Goose at the Eiffel Tower

Earlier this month, we took our kids to the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton to see an artist whose works have been formed by thousands of toothpicks. Now, that is my kind of art! I will never understand post-modern art and why it goes for millions of dollars. Most artwork of that type looks like it required few skills and little time to "create." But the Eiffel Tower from toothpicks, or the HMS Titanic, or Fenway Park? Clearly, those creations took oodles of time, patience, planning, and skill to bring to life. 

Well done, artist Stan Munro!

And sorry that our baby, Grouse, nearly toppled into your massive rendering of the Empire State Building as he toddled and ran around the exhibit floor. Seriously. I saw the sculpture shake on its base. 

St. Basil's/the Catholic Center's 50th Anniversary

This is a post I've had stewing in my mind for weeks, but knew that I needed to set aside a good block of time to properly write. Back in mid-November, the Roman Catholic church I grew up attending celebrated its 50th anniversary. I have many fond memories of this little chapel, the people who have attended it during my lifetime, the priests who officiated Mass under its beautiful light brown wood roof, and of my Mom, whose devotion to her faith is strong. 

A month before St. Basil's/the Catholic Center's 50th anniversary Mass, the church I attend now (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) had its semi-annual conference. One of the speakers, Elder Russell M. Nelson, spoke about the world's need for righteous women, encouraging women who have "the courage and vision of our Mother Eve." When he said those words, my Mom and her upbringing of me and my sister immediately came to mind.

Years ago, I posted about St. Basil's/the Catholic Center. Nostalgia runs thick in my blood, as does a love of writing. Over the past year, my Mom's devotion to her faith and to her church community led her to help with a 50th anniversary quilt project, in which members of the St. Basil's community made 50 quilt squares. My Mom had led a similar project in 1990 to celebrate the church's 25th anniversary and Bridgewater State College's 150th anniversary (occurring in the same year). In 1990, many more college students and families attended St. Basil's than they do now, so for the 25th/150th anniversary commemoration, congregants stitched 150 squares. 

From late 2013 until the summer of 2015, my Mom and others met to plan the 50th anniversary Mass. It was a blessing to me that we still live in this area to have been able to attend it; I would have flown home from anywhere to be there with my Mom. Below is a photo of her on Sunday, November 15th, 2015 outside of St. Basil's/the Catholic Center before the Mass, officiated by several priests who have presided over the church during the last 5 decades, started at 4 p.m.

The excellent church musicians, led by Tim and Kerry Campbell. I love the music they select and play before, during, and after Mass. 

My Mom (in the gray sweater), with campus minister Marlene DeLeon, Father Bob Connors (priest at St. Basil's from 1986 until 1991), Evelyn DeLutis (my Kindergarten teacher), and Judy Armour, whose daughters were friends with my sister Elizabeth growing up. 

The 50th anniversary quilt, hanging in the large meeting room outside of the chapel. On this night, the room was so crowded that I couldn't get a photo of the 50th anniversary quilt on one wall and the 25th anniversary quilt on an adjacent wall. I'll try to get a side-by-side photo sometime over the next few weeks. 

The man in the lower-left corner of the photo above is Dr. Frank Hilferty, who was the key person in the establishment of a Catholic chapel at Bridgewater State College, where he had been a faculty member. In the early 1960s, he repeatedly petitioned the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston to build a chapel at the college; to show how vibrant the community was and could be, Dr. Hilferty led a fundraising drive that was instrumental in the Archdiocese signing off on the chapel's construction. 

Thankfully, Dr. Hilferty's health held up long enough for him to attend the 50th anniversary Mass; without his work, this chapel likely would not be standing. And only weeks after the 50th anniversary Mass, Dr. Hilferty passed on. What a blessing that he lived to see this wonderful occasion and to be celebrated for his efforts. 

My Mom and her grandkids in front of the 50th anniversary quilt. It was so great that we all could be there to celebrate this special occasion with her. During the Mass, the campus minister, Marlene, spoke for a few minutes from the pulpit. She asked the quilt committee (My Mom and the two women in a photo above) to walk to the front of the altar, in front of the whole congregation, to be recognized by everyone for their quilt work. It was a highlight of my life to see my Mom be honored in this way. She was extremely nervous and emotional leaving her seat, walking up the middle aisle to the altar, standing before everyone and hearing their applause, and then walking back to her seat. It's a moment I'll never forget!

  
St. Basil's/the Catholic Center at night after the 50th anniversary Mass. I love this chapel, its location in a quiet little neighborhood, its unassuming physical presence, its spacious lawns, its smells of wood and incense, and the memories I have of this special place. I love that my Mom lives her life with quiet devotion, working behind the scenes with humility, to create goodness for others. So much of who I am is because of who she is and how she raised me. I can't imagine living a life without faith. She set me on that path of a faithful life, and I'll always be grateful for her role as my mother and her efforts to raise me well.       

The Grouse is 2!

Today, Our Baby Grouse turns 2. He is glued to my side when I'm home. He is doted on by his sisters, and is playing more with his big brother, which is awesome to see for the sake of brotherhood. He is talking up a storm and has even started to have conversations with himself, babbling incoherently and then shaking his head to something he just said out loud. The corners of his crib are nightly crammed with five of his sisters' baby dolls. He hasn't once tried to climb out of his crib. 

Each morning, he shouts, in succession, "Baby! Buzzy! Binky! "Buzzy" is his way of pronouncing fuzzy, which is his gray-and-white ultra-soft blanket that the chief development officer at my office gave to me when Grouse was born. Aside from one night, we haven't put our two boys in the same bedroom to sleep at night. They'll probably have a grand time once they're in there together. 

Each night, Grouse pleads for paw-cor, his pronunciation of popcorn. He has also started getting in to watching shows with his siblings, and has his favorites, like Super Why and Mickey Mouse. But Grouse's favorite activity remains kicking, drop-kicking, or trying to throw or hurl any type of rubber or foam ball around our house.  

Happy 2nd birthday, baby boy! We love you very much!

The Grouse on Christmas Morning

Our Baby Grouse still is too young to grasp the meaning of Christmas and of opening gifts. Why we have a Christmas tree in our living room for a whole month remains a mystery to him. By next December, he'll be a firm believer in Jolly Old Saint Nick and be an excited for Christmas morning as his siblings. 

And yet, he was extremely excited once he saw his sisters and brother unwrapping presents by the tree that morning. Grouse was opening a re-wrapped baby doll giraffe, and he could not have been more happy, at least for a moment, to see this new gift. I love the looks on his little face!

Rarity

We don't often get good pictures when all four of our rug-rats are together. Rarer still, great shots of all four at the same time. So, I've got to post this photo from a month ago as a reminder that they're adorable, individually and as a team of siblings. They certainly do have moments when all four are friendly, cooperative, and loving toward each other! 

Grouse, almost 2.

Moose, 4-and-a-half (that "and a half" is crucial to him; he wants everyone to know that!).

Mouse, 7.

Goose, almost 8-and-a-half.

In our backyard on Sunday, December 6th, 2015.

A transformation through hard work

Here is my beautiful bride in late November 2015. Through hard work, self-improvement, and focus, she has lost about 40 pounds since late last spring. All of the baby weight? Gone, and then some. She hasn't been this healthy since around our wedding in 2005, and we have packed a lot of life into the decade since our wedding day. 

She is much more focused about what she eats, when she eats, and what triggers set off alarm bells in her mind. The stresses of life scream have too often screamed, for the both of us, "Go ahead! Eat that cookie that your kid left on the table. You earned it!" Becky has been actively doing something to counter those indulgent tendencies. I'm just thrilled for her that she has adopted a healthy-living regimen that works with her hectic daily life. Her results are remarkable. She's always been beautiful to me, inside and out. But there's an extra sense of beauty now, because she is making time to take care of herself. 

A struggle of time

Each parent, each individual, has struggles. One I'd like to share today involves the parent part of me. Pretty sure I've blogged about this before, but here it is in more detail: I have consistently had difficulty carving time out with just one of our kids. It sometimes pains me. It sometimes worries me. It causes a brief wave of nostalgia for simpler times, when our family was smaller in size and fewer in number, so that I could spend more time with each of the people in our tribe. 

The most 1:1 time I've spent recently was during my 2-week Christmas break, when I got a lot of time with Moose on the days when his sisters were in school and he didn't have pre-school; a lot of time with Grouse when his 3 siblings were in school; some time with either Mouse or Goose. I am sure that some readers (if we have any!) might have scarfed out their drink as they read about my two weeks off. Yes, it was awesome. Yes, it was low-key and simple. That's how we roll, a function of both our personalities and our current family dynamic (I feel less inclined to leave the house knowing that getting each kid ready and out the door will require a minimum of 5 minutes of me or Becky, or the both of us, repeatedly asking said child to get dressed, go potty, pick up their toys, etc.).

I know I have it good in terms of work-life balance/integration. Yet even with that generous time-off (in addition to oodles of other time off throughout the year), the struggle of 1:1 time is real. Maybe, in an odd way, it was even enhanced by the window of time I had to focus only on our family. I likely internally thought, "I've got 10 work days off! I can forgo the 1:1 time to tomorrow, or this weekend, or certainly by early next week."

Another function of this time claustrophobia is our house. Our basement is unfinished (like a lot of homes out East), old, and spooky. Our attic is unheated (as of now; still working on fixing that at some point; have had that on our to-do list for a decade!). All 3 bedrooms are spoken-for, and our living room and dining room are boxed-in by couches, a piano, a dining room table, bookshelves, etc., making small spaces feel even more so. Side note: I know, by the material standards of the world, that we have it far better than the vast majority of people on the planet. I am very grateful for our home and its trappings. 

Simply put, there is no place for me and one of our kids to sneak off to for 1:1 time. I long for a finished basement, a big family room, an extra bedroom...some extra room for us to grow and expand (no, not by adding another child to the mix!) as the years go on. A little space where I can whisper to Moose or Mouse or whomever, "Hey, no one's looking! Let's run off to the attic/basement/spare bedroom and play/read/draw/color!"

So, the child that I feel most strongly a yearning for 1:1 time is, right now, Our Mighty Moose. He craves social time and play dates with friends. We have recently bonded over Legos and Star Wars play sets, stories, and shows. But most of our time together has occurred against a backdrop of busy-ness in the rest of our home. What I am now looking for is a full day or several days off, just me and him, where we can do things together, outside of the home. 

I think I feel this need for 1:1 time with Moose acutely because, in a few months, he will start Kindergarten. Have I played on the floor or in the sandbox or chased him around the house (inside or out) enough? Should I put the brakes on the shows on my 'puter (as he calls my computer) and instead do more reading, Legos, drawing, free-play together? 

So, he and I will go to Legoland this winter. We will watch Star Wars Rebels at my office on a Saturday, like we've discussed a few times after Christmas, and we'll eat all the popcorn we want. I will scour the construction sites near my office and take him to see real diggers, dump trucks, and pavers in action; we've done this a bunch of times before, but for him it never gets old. He and I will break out the Lakeshore Learning's Are You Ready for Kindergarten game box that Santa brought him for Christmas. And we'll mix it up by me asking Moose for his own Daddy-Digger Date ideas (which is the name we came up with for when I have time with him, to counter his sisters' Daddy-Daughter Dates.).

I am trying to suppress the little devil on my shoulder who (jokingly) whispers that it's too late for me and Moose to have a ton of fun in these youngest years. I have a self-professed tendency to doubt my ability as a father and husband, to look back instead of looking forward, to give in to melancholy over things not done together, to doubt how I chose to spend my time when I could have spent it more focused on him or his siblings or Becky, or, dare I allow it, myself? 

This self-doubt comes from a deliciously toxic concoction: one part Catholic guilt, one part Mormon guilt. Shake vigorously until your patience with yourself is gone,  your sense of worth as a father has been rattled around the insides of the cocktail shaker, and there is a fizzy head of nostalgia and melancholy floating to the top, ready for you to imbibe again. 

Now that I've got these neuroses on the blog, I am putting down that figurative drink and making concrete plans for 1:1 time. 

Baby Grouse and his obsession with soccer balls

Our littlest dude loves sports balls. Go sports ball! Isn't that some Internet meme? I couldn't find it quickly online, but remember two Boston radio talk show hosts repeatedly airing a soundbite of a totally clueless female fan cheering "Go sports ball!" at a baseball game. 

Anyhow, our youngest Warrior can't get enough of sports balls, especially good-sized ones like a soccer or basketball one that he can drop-kick around our house. Our next home will have a more livable basement and a playroom for such purposes; our current, 100+-year-old abode can't accommodate this obsession (or his older siblings' growing collection of stuffed animals, Legos, etc.), not to mention the wear-and-tear that our four animals cause. 

These are 2 of Goose's 4 soccer balls from her first season in our town's instructional league. I kept all 4 in the trunk of my car all season long; on sunny weeknights or on the weekends, Grouse would excitedly come outside, toddle to my car, point to the trunk, and shout "baw!" until I relented, opened the trunk, and unveiled the soccer ball bag of goodies. He would never settle for just one; Grouse always wanted all 4, which we would kick around the yard.

Now that it's wintertime, we've taken our act indoors. And because I never got a definitive answer on whether I was supposed to return these soccer balls at the end of the season, I have squirreled 2 of the 4 away from Grouse. Still, he insists on bringing at least 1 of the balls to his crib with him at night...

...joining his 2 favorite blankets, 1 board book, and all 4 of his sisters' baby dolls. At least someone is keeping those baby dolls company! They must feel abandoned by our girls, who loved them fiercely for years but have moved on to other interests!   

David Bowie

David Bowie passed away last Sunday. Many others have written extensively and emotionally about what his life, music, his varied artistic pursuits, and passing have meant and will mean. This one is a favorite of mine. 

While I wasn't the world's biggest Bowie fanatic, and my interest in his artistic endeavors has been limited to his music and his on-stage personae, outfits, and his unabashed, labels be damned shifting of who he was, this quote speaks to me: "If you're ever sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie." 
   



As most of us often do after someone passes, we appreciate that person's contributions more. Beyond music, Bowie was a writer, playwright, painter, art collector, actor, fashion designer, and record producer, and even dipped his toes into finance through "Bowie Bonds." 

Is there a form of art that Bowie didn't undertake and didn't influence? 

He was a renaissance man for our times, yet seemed determined to never be in our times--developing stage personae such as Ziggy Stardust, who highlighted both sci-fi, futuristic peril and sexual ambiguity, and the Thin White Duke, who personified plastic soul, elegance, and suave but who, in reality, led Bowie to near-fatal addictions. 

The older I get, the more I see the world less in dark and light; instead I see it in, and approach it as, shades of gray; Bowie's artistic and personality styles--the wide range of song and album arrangements born from a bevy of different forms of music, his real-life professed bisexuality, his craft not silo'd only music but other forms of art--speak to this shades of gray worldview, which was less acceptable in Bowie's prime as Ziggy or the Duke or Aladdin Sane than it is now. 

A frequent personality and attire shape-shifter for the first decade-plus of his career, Bowie ditched the personalities by the early '80s. He never stayed put in one musical genre for long, while often drawing back on these various styles to create new sounds and mergings--hard rock, glam rock, alt rock, commercial pop, drum-and-bass, jazz, soul, 

Here are my favorite songs from an incredibly innovative, ever-changing, eclectic, and enchanting career, with Life on Mars? being my favorite Bowie song. What is quite remarkable to me is that, in addition to his other artistic endeavors and personal life pursuits, Bowie released songs in the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, '00s, and the '10s, most often as a solo artist. Maybe only Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones can match this accomplishment of artistic longevity and output, six decades' worth of material (though the '60s being roped in here is obscenely generous, since his first offering came out in 1969, but technically it counts!). 

Oh! You Pretty Things (1971)
Station to Station (1976)
The Man Who Sold the World (1970)

Starman (1972). A jaunty glam rock song that added a lot of lyrical context to Bowie's first personae, Ziggy Stardust, this ditty is told from the perspective of one of planet earth's young people, previously devoid of hope, who find salvation in Ziggy and his message, relayed to earth through an appointed starman (all of this later in the album going to Ziggy's head. Hey, it was the seventies!). 

Aladdin Sane (1973)

Let's Dance (1983). One of the most hauntingly romantic lines in music: "And if you say 'run,' I'll run with you. And if you say 'hide,' we'll hide. Because my love for you would break my heart in two..."

Rebel Rebel (1974). "You got your mother in a whirl. She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl." I can imagine this lyric, even today, raising eyebrows in America's puritanical society. How must it have been received 40+ years ago?  

I'm Afraid of Americans (1997)
Changes (1971)
"Heroes" (1977)

Sound and Vision (1977). "Don't you wonder someti-i-i-i-i-i-mes, 'bout sound and vision?"  This art rock classic is mesmerizing for its synthesizer work, its avante-garde air an indication of the art world Bowie sought to live in (West Berlin) in the late 1970s. 

Under Pressure (with Queen) (1981). An all-time classic, with two of Britain's (the world's) best male vocalists and stage showmen, Bowie and Freddie Mercury. There must be an amazing reunion concert going on somewhere right about now with these two.  

Ashes to Ashes (1980). I admit it: This video freaked me out when I was a kid. I didn't like the otherworldly, surreal, artistic at the time. I was much more comfortable with Duran Duran "location" videos or lame videos of the musician/band lip synching in a formulaic studio. But this video? Holy crap. What is going on? What's with the bulldozer? The followers, then the old woman? No idea. "My momma said, to get things done, you better not mess with Major Tom." Major Tom from the song Space Oddity was the personae Bowie first adopted, at the infancy of his stardom, so it's a shocking realization that only 11 years had passed between Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes; in Bowie's career, that might as well be 100 years.

Ziggy Stardust (1972). Just a powerful, sick, amazing rocker. Incredible guitar chords and siren vocals. A lyrical warning about taking fame to excess. 

Space Oddity (1969). The song that started it all. 

Modern Love (1983). I was 8 in 1983, when music videos were in their infancy. We didn't have cable TV, so no MTV; but a TV station in Boston that we got through our rabbit ears broadcast a half-hour of music videos each weekday afternoon, and that's where I saw Modern Love, one of the first videos I ever saw. I loved this song from the first--the wailing saxophone, the different intonations and stresses each time he sings the chorus, the "modern love, walks beside me; modern love, walks on by; modern love, gets me to the church on time; church on time, terrifies me; church on time, makes me party; church on time, puts my trust in God and man; God and man, no confession; God and man, no religion; God and man, don't believe in Modern Love." But at the height of the Stardust era, Bowie said simply, quietly in an interview: "I love life, very much, indeed."

Somehow, this pure commercial pop song stands, at least in my mind, right up there with earlier pots of Bowie gold that weren't as commercially appealing or appreciated. Yes, it's an '80s song, but it's an '80s song with an indelible Bowie spin.  

Young Americans (1975)

Golden Years (1976). "Run for the shadows, run for the shadows, run for the shadows in these golden years." It mixes soul, funk, art house, and rock in a tightly-packed few minutes. One of those rare songs that I kind of wish never actually ends.   

Life on Mars? (1971). Angelic, melancholy, angry, soaring, sad, surreal, all in one song and one minimalist video. This is a true piece of art: the piano, the vocals, the lyrics, the mood, the imagery, Bowie's androgynous look in the video, it's all beautiful and attractive, despite (or because of) Bowie's messed-up teeth, gaunt appearance, heterochromia eyes (a real-life fight in his teens brought this one; not a stage prop). 

Did Annie Lennox borrow Bowie's look (bright orange hair, heavy make-up at least) for her early Eurythmics look? Later, Bowie had to cast Ziggy Stardust aside, because, to keep it simple, he began being unable to determine who/what was Bowie and who/what was Ziggy. But what a combination, for so short a time.    

 Bowie as seen in the "Life on Mars?" video

We will never see someone like Bowie again, and the many imitators of varying degrees that we see today are all pretenders to his throne. That is a bittersweet thought: one and done, but what a time, what music, what a person he was for this one time. 

Soar, girl!

Winter 2015-2016. On the town common, taking in the Christmas decorations as we do each Christmastime. It's comforting to have traditions and settings that we can revisit. No holiday has more in the offing for those traits than Christmas.  

Our Little Mouse soaring into the cold, blue-grey winter sky and about to alight again on the frost-hardened ground. Her peels of laughter mixed with her sister's, brothers', and cousin's and competed for our ears with the cars circling the common. A moment frozen in time and a joy to see your children be so happy and care-free. 

The boys go to pre-school

This week, we bid adieu to a great 2-week Christmas break and returned to our weekday life of school (for our girls), work (for me), YMCA (for Becky), play dates (for Moose), and more consistent naps (for Baby Grouse), among other activities. While we loved the time off and the unhurried pace of the Christmas break, and the chance to have longer family-time and individual time with our kids, there is something nice about routines for all involved.

On one of Moose's pre-school days this week, his little brother Grouse insisted on wearing both his yellow jacket black-and-yellow cape and his new (to him) backpack to the pre- school drop-off. A bunch of the older kids laughed in a friendly way when they saw Grouse toddle up to the school door with his brother next to him. 

Then, the duo posed for photos, and Grouse refused to look at Becky when she snapped the pictures. Refused out of a spirit of being funny, mind you. But he refused nonetheless. And I think the picture is all the cuter because of his funny stance. I especially like the last photo above, where Grouse is neither looking at the camera nor at Becky. He's just staring intently at the wide-open glass door. 

As for Moose...He really likes pre-school. He has the same two teachers that his sisters had before him (in 2011-2012 and 2013-2014). Moose is a very social kid, like his oldest sister. He craves play dates and time with friends, sometimes to a degree that sends us into a tail spin when we (or his friends' schedules) can't accommodate setting up play dates. He much prefers to play with the three boys in his class and has often told us that the girls in his class are mean to the boys. For example, they've "stolen" the boys' basketballs during "recess!" 

We are excited for Moose to start Kindergarten in September for all of the regular reasons, but the chance for him to interact and play and socialize and imagine with loads of kids is high up on the list. It's been a good half-year so far!

1,234

Granted, my math skills are limited, but I quickly added up all of the blog posts by year from the sidebar. This post is the 1,234th post on TimBeck6! I probably did not stop to consider how often or for how many years I would blog when I began in January 2007, but this is a big passion of mine (minus last year's debacle).  

I've always liked these toddler building blocks. When I was young, they were my first intro to a world of building things, which exponentially expanded once I was old enough to use Lego building blocks. Plus, we have four kids, so each block could represent one of our little ones.

The Grouse, almost Two!

Our Baby Grouse has almost outgrown the proper usage of the adjective "baby." In about three weeks, he'll turn two years old. But then I remember my maternal Grandma, who often jokingly and lovingly referred to her youngest son, my uncle, as her baby well into his adult years, so I guess by order of birth, Grouse will be stuck with this moniker for the rest of his life. He'll always, in one way, be our baby.

But in other ways, he's getting bigger and braver and smarter. He tries out new words every day. Tonight at bedtime, Grouse tried to say the word broom. He just couldn't get the "r" sound in there, though, so it came out as boom. He makes very passing pronunciations of his siblings' names; to set the record straight, the first sibling name he has mastered is his brother's, probably because a) he sees him much more than his in-school-all-weekday siblings and b) it's the easiest to pronounce sibling given name among the three that he has to learn how to say. Grouse loves shouting Nana and Bumpa, which are our kids' nick names for my parents.

I'll try to be better at documenting Grouse's sayings and doings over this year, because so much of his baby-hood shenanigans are drawing to a close, and I want to record some of his highlights on our blog for old time's sake.    

The Thankful Tree

Each Thanksgiving since 2007, our first Thanksgiving as parents, we have spent time as a family talking about various things that we are thankful for. Every year in the past, the items have then been written down on a poster and stored away after Turkey Day, then brought out again the next Thanksgiving to join the roster of posters marking the passage of time and the many things we are grateful for.

But this Thanksgiving, Becky used a spare piece of wood and a wood burner to artistically "create" our thankful tree. We then cut numerous slips of paper in various colors into the shapes of leaves. At Family Home Evening one Monday night in November, we named off the things we are thankful for and wrote each one on a leaf, before taping the leaf to our tree. This made for an extra-special and extremely rare reverent and relatively quiet FHE! Maybe we should similar exercises more often!

Anyhow, great idea babe! It's also so meaningful to us that we've kept the prior thankful trees. They are good reminders for the blessings we enjoy and take for granted, and it's also interesting to review the prior trees to see how our focuses have changed over time. 

The Grouse's Loot

Here is Our Little Mouse on Christmas morning, waltzing down our front hallway stairs. No, those aren't gifts from Santa in her arms. And no, those aren't her gifts, either. The two baby dolls, the Truck Duck board book, the yellow-and-blue kid's Nerf football, and the gray-and- white soft blanket all belong to her baby brother, Our Baby Grouse. 

He is obsessed with each of those items. They accompany him to bed each night. They are extracted from his crib each morning, as he gleefully shouts "Baby! Banka! Book!" Banka is sort of how he pronounces "blanket." When Grouse is tired or cranky or both, his gleeful shout turns to an incessant whine, name-calling each item until he has them all bundled together, in the arms of whichever parent is holding him. 

Goose's Christmas gift

Christmas morning. Goose in front of our fake tree (I swear, the last Christmas that we go the fake tree route!) with her newly opened Christmas gift from Mommy: a Shutterfly book of 40-plus pages documenting how she has grown from 2011 until the fall of 2015. Becky spent countless hours this autumn putting this treasure together. It was a labor of love, and the look on Goose's face made all of the time, effort, and tears worth it. 

It's simply staggering how much a child can change in a four-year window. I mean, I know that's a significant amount of time, but when you're living it day-in and day-out as a parent, with numerous demands on your own time, being able to reflect and revisit the past is an insanely limited luxury. But something like this book of Goose's photos really drives home how fleeting time is. 

Keep in mind: If we did a similar gift in another four year's time, Goose will be opening it when she's on the cusp of becoming a teenager. 

I'm going to my neighbor's home right now, knock on his door, and beg for his most readily available alcoholic beverage, to calm the anxiety and nostalgia welling up inside me!   

Mickey Mantle

About a year ago, my best friend from high school and college years met me for lunch. He has two kids, and he's always comically impressed with how I somehow function with kids times-two. (That would be 4). One quote of his has stuck with me ever since. It's not prescient or sage advice or anything, but it always makes me laugh. The appropriate amount of profanity, in the right setting, has that affect on me:

"You're like the f-in' Mickey Mantle of fatherhood!" my friend Ted said while scarfing on his burger and fries. Mine were nearly spit out in laughing back at him.

Yes, even if in jest or humor I was compared to "the Commerce Comet" who hit more than 500 home runs in a Hall of Fame career, I'll take it. Yes, even if Mantle spent his entire career in a Yankees uniform. Side note: I am done with Yankees-Red Sox trash-talking. I am done with the rivalry. Winning it all in 2004, plus not having time to watch much baseball since about 2007, have watered-down my passion for the Red Sox, rivalries, and the olde ball game in general. 

But this comment frequently comes to my mind, and when I need a laugh (and man, do I ever need a laugh, most every evening), this quote provides the sorely needed praise and comic relief. 

Re-Do

Since beginning to blog in early 2007 (hat-tip to the no-longer-blogging Lisa), I was convinced that blogging would be an ever-present part of my life. A quick look at the number of posts by month and by year will demonstrate my passion for this creative and family history-documenting outlet. 

So, what happened in 2015? What happened after early November, when I last posted?

The short answer is: Life. 2015 was a year of numerous changes, no more so impactful than some big changes at work. The pace of my job accelerated. New responsibilities and challenges came my way (which were great). But I came home maxed-out a lot of nights, and then tried my best (most nights) to be a helpful, in-the-moment dad and husband. I put kids to bed, I (too infrequently) gave Becky nights off/nights out, did laundry and dishes, and had, on average, about 25 minutes of "me time" each evening, before conking out around 10:30 each night. Rinse and repeat, over and over, days on end, through much of 2015.

On top of that, I was given a more time-demanding responsibility at church (in the Mormon church, such responsibilities are called "callings"). In non-Mormon terms, I am basically the president of the young adult men's group ("the elders quorum"), in charge of helping people move, getting teachers for each Sunday, and a bevy of other regular and out-of-the-blue needs and demands on my time and attention.

My physical health suffered. I made zero progress on losing weight, while Becky made a radical transformation that is both extremely awesome, praise-worthy, and sustainable for her. I think her healthy eating/lifestyle change is our family's biggest and best story of 2015, and I was pleased to be along for the ride.

But I am now committed to leave 2015 behind. Factors at work give me optimism that things will change for the better. I re-joined the work gym. Blogging will re-commence, and to atone for last year's slacker-itis, I will post at least 201 times this year, to beat 2013's record of 200 posts. That doesn't necessarily mean one post per day, because I may do multiple posts in one sitting and use Blogger's "schedule" feature to back-date or forecast posts. 

Our kids are getting older and into more fun stuff, and I want to record these moments. Many of the posts may simply be a photo and a paragraph of text, as opposed to lengthier tomes like this one. I am not posting for comments, though those are always appreciated. 

I am posting to record, to capture, to remind, as the years go by, that these were in every sense the best years of my life.

Here's to 2016.