Racing sheep

Yesterday on the way home from the grocery store, Will noticed some sheep in a field off 49. Clary asked him why the sheep, recently shaven, had numbers painted on them.

"Because they're racing sheep," Will answered.

Ahhh ... now it makes sense.

Day Four

It's Day Four for Charlie, and things are going well. He eats every two hours or so, and is good for one or two three- or four-hour periods between feedings. He doesn't open his eyes very often, mainly at night. Jana had a profound discussion with him at 4:45 a.m. this morning.

Last night we were reminded of how challenging it is to change a newborn. Charlie had one blowout and two wet-throughs in about a six-hour span.

Will has apparently gotten the cold Jana had two weeks ago, so we're trying to keep him away from Charlie, which is really hard and which we really don't want to do. But big brother understands. He is acting out a bit more than normal, talking loud and being crazy ... although we might just have a shorter tolerance for that now with Charlie around.

Charlie photos: Day Two

We took Charlie home from the hospital yesterday, where he was welcomed by Will and Clary. Soon after, my mom, dad, grandma, brother, and Sara and Katy from work came by to see our little bundle of joy. Today he made his first Saturday morning excursion to Grandma's apartment in Waupaca to meet my aunt Karen.

He is a night owl right now - that's when his eyes open the most - and sleeps more in the morning and middle of the day. Still eating well.

Big brudder sings the classics

Ever since he found out we were having another baby, Will has been excited to be a big brudder. He was terrific with Charlie right away. "Aw, look at how little his ear is!" is the first thing he said. He loves holding Charlie, and is very protective of him, warning us to talk quietly because baby is sleeping.

Will also loves singing to Charlie. He basically has two songs: "Rockabye Baby" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." The first time he sang them to Charlie after we got home from the hospital today, the baby was crying; Will got him to stop. This has given him great insight into the ways of child care: "See guys, you don't say 'Shhh' to get the baby to stop crying, you sing to him!"

Here's a video of Will singing to Charlie at the hospital Thursday evening.

Charles Edward Tappa

This morning at 2:22 a.m., Jana gave birth to Charles Edward Tappa. Charlie was 20.5 inches long, 7 pounds, 8.4 ounces.

The process went as smoothly as a pregnancy can go. We left for the hospital at 10:30 p.m., Jana started pushing slightly after 2, and Charlie came out 20 minutes later. Once again, she's a major league trooper. He took to feeding right away, which made the post-delivery much better than last time.

Charlie is wonderful - already sleeping for several hours at a time and a willing eater. His brother is in awe; Will wanted to hold him as much as possible, and kept saying things like "He's the best baby ever" and "Isn't he cute?"

Our new addition: It's a ... minivan!

Four years ago, right after Will was born, Jana and I took are slightly larger family to Oshkosh to visit friends. As we rolled up to our friend Shu-Ling's house, she came outside, took one look at our new car, and announced:

"Oh my God, you middle-aged!"

That new car was a Toyota Camry.

Saturday, we bought a Honda Odyssey — a minivan! So if a mid-sized sedan made me middle-aged, what does a minivan make me?

I feel like that Mike Myers Saturday Night Live character, Middle-Aged Man. The guy whose theme song included the passage "... developing skills and a gut ..."!

Well, whatever. We bought a minivan because our family is about to grow by 33%, and we need the room. And I'm guessing this thing can outrun other minivans. Especially ones from Detroit.

By the way, Will is in these pictures. Not sure if you saw him, you know, because of all the camouflage he has on. This is what happens when 4-year-olds dress themselves.

Wrestlemania

Here are some pictures of Will and me wrestling. Believe it or not, he has beaten me every single time we've wrestled.

Easter fun

One of our big goals is to get all of our cameras' memory cards cleared before the baby arrives, so we have the capacity to take tens of thousands of pictures of him instantaneously. So we're looking at pictures we took awhile ago but never downloaded. We'll be getting as many up as we can.

Here are some from before Easter: Will and Jana coloring eggs, and Will at the Easter party put on by the Iola Lioness Club. We had a lot of fun.

The middle man

We had to have the "private parts" talk with Will recently.

It all started when our friend Katy was over one day and Will was getting changed for a big event.

"Hey, Katy!" Will said. "Look at my MIDDLE!"

Insert the little "shake, shake, shake ... shake your booty" dance his Aunt Sara taught him here.

"Middle" was the word he used, one we'd never used for that particular appendage, but we all knew what he meant, even without a wide-open size 5T trenchcoat.

Anyway, we had the talk and I thought Will got it until later that night.

He is notoriously bad at sitting still while I cut his toenails and it usually ends up with us arguing over why it is so difficult to sit still. Will's main excuse is that "sitting still is just TOO hard."

Anyway, that night Will tried another tactic to get out of nail-cutting time.

"Mommy," he said. "You cutting my nails is not right. My toes are some of my privacy parts."

The Hamburglar's still guilty

Will has a funny way of pulling things from weeks or months ago out of thin air and injecting them into conversation. For instance:

This weekend, while driving around a mall parking lot, Will belts out "Daddy, you were wrong!" The tone of his voice carried an implied "once again" at the end of the sentence.

"Why's that, buddy?"

"Because you said the Hamburglar didn't steal burgers any more and he still steals hamburgers." (Remember, it's Will talking, so take out all the L's in that last sentence to get a sense for how it sounded.)

"What was that all about?" Jana asked.

Thought about it, and remembered that a month or so ago, after Will told us about a Ronald McDonald movie they watched at day care (McDonald's stealth mission to get a new wave of consumers hooked on Big Macs and salty fries from a young age). That night, for his pre-bedtime story, I told him a tale of how the Hamburglar reformed, stopped stealing hamburgers, and became a productive member of society.

Apparently, Will has recently seen evidence that the Hamburglar has not, in fact, given up his criminal ways.

Someone call Mayor McCheese.