It's complaining time!

 I'm constantly overwhelmed. I don't get breaks from the kids. I feel like I'm too overwhelmed to get them up to speed. Crash Boy still will not poo on the potty, and kindergarten is coming up fast. Daniel just needs to sit down and do his math, but I have a hard time keeping up with him because I have so much to do always. My kids will always fight when they play together, and they will always break things. My hands are cracked and bleeding in two different spots just because of how often I have to wash them, because of dishes or diapers or kids being generally gross. My jaw hurts pretty bad, and has for the last ten days, ever since I went to the dentist and got my tooth drilled and fitted for a crown. I have no reason to expect that my jaw will just start feeling better. For all I know, it'll just always hurt now. All my fillings seem to have been put in very badly, because all of them need to be replaced, and it's going to cost a hell of a lot. The parts I can brush and floss are fine! The only parts with cavities are the parts under the fillings! My house is in a constant mess, and my kids see that as an invitation to make that mess worse. I'm very stressed, and I'm worried that it's going to affect my health.

It's all a lot. It's pretty bad.

A Night With Family

 Tonight was not a special night, not more than any other week. Jessi and Jess went off to watch The Bachelorette, leaving the kiddos with me and Bucky. I was drinking leftover tasting drinks (hard pumpkin spice latte and hard vanilla cider), and the kids decided it was a fine night to scoot up and down the sidewalk, constantly going from Bucky's garage to my driveway, where we'd set up some blankets where the kids could lay down and look at the stars.

And I felt for one moment this monumental sense of how great it is. That a normal night could be me and my brother with each of our piles of kids just riding up and down the street, playing, laughing, occasionally shrieking. My new neighbor came by, talked for a little bit with us, and it was fun and small and funny. I was just this side of tipsy, taking it all in, reining in my kids as they haphazardly did haphazardly things with their cousins.

It's my greatest wish that my kids can learn to be happy, and take these incredible blessings for granted, thinking that nothing could be more natural than living two doors down from your family.

<3

Thoughts on Progress

We're taking another stab at this whole "Crash Boy pooping in the potty" nonsense. My goodness.

Today, I was SO at the end of my rope, that I promised him that if he pooped in the potty, he would be allowed to watch ALL THE CARTOONS HE WANTED. And wouldn't you know it, it worked! And dang, if that's what it takes to get his little butt on the throne, that's what it takes. He also got a sticker!

It's awesome living two doors down from your brother. I just want everyone to know that, in general. In specific, I want my boys to know that. I want them to grow up thinking it's just natural to live right down the street from your family.

It's. Just. So. Awesome. Like, I've realized that Jess (the other one) is kind of one of my closest friends! We talk every day to and from school, and on chatty days, I'll just yak yak yak about whatever game I'm making or whatever book I'm reading.

The last few days, I haven't been feeling chatty. And you know what, that's a fine and healthy way to respond when I'm feeling overwhelmed. (Which, yes, still happens pretty often.) I like to be alone. I love the solitude. And when things are feeling up, I go out of my way to be outgoing. It's a bit of an ebb and flow. But hey, I don't make secrets of how I'm feeling, so I feel just fine about how I act.

This year is no 2020, but I'm happy to say I've retained the truism: It's okay to not feel okay.

Things are good. I worry sometimes, I stress sometimes, but when I take a big step back and look at things, it's good. It's hard emotional work, and on days when I spend more energy than I thought I had, it's sometimes not enough. That's okay.

Man, 2020 was just the worst year, but if I can learn enough to grow from it, I'll be unstoppable.

I'm not an ambitious person. Heck, before I had kids, I probably would have said that I'm a lazy person. But I think my lazy days are behind me. I look forward to the future, to days when my emotional energy isn't dragging behind. It's been an issue for the last few weeks. I'll start my day determined to do something, to write something or craft something or edit something or make something, but when the kids are finally in bed and asleep, I'll just feel completely drained.

Optimist that I am, I'm thinking about when the boys are more independent, about a day when the boys can sort out their own problems, and how much energy I'll have in the day when I can spend it on me!

I mean, I'll probably have a job, but here's hoping it won't be something that sucks out my emotional energy. 

... writing that down, it sounds like I'm stepping away from teaching. Maybe I am. I want my own life. I want to at least act like someone ambitious!

I'm proud of who I am. It took a lot of work to make me who I am, (a credit not only to me, but to my friends and family,) and it's taking work to keep the parts of me that I want to be.

Well, I guess that's all that's been in my head. I'm gonna go meditate, because my sweet lil' brain needs it!

-Woody!

And now, some pictures of my little goober who can't be stopped!

Reading, Writing, Editing!

Reading!

I love to read! One of my favorite things to do is to take my kiddos to a park, let them run around, and take out a book. With several published books under my editor's belt, it's like I have a new way to appreciate books! I give books a critical eye, down to how they structure sentences, and think about what I would've done had I been given the book as a manuscript.

A little while back, I went through and tried to keep track of every book I've read as an adult on Goodreads. The site lets you organize books into "books I've read" and "books I'm currently reading". Problem was, when I did that, I realized I was in the middle of SEVEN different books! Some books I want to read, but don't just fly off the pages!

Anyways, I'm happy to report that I've finished all seven of those books! And now I'm in the middle of five other books! Oops.

Writing!

I have tried to write a LOT of stories! Lich, about the necromancer superhero, Esther Lake, about the paranormal investigator in the small town, Grand Consul, about the near-end of the world, Vesper's Ridge, about a group of vampire do-googers .... and most lately, a combination of all of these.

But let me tell you, the best thing I've done to contribute to good writing in the last few years is to support Jessi, who's been writing a GREAT story! Some nights, we'll just toss ideas back and forth, just developing her story, making things happen, determining what should happen between our group of heroes. And it's my FAVORITE kind of story: good and fun people taking on bad and serious situations! I love it all.

I know what I'm good at, and it's not sitting down and cranking out pages of story (a skill I'm working on). It's making a character and giving them important and meaningful actions! That's all my years of role-playing games coming at me! Only problem is, by the point that these big actions happen, the reader is probably supposed to care about the character first! I just want to skip right to the big powerful moments! (It doesn't work!)

Editing!

I have a darn good eye for spelling, grammar, and mechanics. The greatest thing about it is, that I don't really mind errors! I'm a descriptivist linguist, yo! As long as it doesn't majorly affect comprehension, I have no problem with problems! Unless I'm an editor, in which case I will do my job and do it WELL. I'll hunt down every last comma and hyphen and get them all sorted out!

Most recently, I've been helping my friend Jared work on his second book, Remnants. If you ask me, he's been focusing a lot on laying down the groundwork; getting an online store in order, expanding his audience, making a blog... where all I'm looking for is a book! But I'll help where I can! I'm a helper guy, and I'm good at it!

This is all on the side of, you know, fatherhood! Speaking of which, here are my boys!

The boys enjoy hanging out with Mama, especially when she's trying to write!

Great smile on that boy!

Sweet Crash Boy taking his own picture with my selfie remote!

Scooter brigade!

The Groove!

 It's the sort of thing that normal people don't keep track of, but I am celebrating my fifth good day in a row!!!

Yes, for the last month or so, I've been keeping track of my days, and writing down little notes to myself about them. Why? Well, because I was having a lot of bad days, and I wanted to figure out what I could do to help.

Happily watching Bucky throw a boomerang!

Things are finally coming into focus for me, for how I can make a good day. Some days will still be bad, and I've come to terms with that. I don't have complete control over what needs to be done. I've got kids, I've got a house, and I don't have the amazing superpower to change how I feel! Which means I've got to put the work in, like a normal person.

I'm glad I know my own brain, and how to deal with it.

The walk from school!

1. Breathing

I've taken up meditation, and I think it's here to stay.

Every night, I find ten minutes to sit down, close my eyes, breathe, and listen to a guided meditation, where some dude is telling me to relax my shoulders, feel my breath move all the way down to my toes, and to think about only my breath.

It's a skill, and I've been using it in the heat of the moment. Kids can get overwhelming very fast, and like I said, I can't just tell myself to feel better about it. But I can breathe.

Inhale for 4.
Hold for 7.
Exhale for 8.

I've got it memorized! I even memorized it in a funny way. "Just breathe, compadre!" (4-letter word, 7-letter word, 8-letter word.)

I know when something is going to be rough for me. I can tell by the pitch and timbre of any one of my kid's screams what has happened, and who is responsible for it. And it's always stressful. So it's nice to at least enter the situation with steady waters.

Giraffesey's driving the cart as we get spray paint!

2. Refusing to escalate

Daniel is a kid who loses control sometimes. And I have a hard time with that, because he doesn't do it peacefully. Just last week, the rest of us were eating dinner, while he was screaming and hitting things in the front room. It went on for about an hour. And yes, he was screaming the entire time.
I don't remember why it started. I'd told him to put something away, maybe, and he took it personally. And he spiraled out of control. Now he was missing time with his cousins, who were over for dinner. So he screamed. He wasn't going to be able to get a second slice of pizza. So he screamed. Oh, now he doesn't even like pizza. So he screamed.
There is nothing good in this situation for me. It fries my nerves, it drains my battery, and it makes it hard for me to do anything else.
But I freaking DID it. I checked in every few minutes, offered an acceptable solution, got screamed at, and left. And it takes a lot for me to do that. I do not have a lot of patience these days. But eventually, when his dinner was cold, the cousins had left, and it was time to wind down, I offered to make him another dinner.
And he said okay.
And he had some chicken nuggets, and smiled again, even through red, red eyes.
And that night, he hugged me, and said, "I'm sorry I lost control, Dad."

He's a sweet boy. And he's as much the perpetrator as the victim. We're working on it, and he needs to know I'm not his opponent, but I'm on his side.

So this morning, he started to spiral. Didn't want to go to school. Said he hated school. Climbed under a chair and said he was going to stay there FOREVER.
Well, he's got to go to school. And earlier this week, I had to put him in the wagon like a bag of sad potatoes and drag him to 1st grade. But I didn't want to do that.

The idea of giving him things, of rewarding him as a result of these episodes, is a hard one. But I'm not rewarding the fit, I'm rewarding him stepping away from the brink. Punishing him only makes it worse. So, I told him I'd give him a piggyback ride all the way to school if he came out.
And he said okay.

So I carried a boy on my back while pulling a wagon all the way to school. Someone called me "a beast", in the good sense! And you know what? You're damn right I am!

Crash Boy and Josie are so good at playing together!

3. Downtime

I have a rule, and it applies to adults. If you're tired, you should sleep. Sounds straightforward enough, but it's a hard thing to achieve when you've got kids.
(Man, kids really run the show nowadays, huh?)

Whenever Jessi is zoning out, I tell her to go take a nap if she feels like one. Because by golly, it's the right thing to do!

For me, my downtime is usually spent on a couch, or sitting at the kitchen island, doodling and writing. And I can think all the thoughts I want, about how some things need to get done, about some projects I could be working on with the house... and while those are important, and I know that I can do them even when I'm tired, it's just healthier for me to do it while I've got a little bit of rest tucked away.

It's still sadly true, that the last time I felt fully rested, like I woke up and I was at 100%, was the day after Echo was born. Almost three years ago!

Breaks are hard to come by, so I give myself carte blanche permission to take as many smaller breaks as I can squeeze in.

This Echo Guy is a real goober!

4. Personal achievement

I could talk your ear off about Dungeons and Dragons, or about Rollerpunk, or about how I think vampires should be. And what I've found is that it helps me feel better about myself when I do these things, because it feels more like I'm being the person I want to be.

I congratulate myself when I write and send silly postcards to my friends. I smile for hours after a good session of D&D where the players had a good time. I tell people who don't really care (but are polite enough to listen) about the new conspiracies in Rollerpunk, because it's what's on my mind.

And at the end of the day, I find myself really admiring myself. Looking inward, I see and recognize the person I want to be when I do these little things. Yesterday, I took my younger boys out to Home Depot to buy gold spray paint, so that I could paint some rocks in the backyard and hide them! It made the cousins laugh and run around and start their own little adventures, and I was proud to be me.

And in the end, when the actions you do match the person you want to be, you've really got it made!

Climbing up the big rock at Larkspur!

The summer is coming!

 Tell you what, there are a lot of things to look forward to right now, and here they are!

SUMMER.

I like nice weather. And we've finally got grass coming in, so I don't need to worry about my kids coming back inside covered in mud! And it's soooooooooo nice to be able to just tell my boys to go outside. No big jackets, and shoes only if I'm feeling particularly motivated. (Or sometimes Echo just wants shoes and won't take no for an answer.)

PLUS.

No more school for Daniel. It's been getting harder by the week, and I've been less and less interested in keeping up the battle to motivate him to do his work. I really really hope he ends up doing first grade in-person next year, so I don't have to be taking care of his brothers and the house while also making sure he's doing his work. I hope we all appreciate our teachers more after this year.

FULL VACCINATION.

Tomorrow will be two weeks past our second shots of Moderna, and I look forward to it all. I just want to be out and about without the extra worry. Taking three kids somewhere is no easy task as it is, and so, with the added difficulty of the COVID pandemic, I've been avoiding it all. But I look forward to that casual interaction with other parents I've just met, and seeing my boys socialize with kids they've just met.

Goodness, Crash Boy is so cute around other kids. They'll be talking about anything, and he'll interrupt them with "Yeah, but, my name is Crash-A-Boy. Or Crash. And that's Daniel. And that's Echo. And that's Dad."

And Daniel is just so excited to be with other kids. Especially older ones. I'm sure he gets a little tired of being the big one. Not often, but sometimes.

LEMON LIME

The park that's just a stone's throw from our house, Lemon Lime, is a great little park, and we've been going once or twice a day recently, sometimes bringing a quick picnic! It's surely going to be a staple for the summer.

It's been a rough year, but things are looking up!

All these tabletops!

So, if it can be said that I have one hobby, my hobby would be tabletop RPGs. Dungeons and Dragons and all that. And I like to make them! I enjoy playing these games, so I tend to see everything as a potential board game!

And you know what? After over a decade of loving role-playing games, I think I've found my target to hit; I'm a very good dungeonmaster, and I love the idea of having my friends play through games that I've made up.

Here they are, in order of how complete they are!

The Hocus Conspiracy

You play supernatural investigators in 1920s Chicago, working your way through gangsters, vampires, and all sorts of denizens of the city's underground.

There was no gameboard, and for the most part, it was all up to the players to decide what they were going to do. All I had to do was come up with a few different plots that the bad guys were going to do. Sometimes working together, sometimes working alone, and all of them ended catastrophically if the bad guys were going to get their way.

And so the brave agents of Hocus, with their varied understanding of the occult and limited magical power, faced down these many many many terrible things happening to Chicago, forged strange and fun alliances, and saved the day.

I plan on starting this one up again someday. It was easy to run, and didn't take a bunch of work for me to do beforehand!

Completeness: Could use some tuning up, but I've played this for hours with friends. It suffers from a standard problem with my games: Me, Woody, the Dadmaster, needs to be there for it to work as well as it does. I turned it into a system that is fueled almost 100% with improvisation, characterization, and bluster. I am VERY good at all three of these things.

Umbra

In an attempt at a more magical, less violent world, I made a simple world: everyone has a unique magical ability that is embodied in a shadow spirit called an umbra. And if you kill someone, that spirit leaves their body and kills you! So lethal violence was a really bad idea.

It was an interesting world, because although it was your standard fantastical swords & sorcery setting, there wasn't widespread war or violence. You took up your non-lethal weapons to fight others and incapacitate them.

The players enjoyed the world, because they had to think outside the box, rather than the usual "I cleave the foul brigand in half with my sword!" Also, rolling was story-related. In a normal action, you rolled one die. 6 was yes-and, so not only do you succeed, but something else good happens. 5 was yes, you did it just fine. 4 was yes-but, so you succeed, but something unexpected happens. 1 was no-and, 2 was no, and 3 was no-but.

It put a good amount of pressure on me, because I had to come up with unexpected results to happen all the time, but I enjoy doing that! It's a skill of mine, and it results in a bit of fun-as-heck mayhem. And again, violence isn't as important in this game, so our heroes are usually unraveling a mystery or escaping some dungeon!

I made a cheesy little conspiracy system, where you learned about different strange occurrences, leading you and your companions to uncover ONE BIG CONSPIRACY. It was shaped like a hexagon with triangles inside of it, each line a thread you could pursue and follow.

Completeness: Check it out, I made this game in ONE NIGHT, because Hodey was in town and said he'd be down to play one game. So I made it quick to learn, easy to grasp, and memorable. I've played two hours-long sessions of Umbra, and everyone really enjoyed it! There are some things that I want to follow, such as the conspiracy system, and how you take damage. But it's a lot of fun for not a lot of effort! However, it still requires the Dadmaster. Give me one day, I'll have it complete again!

Rollerpunk

I decided I would take things in another direction here. I decided to make character creation short and sweet. It's a futuristic game, but I feel like the system could scale to anything.

The character sheet is a four-piece puzzle that you mix-and-match, and I really like the design of it. Your equipment is tied to your role and one specialized skill, your level of cyborg-ness is tied to your ability scores, and it all fits together to make a really fun character design.

Gameplay is simple, a bit like Umbra, where you roll one or two normal six-sided dice. I made it as an introductory game for newbies, and I playtested it for the first time with these first-timers. Probably not the best idea, and there was a lot of stuff still not-quite-nailed-down. 

But it was FUN. And I loved making the character sheet. If there's nothing else I keep from Rollerpunk, I will keep that

Completeness: It needs loooooots of work... but, well, keep in mind, even for needing lots of work, I have played this with people and it passed muster, meaning that people were laughing at their antics and legitimately concerned for their characters' well-being at the end of it.

Dire Dire Dice

Now here's a fun one, and one that I've even tested several times! So I know it's FUN, it's just not entirely fleshed out. (Even Daniel has played it with me!)

There are dungeons that you need to clear out, and every time you return to town, the dungeons get harder. Each dungeon has a boss.

When you enter a dungeon, you see the boss, and you see three minions below him. You roll five normal dice and put them randomly in the spots for the boss. The minions each get one die, so the boss has two moves. Each of these does something different, sometimes it's an attack, or a block, or something special.

When you defeat a minion, it uncovers one of the boss's more powerful moves. So, as you fight through the dungeon (which is just one paper), the fight gets harder. I really like this game, because it's a bit simple and intuitive.

You play Yahtzee rules for your own dice, also five, and you place them in different spots. If the enemy is going to attack with a 4, you can block it with a 4 on your own shield. With a match, you can heal yourself. And you get better equipment as you go.

If you defeat two minions before running away, you get two gold pieces you can spend on your equipment. If you defeat two minions but then get roasted by the boss, your character doesn't die, but instead you manage to escape back to town, but don't gain any gold. And you 

Completeness: In a way, this might be the most complete? Kind of? In this list, it's the only one that doesn't require the Dadmaster. It has a set list of rules, that I even wrote down! This almost means it's the most restrictive game. That is to say, you can't exactly go off the rails and decide to start raising horseshoe crabs on the moon. It's not quite as much a tabletop rpg as it is a board game. But it's listed here because I love it and I'm very proud of it.

Legend of Zelda: Forsaken Age

This one is barely more than half-baked dreams in Microsoft Word, and I only playtested it once, enough to assure me it's far from ready.

But! I'm really excited for it.

First off, I love the world, because it's a sequel of Ocarina of Time, one of the most popular videogames of all time! It's especially popular with me! Because I'm a bit of a nerd! Woo! Second, I think it'll be fun to have different characters coming together to play through dungeons, unlike the normal game, which is single-player.

I can simplify a lot of the game by making it streamlined in the ways I want. In normal open-world rpgs, you can tell me "Okay, I rob the store and leave the owner tied up in the roof." In this one, I can tell you "No. You're heroes." Or, I could just let them ruin the world and roll with it!

Completeness: I was able to playtest one room, so that's at least a little bit of it! However, it showed me that the main mechanics of it need to be changed, because the heroes were able to easily dance around the bad guys.

Charon

Charon is a dream that keeps on giving. Meaning that everytime I think about it, I imagine up an entirely new facet of it, and so it becomes less and less reachable.

Let me explain what I can. Keep in mind, it's the least complete of these, although I've thought a lot about it.

You start out as one character, living in a desolate land, and your only shelter is Charon Tower.

Your goal is to expand the settlement you have, attracting anyone else who is wandering the wastes, and explore to discover what has happened around you. But the more you expand, the more threats are coming to find you.

That's as much as I can describe, because a big part of the game is that you aren't certain what the world is like when you start. You're building houses and cultivating farms, doing the sorts of things that aren't exactly exclusive to any scenario. Is this a fantasy world with magic? Is it a new planet? Is it a post-apocalyptic Earth? The scenarios change every time you play, and so do the end goals.

I have an idea where you can do special quests to turn the nameless people you come across into actual characters, with personalities, and you can give them classes and shifts and equipment and all sorts of different things to make them better-suited to playing the game.

In Charon, the entire world is against you, but no matter what, you can't LOSE. You can just get beaten back so hard that you and your little group of heroes have to huddle back in Charon, almost back to the beginning. But the threat of attack or disaster is only as big as your settlement, so if your thriving city is destroyed by alien zombies, the worst that can happen is that you have to start again, but with more heroes on your side, so it could take longer.

But, because the very idea of it is so certainly vague, Charon has, over the years, been a factory for making other games. The entire game of Dire Dire Dice came from me trying to create Charon and falling short.

Completeness: Hahahahaha, not very complete at all! The dreaming is there. I've printed out papers and drawn up ideas, and they haven't amounted to much, but it was Charon that got me to print out a hexagrid and glue it to the back of a board game, and I've used that board as a jumping-off point for a bunch of stuff! It's not at all complete, but it's right where it needs to be.

So, there you have it! I'm glad to have it all written down. It feels good to see the progress that I've actually made.

Mercury Doing Backflips

Last Friday, Daniel was being stubborn. And when Daniel does stubborn, he doesn't half-ass it. He was hiding under his table, out of sight from his class, refusing to even write the next letter (it was the "n" in "I can"). And I'm trying something new, where I don't punish. Because that has never worked. Instead, I've been telling him, "Okay, but you don't get to play Minecraft until you write this sentence." And I feel pretty good about that? Like MAN, I cannot WAIT until the responsibility of motivating education is off my plate. A school environment would do wonders for this kid. As it is, I have a hard time keeping Echo from running around naked in the background.

A strange side effect, though, is that DanPar has been doubling down on his stubbornness. So, all weekend, I had the assignment, the single-sentence assignment, ready to go. And every day, he's decided against doing the work, and instead finding other things to play with.

Which is... honestly kind of cool, although definitely not at all what I was trying to get from him. He'll decide that this sentence is SO LONG (it's not that long) that he'd rather get on shoes and play on the swings.

...oh darn?

The boys have all been pretty emotionally taxing. Crash screeches, Echo clings, and DanPar doom spirals. It's a lot to handle. Jessi and I have started spending our free time doing awesome productive creative things, like writing and drawing, but on rough days, which aren't uncommon, sometimes we'll just collapse at the end of the day.

It's gonna get better, right? The boys are just so much right now. Echo's young, he'll grow out of it. Daniel will go to school, and we won't have to be his everything. And the weather is getting warmer; we'll be able to send the boys outside, so at least when Crash screams, it won't be in a contained space!

But I'm very proud of my boys. The basement's a mess, but it's a mess of Duplos and Legos and Megablox and wooden train tracks and all sorts of fun building projects. I wish they'd clean up what they aren't playing with, but more than any of that, I'm just so darn glad that they're building, being creative, and sharing all their creative energy with each other and their cousins!

I caught Crash Boy singing Wellerman the other day, and that's AWESOME. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A6XcFE4CL8

Echo keeps getting more and more capable with his sentences, participating very well in our nightly "What was your favorite part of the day?" (He used to just say Jaina and Josie, no matter what actually happened that day.) And sure, he's clingy, but when he snuggles up in our bed the middle of every night, I know it'll be one of those things I might miss one day.

These boys.

This sweet boy refused to nap!

Aunt Jess with all those kids!

Rolling balls off the roof with Grandpa Bill!

All these kids on a tire swing!

Dyeing eggs!

Easter egg collection!

Miss Susan dropped off a bag full of sweets!

Snow!

 Yesterday was a snow day for all the schools! ...except ours, because it's online, and whoever makes decisions like this does not like children.

That didn't stop us from making the most of the last couple snowy days! My goodness, though. I'm beat. Crash Boy slammed into me boot-first right in my leg, so I've been limping! (But I did shoot out my leg so he wouldn't hit Echo, so at least it's a heroic kind of injury.) And I'm sooooo tired, and don't want to do anything.

It takes a lot to do what I think is right for my boys. Ugh. Blah. Blah and ugh. I'm hurt, I'm sore, I'm tired, and tomorrow is another day.

One cool snowman! Mostly Aunt Jessica's doing, but I contributed the shades and smile!

Woody's youth!

 It's been a while since I've felt young, but today? I feel young. I've got some stubble that looks out of place on me, and sure, I'm balding, but my face just looks light!

I think I've been doing a good job trying to keep myself up. And that's something! It's been hard. Especially since Echo turned two, and decided to start screaming (SO LOUD) about everything that upsets him, which now includes when his brothers don't let him steal their toys.

They're a handful! And they're hard. Crash Boy has apparently forgotten how to poo in the potty, and Daniel loses his cool more often than he should, growling, hitting himself, and just being short-tempered.

I try to keep my head screwed on right. I try to take care of myself, and I try to make time to clean the house (a thing I like to do!) while the kids are around. They're demanding, but they're used to me and Jessi telling them no, that we're busy.

That all said, yesterday, Daniel and I played a little game with Legos, each of us playing a character from the show Grizzy and the Lemmings (like a modern day Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner). And doggone it, it just felt good to be making stuff up with Legos.

Having kids young is awesome! I can keep up with them, and I feel like I've still got vim and vigor! Although, at the end of the day, I'm still exhausted. Being the parent of three young boys takes all I've got and then some!

But doggone it, I'm important, too, and I do what I can to feel like a human being. I've got my editing business, which can't really grow any larger, because I don't have much time for more! I've been doing my positive nonsense, my Little Delights, as a practice in positivity, a way to get people talking, and a way to just have a thing that's mine. I've got Dungeons and Dragons, and I've got my own campaign that I'm running, and all my players say that it's a ton of fun!

This is a big pat on the back for me, because I'm keeping my chin up, even when I'm stressed. And I know I'm stressed. My sweet boy DanPar, he was reading a book on emotions, and when he came to "stressed", he was like, "Hey, that's what Dad is all the time!" Hahaha, oh, sweet boy. I'm rather proud that he knows, because it's important to name one's feelings.

I'm stressed, yes, but I'm staying positive, by gum, and that's nothing to sniff at! I feel like I'm living my life, and in these times, when it's hard to justify getting out of the house, and most my energy is spent keeping up with the little ones, I feel great about it!

DanPar taught Crash how to swing on a swing when we weren't looking!

The boys playing Sorry! with Mama. DanPar's getting a bit silly with it.

This sort of thing gives me hope. Echo threw a rock at Daniel while he was on the swing, and after a little cry, Daniel laughed about it and commemorated the occasion in chalk!

Happy goobers!

Echo's ready to cause havoc with the unpacked Ikea shelves!

That smile. He's a mischievous little rascal, but he's at least a cute mischievous little rascal!

Crash Boy made his own "witch's hat"!

I've got my game shirt on! One of these days, I plan on being muscular, because I'd love to be the hunky nerd who plays Dungeons and Dragons.

I act with more patience than I actually have, and speak with more positivity than I've actually got. I used to dislike the phrase "fake it 'til you make it", but when it comes to my attitude, that's a good half of it. The other half is all procedure and discipline. When I feel like I might lose my cool, I wiggle my toes and pay attention to them for a little bit. I always keep a book nearby so I don't just zone out on the Internet. I have a list of friends who I want to make sure I don't lose touch with, and I will sit down and bang out an email to make sure I don't! I want to get myself into the routine of being a better person than I am right now. After all, that's how I grow into those big shoes!