Guitar hero

Last night Will and I were playing billiards, darts, and Neil Diamond in the basement of Uncle John and Aunt Mavis's house. Will found Jana's old guitar behind the darts machine, took it out, and started to play with it.

As I turned my back on Will and attended to the skipping Diamond disc, Will said, "Daddy, listen, I'm telling a story!"

Hmm, he's telling a story on the guitar, letting the notes write the words. Should be interesting. "What's it about buddy?"

"It's about a lizard in the desert ... and it's snowing."

Whoa, trippy story, dude. We'll look for the rest of the story on VH1.

Laugh-a-Roo

I've started to detect a direct relationship between how annoying Scott and I find Will's antics and how funny Charlie finds them.

Here's an example: Charlie and Will and the jump-a-roo. If there had been a pair of ear plugs in front of us, there's a reasonable chance Scott and I would have scratched each other's eyes out to claim them first.

For some reason, this nails-on-a-chalkboard moment was comedy gold to Charlie. Here's a video:

Happy Thanksgiving

Will has been super busy with Thanksgiving projects at school and at daycare. Here are a few of our favorites.

Oh, there's also one from Charlie ... he had a little help from his teachers at daycare.

West Bend Weekend

The most amazing thing happened on Saturday night.

I slept for EIGHT hours ... in a ROW!

When I did wake up, it wasn't because a baby was crying or there had been an "accident" or someone was hungry, thirsty, squirmy or dreaming about a dinosaur staring in the window.

Nope. I woke up after eight blissful hours because, well, I needed to use the bathroom.

I felt so human again.

Many thanks to my in-laws who made it all possible.

Here are a few pictures from our weekend in West Bend. I put quite a few of Charlie because I just couldn't narrow them down ... his expressions are just so cute! There are also a couple of Will doing what was either an impression of Michael Phelps or perhaps the Incredible Hulk. Enjoy!

Our floor model

I'll take that twenty, if you don't mind

The other night after work I needed to stop by an ATM to pick up some cash for my quick trip to Baltimore. Will insisted on coming inside with me, something he never gets to do. He watched in amazement as I made money magically appear from the machine, two $20 bills.

Will grabbed one of them, walked away slowly, and said "Hey Daddy, what if you took one and I took one?"

Yeah, great idea dude. Work on a better line.

After that ...

... I feigned disbelief -- "What Will, you don't think I'm cute?" -- and got him backpedaling. After trying to dig himself out of a hole -- how dare he imply that Jana loves the baby more than me? -- Will says:

"Daddy ... do you know what this means?

"What?"

"It's time to wrestle!"

Changing The Subject 101, that's my boy! So we wrestled for awhile, with Will's new ring name being Escape Man. I asked Will what my new name should be.

"Wrestle Man."

This drew big laughs from his parents, especially his mother, who told Will "Maybe your new name can be Captain Obvious!"

"Yes, Daddy can be Captain Obvious," said Will, distorting things as he often does. "That's perfect!"

We really should have sent him back the drawing board, but the name stood.

Charlie or Daddy?

"Mommy?"

"Yes Will?"

"Who do you love more ... Charlie or Daddy?"

Hmmm ... I'd braced myself for the "Do you love me or Charlie more" question, but Will sort of changed things up on me.

"Why do you ask?" I said, using my favorite stalling technique.

"Well, Charlie is just so cute and soft and his skin is so shiny," he said, patting Charlie on his chubby little cheek.

"All true."

"And Daddy ... well, his skin is just so hairy."

Whistle while you work

Charlie has learned a new skill ... he can whistle. No kidding.

We discovered this at about 2 a.m. and we were both so giddy about it we stayed up and practiced for a good 30 minutes. I'm trying to teach him the intro to Guns N Roses "Patience."

When you combine this with his ability to touch his head to his toes, that makes two things Charlie can do that his Daddy can't.

You've got to be kidding me

Will has a funny way of showing that he misses me. I was away from him for almost five days, for three days on a work trip, then while he was in Michigan with Jana's grandma.

Tonight, I read Will a Magic School Bus book focused on ... rocks. You know, sedimentary, igneous, shale, slate. Good stuff.

Afterward, Will was asking about what things were made of, like coins. (Will brought home plenty of coins from Michigan. He said he got them from his grandma for "having fun.")

Then he asked what glass was made of. Not entirely sure, but later proven somewhat correct by Wikipedia, I said "sand."

"You've got to be kidding me," Will said. That made me giggle.

Will couldn't stop asking me questions, which I interpreted as making up for lost time together. After a few more minutes of this, he said "Daddy, let's just lay down in bed, relax, and look at the stars," referring to the glow-in-the-dark stars I hung on his ceiling a few months ago. "Someday, we should lay outside and count all the stars in the sky."

Sounds like a plan.