This is our youngest child. Yes, he’s a human. But sometimes he morphs into a cow. He has been known to be in the pasture on his hands and knees with the cows, acting like he is one of them. He knows the ear tag number along with every marking of every cow we have. He knows the calves too. He is obsessed with cows. I happened to catch him the other day (the picture you see above) dressed in all black and an ear tag in (a piece of paper cut out in the shape of an ear tag with a number on it taped to his ear) sneaking up on the cows. He does stuff like this a lot. I honestly think when he does this he truly has an experience where he feels like he turns into a cow for a few minutes. He also will go get the rubber surgical gloves we have in the house and fill them with water and find a way to attach it around his waist and he calls it his “gutters”. You can just use your imagination for that one.
When we have to go back to a normal lifestyle, I just can’t imagine the day I have to wear pants that might be somewhat tight around my waist and that have belt loops. I haven’t had something like that on in a long time. I have become accustomed to my sweat pants or shorts and crocs. While I have had to wear shoes when I go to the school for awhile each day, I spend pretty much every minute I have at home with my crocs on. I’m not sure who invented crocs, but I’d like to shake their hand. They are the ultimate shoe for so many occasions. They have to be one of the most versatile shoes there is. They can be for working, fishing, mowing, lounging (I wear them as house shoes), or even going out in public for certain occasions. Some can’t get past the looks. I’ve had some say they are ugly. Well, comfort before beauty is what I go for at this point.
We have gone fishing several times over the last few weeks as well. As much as I love teaching my kids things that will hopefully last them a lifetime, this can be exhausting and sometimes astonishing all at the same time. I am amazed at the amount of things that kids can find to hook their lure on. Sometimes it is pretty obvious what is in the water. There will be a log 2 feet in diameter right in front of them and they will see how close they can cast their lure to it and inevitably they get hung up. But, what about the ones that you can’t see from the shore? Those are the ones that amaze me. They say, “Dad, I caught one” as they tug and pull with all their might like they just caught baby Jaws, only to find out that it is just a log or something that is under the water and can’t be see from where we are. But I am impressed with the structural integrity of the rod and the line when this happens. Because, (and I will jinx it now I’m sure) to this point, those things have held together and not broke. We tend to give it about 3 cast each time before we either want to change lures or change locations because nothing is biting. But in the event that our lure is actually in the water long enough and someone does get a bite, the other two run and stand right beside them as if the fish is just sitting still waiting to find something else to bite. Then, you guessed it, their lines get tangled up with each other. Now we have a whole new mess on our hands. Not to mention an argument between them about who’s fault it was. Oh, the adventures of fishing with youngsters. When I think back to when my grandpa and dad would take me, I think I did the same thing though. I chuckle to think about how my grandpa and dad must have felt when I did these same things.
I’m not even sure what day it is half the time right now. I am a person that is obsessed with time. I am very time conscious. I always know what time it is and am very rarely late. But lately, I couldn’t tell you whether it was 10:00 AM or 3:00 PM. a lot of days. My sense of time has been messed up. I’ve had to look at my watch or phone some days to see what day it even was. I do know when it gets to be about 9:30 in the evening though. The way I know it is about that time is that we are usually watching a movie and that is also about the time I start to get sleepy in my chair. Some nights I make it though the movie and some nights I wake up when it is over. A few nights I have woke up about 2:30 AM and I’m the only one not in bed. I’m not sure when they went to bed, but apparently they made it through more of the movie than I did.
I’m sure I’m not the only one that has experienced this. My children are eating about 5 times the amount of food they did a month ago, or so it seems. We will eat breakfast at 9:00 and by 9:45 they are rummaging through the pantry looking for something to eat. I’m like, “we just ate 45 minutes ago.” They will say, “I know but I’m hungry again.” So either they aren’t taking full advantage at meal time of everything that we have cooked, or they are just eating out of boredom. I like to eat too. I would even say I’m pretty passionate about food. I’ve got a good friend that says he likes to watch me eat because of the smile I have on face when I do. He said it makes him happy just to watch it ( I know that sounds weird, but I don’t think he meant it in a weird way. I think he was more making fun of me). But, even in my prime, I didn’t get hungry that often I don’t think. We have saved money on a lot of things here lately. I saw a meme on Facebook the other day that said, “Is anyone else’s car getting about 3 weeks to the gallon right now?” That is about right for a lot of us. But while we have saved on things like that, we have made up for in the grocery bill. It is amazing how much food we can go through when we are home all the time. The crazy thing is we would only have to buy two things to really please our kids during this time. Pancakes and cereal. I’m convinced that we could feed them only those two things and be just fine. I just wish we would have bought some stock in Frosted Flakes, Rice Crispies, and Griffins syrup. We have kept those things in business lately. A side note to Rice Crispies. If you put sugar on top of them and the little mini marshmallows on top of that and mix it all up, it makes for a wonderful concoction. Kristin and I did that as kids. We introduced that to our children a few weeks ago. Maybe we should have bought stock in the marshmallows too. We had to kinda limit the amount they could put in each bowl. I just wonder though if other families with children from about 4 years old to 18 are experiencing the same thing. Surely so!
We have also watched hours of Family Feud. Our kids love this show, as do Kristin and I. But I have to say that there are times when it could just be called Feud and leave the Family part off. I have fielded about as many questions about awkward adult topics from that show as I did from that awful movie we started a couple of weeks ago that I referred to last week in my blog. I’m amazed at some of the things they talk about on there. It’s on the Gameshow Network. That sounds harmless, right. But, it isn’t always so harmless. Sadly, it’s about as clean as anything else you can find though. So we just take those questions one at a time and sometimes think of a way around it until we can think of a better answer later. Sometimes that’s also a great time for a bathroom break and hopefully they will ask their mom!
While all of this is comical and it also makes me a little crazy at times, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Family time is a special time. Our oldest son is 7 years away from leaving home. Some of you with 12 year olds just got a little teary eyed I’m sure. Some may have just got excited too, I don’t know. But, my wife and I have talked about how it goes by so fast. As crazy as they make me, some day I will miss this. Some day I will wish he would catch his lure on the massive tree stump 8 feet in the water in front of him. Some day I will wish he would be mean to his brother again or that his sister would come tattle on him. There will come a time when I wish my youngest will be on his hands and knees with his “gutters” hanging down sneaking up on the cows. There will come a time when I will wish my daughter wanted to play dolls with me or paint my toenails again. That’s right, I said MY toenails again. When your daughter asks you to do that, you say yes. That’s just part of being a dad. I don’t like holding hands in public. My kids know that and so they do it to me just to aggravate me. No matter how hard I work to pull away, they keep ahold of my hand and just giggle. Some day I will wish they would hold Dad’s hand. I want to cherish these times as much as I can. I don’t want time to stand still, because I want them to be able to experience all the great things that happen as the grow up. But, as crazy as they make me, I will miss that they are not here to make me crazy because they have gotten old enough to leave home. But then I remember, I will always have Kristin here to make me just as crazy as they do!!! Everyone please continue to pray for our doctors and nurses and everyone effected by COVID-19, as well as our great country and its leaders!!! God Bless!!!