Goals

This will be a short post and wont be routed through Lisa for approval.

Goals, we all set them for ourselves, our family and our children. This Post is about a new goal I am setting for the boy. We already have the usual goals for him, do well in school, go to college, play sports, marry a beautiful woman, but I have a new unique goal for him. I can't help him with this goal, but his Pappy can . . .

I want BC to kill a 12 foot alligator by the time he is 5.


Article

From KTRK ABC13: LIVINGSTON, TX (KTRK) -- The catch of the day was just up the Eastex Freeway in Livingston.

Five-year-old Simon Hughes is a real-life gator slayer. Simon didn't even flinch when he and his dad came across a huge alligator. The pipsqueak hunter from Polk County grabbed his gun and shot and killed the 12-foot long monster.

This gator was just five inches shorter than the Texas record, and that's got Simon determined to do it again.

"I wasn't even afraid," said Simon. "Next year I'm going to kill me a bigger alligator."

Simon weighs about 40 pounds, without the gun. The alligator weighs 800. That's 20 times his size.

The next Zach Morris

Another weekly update from the Caughran Clan. As you have read from our previous posts, BC has been going to Mother's day out at our Church (yup we go to Church now). He has really taken to going to "school" and being social. Each time he goes, he seems to be gaining more confidence and personality. When we first dropped him off he would cry as he walked into the room. Now he runs right in and goes straight to playing with the toys. According to the teachers he is a great eater (eats with a fork) and a great napper (once Lisa told them to give him his Pooh bear).

The odd thing is that they say he has been silent. Silent?!?! That boy never stops making noise at the house or blabbering about something. I even posted before that he baby curses, and the teachers say he has never even made one noise at class.

Well silence is slowly becoming a thing of the past. In addition to running into the class, he now socializes frequently. He may even be getting to the point of being the next Zach Morris (From saved by the bell for you old fogies). He doesn't talk to an imaginary camera or anything, but he is a future lady charmer.

***Update from Today's Class***

The teacher said he brought her a ball and said "ball" and threw it at her.

Here is a recent picture before class that Lisa took of him.









Now we just need to get him one of those phones . . .

Months?

At what point do you no longer count a child's age in months? Lisa and I have been meeting many new people lately and they always ask "how old is that kid?" Lisa or I typically say 15 months, 15 and a half months, or 16 months (depending on when they asked and if we were rounding). Typically the men laugh that we still count in months and not years at this point. I typically blame the blog since there is a age counter, but in reality I do still count in months with or without the blog.

So back to my question, when are you supposed to stop? I know for weeks you usually stop around 8 weeks/2 months. For months, I think I am going to stop at 18 months. 1 and a half seems like a good point. I feel that there is such a difference between a 1 year old and a 1.5 year old that it is worth specifying. Now I could be wrong, but I doubt much changes from 18-24 months.

As a rationalization for counting months, I look to the methods used by child care. The child care at mother's day out has the toddlers broken out by 3 month intervals to separate all the 1 year olds so that a 13 month old and a 19 month old are not in the same class. If they do that, there must be a difference and a necessity to count in months.

At some point you also stop counting in years and switch to decades or in my mother-in-laws case, half centuries.

Little Swimmer

This week is Colin's second big week in the last two. Last week was his first day at mother's day out. As you saw in the pictures he cried a little bit when we dropped him off, but before I get into this week, I have a theory as to why he was crying.

It was a Thursday and I (the dad) was home and riding with him in the car to take him somewhere. Now from his perspective, every time dad stayed home and went with him somewhere, something bad happens to him. First trip to the Doctor, Shots, Surgery, Bladder tests. Needless to say, he was very whinny and easily crying before we even got to the car or to the church. Once we got to Mothers day out and he realized the teachers were not nurses and no one had any needles he quickly enjoyed himself. His teachers reported that he had lots of fun and he was good on his second day.

Now for the big week. As you guessed from the title, BC is making a second attempt at swimming lessons (the first week was canceled because lightning caused too many missed classes). Now I thought I had heard BC yell and scream before, but I was kidding myself. I went to his second lesson last night and that boy has some lungs. He seems to be progressing (not that I really have any idea what progress in survival swimming looks like). The teacher also said that he is stubborn and doesn't want to do things her way. She is going to break him of that, but I think it is going to be a running theme in his childhood that Lisa and I are going to be working on defeating his stubbornness.

Also another random update: I think BC curses. He gets very frustrated at times and says gibberish in a angry manner. I think it is baby cursing.

Lisa will post a brief video of a swimming lesson in the next couple of days.

My first day with out little Colin.

Little Colin started Mother's day out last Thursday. Colin went into work late so we could both be there to drop him off. He cried a little bit when we got ready to leave but when I got there to pick him up he was sleeping on his nap mat in the middle of the floor (Something I didn't think he would do). His teacher said that he was a good boy. He ate most of his lunch (and some of the child's beside him)loved music time and also enjoyed playing on the playground. He will be going every Monday and Thursday for 5 hours. I missed him almost instantly after leaving. I wasn't sure what I was going to do to keep my mind busy. Im glad that things went well because if they didn't I'm not sure that I would have let him go back. I think it will be good for him to play with other children his age. He has 8 kids in his class 3 of which are triplets(only 2 girls, the rest are boys).

Paper Planes.

Some experts say that a child will be more intelligent if the mother plays classical music while the child is in the womb. Lisa and I do not subscribe to this belief and decided to do her own experiment. She listened to Rap and Pop music for the past 24 months (9 months in the womb, 15 months out). Some might think that this would lead little Colin to be a criminal that curses, pays only $49.99 for motels and is known as a freak of the industry. Only time will tell, but we have noticed odd behavior recently.

Here is a scene of what Little Colin might be thinking these days when he is in the back seat of the car. "What do you want to do with your life?".

Little Colin loves music and dances to particular rap songs and songs with a strong bass beat. In particular he loves the song "Paper Planes" by MIA. If he is crying or moody, if we put this song on and turn it up, he just gets a smile on his face and starts to bob his head and shoulders to the beat. I would guess other kids enjoy music as well, but they probably listen to Barney not 50 cent and Ludacris.

We first noticed this in the car (where he listens to most of this devil music). I tried to get a video of his dancing. His style of dance is very subtle, but he always does it to his favorite songs

He is a little suspicious of daddy sitting in the back seat videotaping him, so he stops a couple of times.



Now that Little Colin is getting older and understanding things more, Lisa is busy updating her playlist with more Disney and edited versions of her songs. I have warned her that she will be in trouble is one of Colin's first words is a curse word or if he calls any girls he knows by a derogatory slang term for women.

We are now planning on getting Rock Band or Guitar Hero so that the boy can be exposed to classic rock and nurture his affinity for music.

The Great Escape

Little Colin is quite mobile now. Since visiting his cousins in California, he has taken to walking 100% and speed walking (no running yet). He rarely crawls although he falls a good bit. Lisa and I had to take more safety precautions with his new found mobility. Shortly after getting back, I had to install a new gate at the bottom of the stairs and we had to get new dog stairs for our bed. (The dogs need something to help them get on the bed and we needed something that we could easily move so that little Colin couldn't climb into the bed). What we didnt know is that Colin would have so much fun playing with the stairs.

He is sitting inside the flipped over stairs.

Colin also minds pretty well. We tell him when he is doing something that we do not approve of and he typically stops. He has a tendency to talk back (Not looking forward to his teenage years) but we are working on that. He has started to try to out smart us. For example he is not allowed to touch the TV or the TV components. This is very difficult for him since they are covered in buttons and blinking lights. To get around this rule, he has begun to roll his toys near the TV and under the entertainment center so that he has a reason to get close. He is good about not touching things, but occasionally tries to use a trip to the TV to retrieve a ball as an opportunity to touch the TV. Lisa is good at keeping him in line, so he just now looks at all the buttons (it only takes one time of turning off "So you think you can Dance" for him to learn that the huge awesome looking button in the middle of the TV is not that awesome at all)

Now on to the great escape. Colin likes to wonder around the house to see what he can find and get into. Recently he discovered the doggy door. When Lisa is around he just hits it so that it opens and closes. But the other day he was under daddy's watch (clearly daddy is a pushover compared to mom), and he decided it was time to make his move. He pulled his typical trick and threw his ball out the doggy door. Although he can't talk enough yet to say it, I pictured him rationalizing it in his head "My ball is out there and I have to go get it before one of the dogs chew it up". He was slow at first testing the doggy door and making sure that I wasn't going to stop him for touching it. He thought I wasn't watching but I was. He got about halfway out and realized it was a little harder than he thought and he might be stuck. He didn't give up and eventually made it all the way out. He wasn't that smooth about the whole ordeal as he was laughing and giggling the whole time. I thought that maybe Tyson had been licking his face on the other side, but it was just that he was excited to have escaped. Once outside he made a mad dash to the play house and climbed the rockwall to the top. I was one proud parent, but now we need to find a way to prevent his escape from the house just like we prevent him from climbing the stairs and the bed.