I told Leah that she could have two, count ‘em, two pieces of candy if she was good for her bath. She asked if they could be green candies, and I agreed.

Story time, shortly after candy land. Did I mention I won this time? It was a first.

Kelly took Leah to the grocery store to get us dinner and I jumped at the oppertunity. It was time to give that boy a haircut. I knew the risk I was taking, but I wasn’t going to chance people starting to think his pretty curls meant he was a girl. So I busted out the clippers.

Before

After

Handsome and cute. Dad wins!

When Kelly got home she said he looked like his dad. Then started crying.

The good news is I am unharmed, however she knows where I sleep. I may wake up bald.

If you follow me on twitter (and if you read this I would guess you do) you probably have notice that Leah has a twitter account. Well, if you see a post there in quotes it is something she actually said. While twitter does a great job as for displaying one liners it is awkward to post the more nuanced converstaions with her there. And I personally think some of those are the most in need of keeping around.

For example, here is what was said a mere 2 min ago:

Chris (to the cat): Yeah, she is going commando. Leah: MANDO!

OK, maybe not the best example, but I still think it is really funny. Of course that could be a lack of sleep making me all punchy.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

I wrote this, although I don’t remember writing it. I do remember going there — and I am clearly the “me” in this post.

There was a time when we did not know how large groupes of people would react to our students in public. So we took a group to Kinds dominion to preform a few expermints. We found that the main reaction to doing the splits between the hand rails — while waiting in line for the Hurler — is only a few awkward stares. It turns out that most people don’t even notice that we are exchangin a flurry of mock attacks while wondering between rides. Hardly anyone noticed that we were bowing to the camera on that first big drop.

Overall our trip to Kings Dominion was a success, While I am not sure that the Public in general is ready for wushu students, they did not reject us out right. However Keye did seem to baffel them with his softball-basket-toss skills.

Good times.

Guest post by Kelly

This week was a hard week. About this time last Sunday my brother informed me that while I was at church my parents had called to say that my Grandma Lawson had passed away. We’d been expecting it for a week so it wasn’t a shock, but it was still quite sad. She was my last grandparent. My mom had to play family peacemaker on top of grieving for her mother. Grandma never met Laurence. I certainly didn’t call or write often enough. And I had to explain death to Leah somehow since she had just seen my Grandma the month before and talked about her regularly.

The viewing was Tuesday night and I saw lots of family I hadn’t seen in a while. Services were first thing Wednesday morning and they were nicely done. And the kids brought some joy to an otherwise sad occasion.

None of this was the hard part of the week. Well, maybe telling Leah about death was hard.

The hard part of the week was the constant trials and tribulations thrown in our path from a logistical point of view. Here are just a few of the challenges we faced:

• Chris was in SFO, leaving me to single parent it while I planned and packed – I did tell him to go ahead and go, but still, it’s harder when he’s not around
• The garage at DCA is under construction and impossible to navigate
• The check-in machines for American don’t deal well with split parties
• Renting two cars from someone who didn’t realize we wanted two separate cars
• Reconciling TomTom’s instructions and my dad’s pre-planned routes
• Finding places to eat that are both kid friendly and dad friendly
• Sharing a hotel room with two kids who have different nap schedules
• The bazillion outlets and drawers in said hotel room that Lars was magnetically drawn to
• The tornados
• The 3:00 a.m. fire alarm – which the fire department didn’t show up to turn off until 3:30
• Locking myself out of the room during the fire alarm while Lars was still inside and I didn’t yet know it was a false alarm
• And of course the “moving the Russian Army” sized task of flying with two small kids half way across the country

And there was more to be sure, but I’m already placing a mental block on a lot of this past week. My bother and parents suffered through all of this with us Sextons and each had their own things to add to the list. None of us, except my mom, handled every situation with grace, but we were all still speaking to each other when we got home, and I think we’ll even be willing to hang out together again sometime soon.

So, hopefully this next week will be kinder to us all. We could sure use the break.

God bless you Grandma, we miss you lots, and you were worth every little bit of trouble that we went through!

Added another to my collection of Au Batido Pictures:

Dr. Harper was kind enough to not only drive me up there, but also take the photo for me. Aside from being out of Au Batido practice I think it came out pretty well.

Kelly and I have decided we are going to try our best to follow a summer of fun, and May was the start of it.

I have pictures to prove it.

Leah likes fountainses.

Fountain: 1. Laurence: 0.

Outside is fun for babies!

Playing Peek-a-boo!

This is how Thor relaxes.

Walking with dad in the sculpture garden.

The fountain in the sculpture garden.

There are more in the photo album .

It helps that it was a long weekend, but it also had quality content.

Saturday we went to Sweet Life Cafe and had an (almost) private show, met up with Beej to help on the kitchen (although we mostly just played at the park).

We wrapped up the day with Sean and Nina. We let them kids stay up a little later than normal so they could hang out. Discussion seemed to be centered around child development strategy and zombie board games.

Sunday we met one of Kelly’s friends and her family for Lunch at P.F. Chang’s over at Fairfax Square. Being a very hot and sunny day we decided to head over to the fountains. Luckily Kelly had preplanned and packed swimsuits for the kids. The boys were not so sure about this, but Leah was. She ran around with kids twice her size and had a blast. The impressive thing was the black eye she got. It was not impressive that she got a black eye, but rather she took the elbow to the face and didn’t miss a beat. That is a girl serious about her fun. Laurence on the other hand decided he had quite enough once he caught a fountain to the face.

For dinner we headed out to National Harbor and met with the Tres Tulli for a tasty dinner at Rosa Mexacana. Which we followed up with Neal and Leah climbing on “The Awakening” and Gelato. The highlight of the evening had to be when Neal’s dinner fought back and won. Now that’s spicy!

Today was a lazy day at home. I got up with Lars around 7:30, played for a bit and then he and I went down for morning naps around 9. Slept until noon. It was legendary.

The rest of the day was just spent wrangling kids, making an experimental dinner, watching a movie with the wife during a simulnap.

Henry has a serious problem. No, not the stink butt. Well, related to the sink butt. He has taken to ‘presenting.’ I will be sitting very nicely on the floor reading books with my little girl and this cat will come settle down inches away (he is determined to get as close as felinely possible to my face), and raise his tail straight into the air — haunches slightly elevated. If you brush him even slightly the hind quarters shoot into the air.

This is gross.

Especially if he is currently in full stink-butt mode. So, I have been looking for a way to fix this. I have tried simply turning him around, which seemed to be working ok, but he will often turn back around. And always starts by facing butt-wards.

I have tried scolding the cat while I turn him around, no workie. So I need to explore possible strategies for preventing this behavior. Here is what I have come up with:

• Keep a ball point pen around to insert into the nearest orafice when he presents. I cannot imagine the behavior will persist if there is any probing done on a regualr basis. I have ruled this option out, as I would never be able to look Henry in the eye again.

OK, so that is the only option I have come up with so far. If anyone has an suggestions please let me know.