I would be alone in the house with all three children. Awake, and perilously close to the time of night when it seems like all The Rocket Queen wants to do is nurse. We don’t give her formula, but we DO have some breast milk frozen in the freezer, so if push came to shove, I could defrost it and feed her.

The Wife left while The Boys and I were having dinner with The Rocket Queen in her bouncy seat on the floor watching us. Dinner was relatively uneventful. We played “Name That Tune or Band Singing The Tune.” We started with “Dream On,” which Axl eventually got when they sang the words “Dream On.” Slash got Paradise City pretty much right away. Axl nailed Ring of Fire, though neither boy could come up with Social Distortion. Axl got The Play (Gay) Bar Song, and Slash quessed Home Sweet home. However, the most impressive get of the game was when Slash heard the opening keyboards in the live Woodstock version of “Santa Monica” and shouted out “Samma Monica!” before the opening chords. That reduced Axl to tears.

At some point during the game, The Rocket Queen started to get fussy and cry. The biggest takeaway from the game was that Sweet Caroline started to calm her, but she grinned when I put Kickstart My Heart on. Atta girl!

Anyway, I brought all three kids upstairs so I could give The Boys a bath. The Wife had said that we would give The Rocket Queen a bath when she got home (usually, she gives The Rocket Queen a bath while I’m giving The Boys a bath and then when she’s ready to take The Rocket Queen out, I go in there and hold The Rocket Queen while The Wife gives her a final rinse and then I hand her to The Wife, who’s holding a towel). While I was giving The Boys a bath, The Rocket Queen started to get fussy, which meant one of two things:

1) She had a poop and wanted to be changed; or
2) She wanted to nurse.

Please g-d, let it be one. Let it be one.

So I got The Boys out of the bath as The Rocket Queen’s cries started to reach a new level. Not quite Defcon 5, but approaching it. And of course, Slash wouldn’t just let me put his hooded towel on his head and wrap himself:

Slash: (crinig [crying/whining]) Wrap me Daddy!

Me: No, you can wrap yourself.

Slash: I can’t! Wrap me!

Me: Slash, you’re holding the ends of the towel already. Just wrap yourself.

Slash: (crining) I can’t do it. Wrap me Daddy!

Me (holding a screaming Rocket Queen) Slash, just hug yourself.

Slash: I can’t!

Me: FINE, here (and I half-assedly wrap him).

I walked into The Boys’ room, took out two pull-ups (they had to be matching, of course, little pains in the…), basically threw them at The Boys and told them to put them on:

Slash: Help me Daddy.

Me: Fine, dry yourself and I’ll help you put it on.

Slash: I’m dry.

Me: No, your penis and tushy. Make sure they’re dry.

Slash: They’re dry.

Me: (feeling) No, you’re totally wet, come here.

Slash stands in front of me, standing up straight:

Me: How am I supposed to dry you like that? Come on, help me out here, I need to deal with The Rocket Queen. Spread your legs a little.

Slash does almost a full split to the point that drying him now feels a little obscene. But I get him dry and in a pull-up. Meanwhile, Axl gets himself completely dressed.

So I go to change The Rocket Queen, hoping against all hope that she’s got a poop in there, otherwise it means she wants to nurse. All THAT would mean would be that I’d have to go downstairs, somehow defrost the breast milk (which, admittedly, wouldn’t be rocket science), find a bottle and all the necessary parts, and then hope she takes a bottle for only the second time in her young life. So I open the diaper and…

JACKPOT!

I’ve never been so excited to see a big spot of smelly, green breast-milk poop. She stops crying almost instantly and I decide to give her a bath. I put her back in her rocky chair and get her bath ready on our bathroom sink. I get the bath all set when:

Axl: Daddy, I have to poop.

Me: Ok, go in the other bathroom, but you’ll have to wipe yourself.

Axl: I don’t want to go in that bathroom, I want to go in your bathroom.

Me: Well, you can’t go in here now because I’m giving The Rocket Queen a bath in here (the reason why he couldn’t go in there isn’t because that would be gross, but because I had a bin of water for rinsing her down sitting on top of the closed toilet seat).

Axl: Move the water.

Me: No, I can’t. Just go in the other room and wipe yourself when you’re done. You do it at camp.

Axl: Mumble mumble mumble.

So I’m giving The Rocket Queen a bath, which she usually loves. She’s usually all smiles, but last night, not so much. Slash came in to the bathroom and wanted to watch her bath. He then asked if he could help. Near the end of the bath, when I needed to rinse the soap off of her so I could take her out, I said:

Me: Sure, you can help Slash. Take this cup and pour it over her back.

Slash: (holding the cup very carefully with two hands) I can’t.

Me: What do you mean you can’t? Just pour it on her back.

Slash: I can’t.

Me: (seriously dude? You pour water over yourself and Axl in the bath all the time) Fine. Put the cup down.

Meanwhile, I looked at The Rocket Queen and could see the internal monologue going on in her head:

The Rocket Queen: (Wait a minute. Why are YOU giving me a bath? Where’s Mommy? You don’t do this as well as she does. And when you washed my hair, how come you didn’t do the whole massaging baby oil into my scalp with a toothbrush thing that she does. Hey, Slash, pour the fucking water on my back, I’m cold. Can you believe this clown? Just pour the water. POUR THE WATER. Oh, and how are you going to get me out of the bath, huh? You can’t leave me here for even a second to get the towel, did you ever think of that. Seriously, when’s Mommy getting home? I’m getting hungry…)

Me: Okay, fine Slash. Can you get that towel down from the door?

Slash: Yes.

So he tries to take the towel down from the hook but can’t. So I have him pull the door closed and I’m able to reach it. Despite Slash NOT wanting to help out by holding the towel, I get him to put it down where I can reach it:

Axl: (yelling from the other room) Daddy, I’m done.

Me: Wipe yourself.

Axl: No.

Me: Fine, but you’re going to have to wait a while until I get The Rocket Queen dressed.

I get her out, into a diaper, and into a pair of pajamas. As I finish wiping Axl, The Wife gets home.

Like I said, a rock star. A mutha-effing rock star.

Good times.

Moisturizer

So, last night after the bath, I brushed Slash’s teeth and then he ran down the hall towards where The Wife was nursing The Rocket Queen while I helped Axl brush his teeth. About a minute later, Slash came running back into the room, buck naked, and excitedly exclaimed:

Slash: Axl, Mommy said we can have woshun.

Axl: What?

Me: Yeah, what Slash?

Slash: Excited babble babble get dressed babble woshun!

Axl: What?

Slash: Mommy said that after we get dressed, we can use woshun. On our hands.

Me: Ohhh, Mommy said you can have some lotion for your hands after you get dressed?

Slash: Yeah, that’s what I said, wotion.

Axl: Ohhhh, I thought you said emotion.

Me: How would THAT make sense Axl?

Axl: WHATEVER Daddy. Can we PLEASE stop talking about it now?

Good times.

Thing

So, I was in the basement doing laundry the other night (I think it was Wednesday). I carried our hamper over to the washing machine (which is to the right of the stairs) and set it down. Just as I was putting it down, I saw something scurry past the dryer out of the corner of my eye. All I could see was something dark (and I think I saw a tail):

Me: Whoa.

The Wife (from upstairs) Are you okay?

Me: Um, yeah.

We’ve had mice in our house before. We’d seen some in our play room, and as I wrote about on this blog last summer (or maybe it was fall, I don’t remember), in our kitchen drawers after Slash decided to hide his corn in the drawers instead of eating it. And I know we’ve had some in the basement because I’d found a dead mouse or two in the basement over the last few years. However, all of the mice I’ve seen, dead or alive, were gray (or they could’ve been British and been grey, I’m not sure).

However, this looked black to me. Which made me think, was it a rat?

Man, I fucking hope not.

I don’t have a huge problem with mice. Though I don’t like them, they don’t really freak me out. But rats creep me out.

So I looked at where it seemed to run to and I saw that there’s a little separation between the wall and the floor next to the dryer. When I got upstairs I told The Wife what I had seen, and we were both instantaneously thrilled at the prospect of something, or things, living in our basement. Thankfully, we had one thing of D-Con mouse/rat poison (Come on D-Con people, pony up with advertising money!) left so I brought it downstairs and put it in front of that opening.

When We looked at it later that night, it was clear that some of the poison had been eaten. Awesome.

So I went down to do some more laundry on Thursday night, and as I got to the bottom of the stairs, I looked towards the washing machine and saw something dark run behind the washing machine. And then for good measure, it seemed to start running out from under the washing machine towards the opening and poison, but scurried back underneath the washing machine. Once again, I didn’t get a good glimpse and I still didn’t know what it was, but it still just looked dark.

At this point, The Wife has declared that she will not be going down into the basement by herself.

So on Friday, as we were getting ready to leave for our trip to Albany (or as Axl and Slash called it, Baltimore. I have no idea why, but they kept saying that we were going to Baltimore), I went down to the basement to get our freezer packs from the freezer, and The Wife was standing at the top of the stairs looking down (she was being my look-out to let me know if I was about to get attacked by a bunch of rats):

The Wife: OH!

Me: What?

The Wife: I just saw it. You’re right, it’s dark, whatever it is.

We finished packing, went to Albany, and came home Saturday evening. When we got home and started to unpack, I opened the basement door so I could look down at the poison to see how much more had been eaten (that’s become a favorite hobby over the last few days), and I saw a dead mouse lying about 2 to 3 feet in front of the poison. The mouse was gray, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t what I had seen, which brought to mind a few possibilities:

1) That mouse WAS what I had seen and because I never got a great look at it, it might not have been as dark as I thought (unlikely, because I KNOW what I saw, and it was dark, and I doubt a mouse that size could’ve eaten that much poison and lived from Wednesday to Saturday, but then again, I’m no expert on how long it takes for poison to kill mice);

2) There were numerous mice (or rats, ugh, I shuddered as I wrote that) living in the basement and for some reason, that one failed to get outside to die like the rest (that’s how the poison’s supposed to work…they’re supposed to eat it and then go outside for fresh air. Not sure why, but that’s how it goes); or

(and this third explanation seems to be the most plausible)

3) The dark thing killed it and left it there as a warning to all the other mice that our basement is his (or, to be fair, her) territory and those who wish to challenge that will pay with their mousey lives.

On the bright side, the amount of poison in the tray does not seem to have changed since we got home on Saturday, which either means all of the things have now eaten the poison and died, or the dark thing has scared the rest of them away and is staying away from the poison.

Good times.

Um...

So, The Wife and I got into a little fight this morning. I was stressed because we need to go to Albany on Friday and she wants to leave early, which means I have to leave work early, which means that I need to get to work earlier the rest of the week to make up the time. BUT, that means that she has to take The Boys to camp and get them ready, which, for some reason, seems completely overwhelming to her (I'm not sure why, I've been doing it every morning for the last week).

So I was just about ready to leave at about 8:15 a.m. when she asked me to help her get their "lunch" ready (I put it in quotes because, with the exception of a couple of cheese stick that Axl will deign to eat, there is almost nothing nutritional, or to use an industry term, lunchy, about their lunch. It's basically just a collection of fruit cups and assorted chips and pretzels with a chocolate chip granola bar thrown in for good measure).

I got exasperated:

Me: (in a little bit of a raised voice) Sure, I don't need to get to work any earlier to bank the time. At this point, I might as well just take The Boys to camp myself since I'm going to be late anyway.

The Wife: (also raised voice) Great, then take them. You'll get in at the same time? Blah blah blah blah blah!

At this point, she walks out of the kitchen holding The Rocket Queen into the other room, leaving me in the kitchen by myself. The Boys were in the play room watching Andy Pandy, or Yo Gabba Gabba, or something with multiple names.

Me: You have 45 minutes before you need to leave. I already got them dressed, what's the big deal?

The Wife: Blah blah blah something about having to nurse The Rocket Queen.

Me: (yalling beacuse she's in the other room) Oh, I guess it's SOOOO hard for you to throw some snacks in their lunch bags?

The Wife: (yelling) I'm fucking changing The Rocket Queen you asshole.

Me: Nice. Very Classy The Wife.

Then, from the silence of the other room (like the scene in Meet The Fockers), we hear:

Slash: (giggling) Asshole! Asshole!

Me: Great. Slashy, don't say that.

Slash: Asshole. Wait, what did you say Mommy?

The Wife: (laughing) I said, Stop it you furball.

Slash and Axl: Ha ha, furball.

Slash: You furball!

The Boys spent the rest of the morning and all night calling each other, and us, furballs. On the bright side, The Wife has given us a nice, non-offensive way to use the word asshole without having to actually say it.

Good times.




Me:

Weekend

So, we had a baby naming for The Rocket Queen this weekend. It’s a ceremony where baby girls get their Hebrew names. The Rocket Queen’s Hebrew name is (and this is transliteration) Ha Malkah Rocket.

Anyway, my sister and her family came up for the weekend, as did my parents. It was really great because The Boys don’t get to see their cousins very often and they had a lot of fun running around with my nieces, Ann (the older) and Nancy Wilson (you know, the sisters from the band Heart?!). Slash is in love with Nancy and just kept walking up to her and giving her hugs and kisses. But as we were eating dinner last night, both Axl and Slash tried to influence Nancy Wilson:

Axl: Nancy Wilson, do you sneak?

Keep in mind, Nancy Wilson will be 3 at the end of November. So no, she doesn’t sneak around (not to mention, I’m not even totally sure what The Boys were talking about because this whole sneaky thing is new).

Nancy Wilson just grinned and looked at them.

Slash: Sneak Nancy Wilson!

Me: Ok guys, eat your pasta, she’s not sneaking.

Axl: Ha ha, sneak Nancy Wilson.

Me: Seriously guys, stop trying to get her to be naughty and eat your dinner.

Then, both together and chanting:

Axl and Slash: Nancy Wilson sneak! Nancy Wilson sneak! Nancy Wilson sneak! (think: Donna Martin graduates…) Nancy Wilson sneak! Nancy Wilson sneak! Nancy Wilson sneak!

Me: Guys! Stop it or no dessert.

The kids finally finish dinner and they all get up and go play in the other room and The Wife and I were sitting in their with My Sister and The Brother-In-Law:

Me: I’m impressed, your girls are so well behaved. They didn’t bow to peer pressure.

The Brother-In-Law: Yes, they ARE well behaved, but I have to say, I don’t think she had any idea what they were talking about, or she might’ve done it.

Good times.