Cedar Point, 2013

Before I get started with our Cedar Point photos, I have to share this funny, albeit gross, story from a couple of days ago. Our readers with kids know that the volume of poop that ends up in the potty after young kids are through can be truly magnificent. Jeff Foxworthy does a funny routine about looking in the toilet after his daughter finished and saying, "That is not humanly possible! Hey, Honey, come see this!"

Lydia had one of those over the weekend. She usually takes a good 40 minutes to poop, and she didn't disappoint. Jenn had helped Henry with his most recent poop, so it fell to me to address this one. I took one look and said, "Jenn, this is colossal." She "ho, hummed," thinking I was exaggerating, and then Henry came over, looked in the potty, and said, "Two poops!"
"Wellllll, it looks like two poops," I said…

Now, on to more pleasant things. Lincoln spent Saturday afternoon through Tuesday evening with Grandma Laura, Grandpa Dave, Auntie Haley and Chris in Columbus. They visited the zoo & COSI, played golf in the back yard, went on long bike rides, visited Auntie Haley at work with a dinner at Outback and spent a few minutes where Chris works in take-out, and had a general, all-around good time. The fun culminated with a trip to Cedar Point on Wednesday where Lincoln was a hardy partier.
Jenn and I were more than appreciative of the time we had to ride a few rides while Auntie Haley & Chris kept up with Lincoln in Camp Snoopy over lunch. Grandma Laura took him on a bunch of rides, too, and Grandpa Dave made a return trip to the Dodgems with Lincoln. Lincoln's job, apparently, was to point out the targets, and Grandpa Dave would line 'em up and bump 'em.

Dry Diaper

I'm sorry I don't have photos today. This is just a historian's entry.

Lincoln has been doing great with potty training. With only slight accidents here and there, he really wants to get this right. He's enjoying his big boy underpants and receiving his "special treat" every time he uses the potty.
This morning he woke up with a dry diaper, and as soon as I took it off of him, he ran to the potty and filled it up. Awesome.

The other funny thing from this morning is that he's very proud of the three words he's learned today:

• dismantle (as in "I dismantled my Duplo tower)
• cylinder (as in "stack the cylinders, not the cubes")
• strudel (as in "pass the walnut strudel")

Lincoln, Potty Training & World Cup

We've been working on preparing Lydia's room. Jenn ordered a nice, comfortable chair that goes with her new bedding, and she found some great stickers to apply to the wall that give the room a very neat, very cute feeling.

Potty training is actually going very, very well. Beginning on Wednesday he has been going pants-less in the house, and he's been doing a very good job of running to the potty now when he needs to go. He hasn't had a Number 2 accident on the floor, and he's only having a couple of Number 1 accidents, and mostly because it catches him by surprise at times. And when this does occur, he stops himself very quickly and runs to the potty. He's loving the M&Ms!

Today Jenn put him in his big-boy underpants, and that worked well for a while. He had a small accident in them, but what can we expect from the first day in big-boy underpants?! We're very proud of his progress.

Lincoln's also loving the warmer weather and the fact that I'm watering some areas of the lawn. He's made a game of chasing the hose around, and that prompted me to hook up his water toy:Gretel's training is clicking along very well. I think she's officially house trained, which means that she did this faster than Bridget. She's got a long way to go to get to Bridget's standard overall, but she's on her way.
On a completely separate note, Jenn was making some oven fries this evening for dinner (which were fantastic, BTW) and was commenting that the recipe called for them to be in the oven for a total of 15 minutes, which was far shorter than the amount of time that they actually needed to be in the oven. She then went on to say that "just once, I'd like for a recipe to have an accurate time." Have you had this problem? It seems fairly common, though I can't figure out why cooks and publishers continue to print clearly inaccurate information.

I couldn't let this post finish without commenting on the horrendous officiating during the World Cup matches today. The referee of the Germany/Serbia match lacked common sense to the fullest extent. And the referee of the U.S./Slovenia match should be relieved of all officiating duties for the rest of his life. He ought to be required to make a public statement detailing his call while standing in front of a high-def monitor to point out he foul that he saw but that the rest of the world did not see. Sports fans have long used the phrase, "We were robbed!" But today the United States soccer team was literally robbed of a goal. They should not have put themselves in the position to need that third goal, but neither should a referee make such an egregious error on the world's biggest stage. The man is simply unfit to perform in international soccer competition.The other topic about the World Cup that amuses me is the term "Democratic People's Republic of North Korea." There is nothing Democratic nor Republican within the borders of North Korea. Their crack-pot dictator has repeatedly shown that he is not capable of particpating in modern society, and this is just in the sports arena... I haven't even mentioned his attack on a South Korean ship or the starving of his own people or the execution by firing squad of a man whose crime was making international phone calls. Finally, according to Voice of the Martyrs, "North Korea is the worst perpetrator of persecution against Christians in the world." Knowing what goes on in North Korea at first makes me angry, and then I'm prompted to pray for those who are being persecuted, and for those doing the persecution.

Family Photos

The Hopwoods were in town last week, and we took some time to take some family photos:
For some more photos and a video of Lincoln with the Hopwoods, visit Auntie Em's blog.

Potty training started today at the Gates Home. Lincoln is running around with only a shirt on and it's pretty funny. He's told us a number of times that he has to go, which is pretty good for Day One, I think. He gets an M&M every time he goes in the potty.

I'm in the planning process for our ABF's First Annual Men's Retreat. I've lined up a couple of guys to do the teaching, I'm planning some great meals, and I think it'll be a really neat weekend for the guys. We're having it at Dad's new place down on Leesville Lake. It's a great size for the group we'll have, it's comfortable, it's in the middle of nowhere, and the only fee is that we have to restock the toilet paper... so it's perfect! I'm a rookie men's retreat planner, but I've found some good resources, and I'm praying a ton! I'll let you know how it unfolds. (BTW, if that photo looks familiar, see here.)

Edge Games, Potty & Prayer

Things continue to chug along at the Gates Home. I've been busy with work, both with the veterinary side and with taking on a few more small roles on the business side. The latest is developing material for a website for the clinic.

Lincoln is growing up, one day at a time. On Thursday, Jenn took Lincoln to get a new potty. He loves it! He doesn't use it for it's intended function yet, but he loves to sit on it, sans diaper, for long periods of time. When he was showing it to me on Thursday evening after work, he sat there for a moment, and then looked up at me and said, "Close." So I nodded, not knowing exactly what he meant. Then he stood up, walked over to the door and shut the door in my face. Hmm. So I promptly grabbed his How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms? board book, opened the door, handed it to him, and then shut the door behind me. He stayed in there for another five minutes or so. Then I went back in the bathroom to find him playing with some of his bathroom things in the drawers, still sans diaper. I picked him up to take him to his changing table to get him ready for bed, and as soon as he realized I was taking him out of the bathroom he started crying and saying, "Poop. Poop. Poop." I said, "There's no poop in the potty, and you were playing anyway." He settled down after a minute or so. In the 36 hours since then, the potty novelty has yet to wear off. We're not going to tackle actual potty training for a while, but we want him to like the potty, and that seems to have been accomplished.

The Edge Games started last night. You may recall my posts about taking photos at last year's Edge Games (post 1, post 2). This year, as an Edge Small Group leader, I'm a team coach. My small group is part of Fiji. I should explain that there are eight teams: Cambodia, Togo, Uruguay, Fiji, Aruba, Bahamas, Djibouti and Iceland. These eight teams are made up of a couple of small groups and all the friends they can invite. There were around 500 kids there for the first night of the Edge Games, and there were two sets of games, relays (involving a dizzy-bat race and Spam) and a fun game in the gym where each team was assigned a corner, and then had to make it across the gym to the opposite corner either crab-walking, crawling, rolling... whatever the game leader decided to call out. It was utter chaos in the middle of the gym when the teams collided! Then there was a "capture the bacon" style game where the kids run to the center and send yoga-balls and inner-tubes back to their corners. The game always ends with about 15 middle schoolers attached to an inner-tube trying to get it back to one of their corners. Again, it was chaos.

Jenn took Lincoln to Toddler Open Gym last night. When I arrived home from Edge Games and asked her how Lincoln enjoyed it, she said, "Well, all the other kids had fun!" Apparently he was a bit "clingy" for the first 40 minutes.

Another of the neat things that Lincoln has been into recently is praying before our meals. We've always prayed before bed time and he's learned to fold his hands and bow his head. Sometimes he even says, "Amen," at the end. But lately he's been very interested in praying at lunch and dinner time... even mid-meal. Yesterday, he and I prayed five times before I finished my ramen... and he wasn't even eating. He had been play with his tool box, then he walked over to the table and said, "Pray." So I thanked God for Lincoln, my meal, the blessings God gives us and the forgiveness that is ours. Lincoln stood beside my chair with his head bowed and hands folded. When I was done, he went back to his tool box. He came back four more times.