YONDER BREAKS

"Think about how many songs you have stored in your brain," I remember telling my co-worker Angie during some down-time while working at Baskin Robbins. "Is there a better way to spread ideas than through music?" I said, with a hopeful glint in my eye. Okay, maybe I didn't have a glint in my eye -- after all, I couldn't see myself in the dull reflection of ice cream-stained plexiglass -- but I imagine that I did. I was finishing up high school at the time, and getting really into music. My punk band, Minus the Standard , was a lot of fun, and we were actually playing some small shows. Even though the end of high school and different colleges brought about the dismemberment of what I'm sure was to be the next MxPx ( Who is MxPx? , the collective readership asks...), I was all about music and investing most of my graduation money in a new guitar, amp and pedal board. I was also writing some of the best songs to-date, though I had no avenue to share it. ...

I guess messiness is part of my job description. Poop and the such mark my days as a stay at home dad. This morning, however, was one of the biggest to date... I was taking out some trash and emptying our compost, which has been sitting for far too long. I find some degree of satisfaction in utilizing all of the banana peels and avocado shells for something outside of just tossing them, but if you don't empty the inside can regularly, fruit flies abound. Well, in the process of doing so (gone for only a couple minutes), I came back in to find our youngest jumping on top of the dining room table, covered in oatmeal with more oatmeal spread about like grass seed. "Uh oh, Waverly made a big mess," our oldest said, as I began the cleanup process... Not today's mess, but one for the record books. (Yes, that is what you think it is...) Oatmeal is really difficult to clean up, by the way, in case you haven't had experience doing so. When you wipe it, it just ki...

Reading genealogies in the bible can be daunting. Sometimes you wonder why they're even there, but trust that someone, somewhere has derived a spiritual benefit from them in some way. I've been reading through Chronicles, and the first part is a pretty hefty genealogy. There are some lines in between the hard to pronounce names that tell a little story, but for the most part it is tough to get through. Today, though, the Holy Spirit brought out a couple things to me that I'd like to share. They waged war against the Hagrites, Jetur, Naphish and Nodab. They were helped in fighting them, and God handed the Hagrites and all their allies over to them, because they cried out to him during the battle. He answered their prayers, because they trusted in him...They also took one hundred thousand people captive, and many others fell slain, because the battle was God's. And they occupied the land until the exile. (1 Chronicles 5:19-20 and 22) From this verse we can see that God...

The more we are together, the more I realize that I am dependent on my wife for certain things. She always buys the shampoo and tooth paste (and we never run out). She plans vacations. She knows how to make popcorn in a pot and not in the microwave. There's nothing wrong with being dependent of course, but as I take on more responsibility as a parent, I am finding that there are things I should know how to do that I just don't. Last night, for instance, we were going to have pizza for dinner because Katie bought some dough that was about to expire. We used to have a Pizzaz pizza maker, a gift from our good friend Jason, which made homemade pizza night something to look forward to. The Pizzaz didn't make the move cross-country , but homemade pizza is still awesome. But also intimidating, as I have never made it before and a big blob of dough is kind of weird to me. And so I did. And the dough was undercooked and our youngest woke up puking this morning. Still, I tried and...

Kids are really different. This becomes more apparent when you have more than one, of course. Our first learned different words at a different rate, walked later than the second, is a much more fluid dancer but also a little less adventurous. She also used to hate  going to bed (still does most of the time, though it's not as bad as it used to be); but once you got her to bed, she was out for the night. We got this book, 12 Hours Sleep by 12 Weeks , which was recommended from a work friend. I think it took 14 weeks for us, but it pretty much made the difference. However, once you put her down, you usually had to go back in a few times to comfort her before she would actually pass out. Yeah, maybe we should have just let her "cry it out," but sometimes it's hard to take the sound for more than a few minutes. Conversely, our second child was extremely difficult at first, in regards to sleep. To be fair, we were in a 2 bedroom apartment and were putting her to bed in o...

Nap time is never a guaranteed thing at our house. My wife very cleverly started calling it "rest time," so our oldest could play by herself in her room while the youngest slept, also giving Katie some time to relax before the afternoon craziness that would inevitably come. I have tried to keep rest time going during my tenure as the stay at home parent, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. Ellie started getting into an Amazon show called Creative Galaxy , which is a fun little cartoon that encourages kids to approach problems through creativity. At the end, it shows live action kids doing art projects, which always inspires Ellie to do the same. Suddenly, rest time has become "art project time," which involves a constant interruption for paper, scissors, crayons, glue, etc. I think of myself as a pretty creative guy, so I hate to stifle her own endeavors, but it is cutting into my own time, which is when I usually write or do house projects. So this ...