Tonight, however, the boy wanted to get out immediately after his older sister to play with his Thomas train set some more, so I was left with just the 1-year-old.  Eager to memorialize the last moments of my time as the parent of a baby, I recorded this conversation:

Her:  Daddy!
Me:  BL (for “Baby Lola”)!

What’s odd (for me) is how much I actually enjoy spending time with B.L.  With the other two, I tolerated their pre-walking and pre-talking months so that we could get to what I figured would be the better times:  when the children could actually interact with me.  But ever since we went to Houston last year, and I found myself spending entire days alone with Lola, I’ve enjoyed my time with this little creature of few words.

The fact that she starts each morning with cries for “DADDY!!!” and closes each evening’s bath time with the same call (but at a lower volume) only pushes me further into that realm of inability to say “no” to the only member of the family who never argues with me and is always excited to see me enter the room (a description once reserved for Winnie the dog, though now she’s shifted her affections toward our eldest).  And as a result, while I see myself shoving Emilie toward vet school, Maddie toward law school or a CPA, and Owen toward mechanical engineering when their time to leave the nest arrives, I may have to feign invalidity when Lola reaches that age and coerce her into staying around a while. I’m sure she won’t mind.  Right?

Just look at this shit someone attached to our refrigerator.  Apparently, I like to wear purple and blue britches on top of each other, like Punky Brewster or a homeless person, and I hop around all day on my giant johnson.  Oh, and I’m pregnant.

My bride has pink hair, is also pregnant, and appears to be jumping about on a giant johnson as well.

And then there’s little Maddie.  She’s wearing purple for this grand johnson-hopping event, has a horseshoe hanging on her head, and is also pregnant.  In the background are crosses, because we apparently live in ancient Rome on Good Friday.

This is what we get for taking our 3-year-old to the church nursery.

And then there’s this kid:

He’s hanging out in the bath tub.  He’s chill.  All’s right with the world.

But then:

Found something there, didn’t we?  Oh yes, you did (to be contrasted with “oh no, you didn’t”)!

He continued doing whatever he’s doing with the blue plastic rod until way past the point at which the bathwater became cold.  Now that he’s asleep, I’m totally taking that blue plastic rod into the shower with me to see what all the agape expressions are about.