Pete_Petoniak's Blog

My wife Sarah left for the weekend to visit her father and I was in charge of the boys...my 3 year-old Jake and 22 month-old Henry.  Here are some "highlights" from the weekend.

Saturday morning Jake came into my bed at about 6 o'clock and I told him to go to sleep for a while so we didn't wake Henry.  He thought this would be a good time to just throw out some conversation-starters as I lay with my eyes shut. Jake: "Is that a train? I hear a train.  We go to that train place and eat chicken." (it's a place in Suamico that has a train track around the top) Pete: "Yes, Jake now go to sleep." (15 secs. later) Jake: "That's the heat.  I hear it in my room, it goes 'whoosh.' Can I have a snack?  I want cereal.  When we get up I want sausage and 'pampcakes'...I don't want to go to McDonald's.  Are you going to shave?  You're face is crunchy."  Pete: "Jake, go to sleep."  (10 secs. goes by) Jake: "I'm hungry...Where's mom? Is Curious George on?..."      We got up.

Most times you're overjoyed when your kids learn something new, except for the time they learn how to lock doors.  I found out Jake can lock doors when he locked himself and his brother in his room.  Luckily I can unlock the doors from the outside but I need either long fingernails or some sort of a tool to put in the slot.  Since I don't have long fingernails, a screwdriver was close at hand all weekend.

Sarah had to call my cell phone because she couldn't get through on the regular phone.  A quick check found the phone off the hook and Jake's stool next to the desk.  I'm thinking there's a connection.

On Saturday I got them all dressed in their snow suits, boots, sweatshirts, hats, mittens ( that never stay on, especially 22 month-olds) and scarves and took them out to see the snow as it was falling.  They were very excited.  The entire process took about 20 minutes to get them both dressed (of course 5 minutes of that is just getting them over to me so I can start the process) and we ventured out out to the garage.  I said, "okay guys,  I'm going to open the garage and we'll go out in the snow."  The garage door opens, their eyes grow wider and then...the wind blows.  Pete: "Come on Jake and Henry, here's your shovels, let's shovel the snow."  No movement from the two...then Jake speaks..."It's windy."  Pete: "Yes Jake, I know it's windy, now come out here and we'll play."  Finally they put one heavily-clothed foot out the door and say, "It's too windy to go outside."  Ten minutes later we were back in the warmth of our house.  I did gather up enough snow to make my world-famous "snow ice-cream" though.  It consists of snow, vanilla, sugar and milk.  We were out of vanilla but almond extract worked fine.  I think the boys would have liked any flavor, as long as there was that sugar in it.  We shared a big bowl.  A real dad-sons moment sitting at the table eating that snow ice cream (with all that sugar) at about 5:30 pm, 2 hours before their bedtime.  Dad's not too smart at times.  After that a series of events followed within a half hour that made me re-think ever having snow ice cream that late again...

Those events were...well I'll stop for now and tell you about that tomorrow.  

Have a great day!