The Great Woodlief Migration of 2008 has begun. Today I spent 12 hours painting in the new house. I also made the flooring guys listen to my music, which ranged from Lyle Lovett to the Hackensaw Boys to Death Cab for Cutie. The probably think I'm deranged, but then they probably don't care so long as the check cashes.

The boys played by our new pond a good part of the day. We saw a dead snake floating in it, which I thought would make a good deterrent for Isaac ("See? He drowned. That's an icky snake in there, isn't it?"). Instead he got a stick and tried to fetch the thing out. For the most part there's nowhere on the property where he can drown unless there's been a hard rain, but now I hear there are bobcats.

Bobcats. I was all set to get a rifle, until a friend explained that his daughter shooed one away with a stick once, when it threatened her chickens.

I'm still getting the rifle, with scope, because I also have a beaver issue. Beavers are only cute in cartoons. In real life they chew down your saplings. There's one working on a sapling to which my back porch has a clear LOS. Best get your affairs in order, Mr. Beaver, because there's a new sheriff in town.

I'm sure after a couple of evenings I'll break down and get somebody to trap him, but it gets the blood up nonetheless, playing sniper from one's own back porch, which I could never do in the old neighborhood, except with an invisible rifle, which is a pity because it was a target-rich environment, if only lawyers and accountants were fair game, and around tax time I think we all agree that they should be.

Tomorrow we load a big truck. I'm pretty sure I would rather take a baseball bat across both knees, but with my luck that's not going to happen between now and the time I have to go pick up the truck. So we'll be loading. I may even tell you about it, if I can figure out how to get my satellite-card Internet doohickey thing to work, because in our new and unnamed locale, there's no cable.

No cable, no city water, no sidewalks, no homeowner's association. Actually there is an HOA, but it has one member, and his name is Tony Woodlief. Further, as King of the Woodlief Homeowner's Association, I hereby decree that there will be no ridiculous walls built at homeowner expense, no strictures against ugly treehouses or redneck-looking sheds, and further, that all members of our HOA can walk around buck raving naked whenever they please.

It's good to be the king.

Isaac has this thing where he feels like he needs my company any time he has to pee between the hours of midnight and 6 A.M.

Which is inconvenient, because every once in a while I try to sleep between those hours. This morning I was coming out of the bathroom a little before six, freshly shaved and showered, wearing my navy business suit on account of needing to bring some smack today, and there he stood in the bedroom doorway, like a little haunt. Frankly, he scared the bejeesus out of me, but when you're wearing your smack-bringing business suit, you have to play it cool.

So I picked him up, and he pressed his warm chubby cheek against my neck, and I carried him to his bathroom. There we enacted our usual routine, in which he leans back against my legs and tries to fall asleep in mid-pee, and I try to keep him pointed at the interior part of the toilet.

I don't care how nice your suit is, there's just no looking cool in that situation.

Afterward, I carried him to his bed, and tucked him back in. He told me goodnight, even though daylight was beginning to whisper its arrival. Little stinker.

Every night before I put him to bed, I fuss at him not to wake me up. But part of me, the part that has given up on foolish ideals like world peace and a good night's sleep, is glad that he searches me out in the dark hours. I doubt he even remembers these times, but I like to think that some part of him will remember that when he needed me in the darkness, I was there.

One of the nice side benefits of home-schooling, other than the occasional highly inappropriate parent-teacher conference, is that you get to deface the textbooks as you see fit. For example, Caleb is using a reading textbook that contains brief essays, and about which he has to answer questions. Recently the essay of the day was about bullying. "Dad," he asked, "what should I do if I get bullied?"

This is a common tactic for Caleb; he innocently asks for my parental advice, while keeping his reading book by his side, in hopes that I'll inadvertently answer one of the questions for him. His teacher has scolded me enough times, however, that I'm on to this trick. Even if I didn't care so much about his education, I would still have to listen to my son's teacher, because I have to sleep with the woman.

So I answered: "I don't know, son. What does your essay say you should do?"

Caleb scrutinized the essay, looking for clues. "Oh," he said. "If they call me a coward, I'm supposed to agree with them."

Now he had my attention. "Can I see that book?" He handed me the book. The essay explained that the best way to deal with bullies is to let them do what they want, and not fight back. If they call you names, laugh along with them. If they call you a coward, tell them they're right. Bullies like it when they're confronted, the essay explained.

"Give me your pencil," I said to Caleb. He handed it over. I crossed out a good quarter of the essay, leaving the parts about how bullies are disturbed and unhappy, and how it's important to tell adults when you're getting bullied.

"Why'd you cross those sentences out?"

"Because sometimes the best way to deal with a bully is to punch him in the nose as hard as you can, and to keep punching him until he falls down."

"Oh."

I know, I know, turn the other cheek, and all that. I'll get my sons started on pacifism once they're confident they can punch out the bully. Because unless you're willing to punch the bully, turning the other cheek isn't Christianity, it's cowardice.

We've lived in our house with a For Sale sign in the front yard longer than we've lived without it. Yesterday we finally sold the thing, albeit not before getting dunned for a ridiculous neighborhood boondoggle, which I've already informed one HOA officer I fully intend to come back and egg once it's completed. It's the only way I see myself getting my money's worth.

But back to the house, which isn't ours any more, though we live in it for one more month via a rent-back deal with the new owner. He's an attorney, which gave me a queasy feeling, but he proved to be a decent enough fellow at the closing. We like the house very much, with its swimming pool and rounded castle walls. But somehow we settled on the conclusion that we aren't going to be the family who lives in a house like that amidst meticulously edged and fertilized lawns. The new owners will be that family, and I'm sure they'll be just fine, and the neighborhood gossips can now breathe a sigh of relief.

As for us, we've found a house on twenty wooded acres north of the city. It has a creek running through it, and a pond, and a basketball court, and the boys are beside themselves. There's also a garage/barn-type structure that is apparently a mechanic's dream, though all I noticed is that it has a corner office which will serve nicely as my writing haven. We've traded suburban for rural, and mortgage for mortgage, and somehow we're becoming country people, which when I say it makes me conjure Nellie Olsen's mocking voice.

Now there's just the small matter of moving our houseful of stuff without divorcing one another or accidentally leaving behind one of the children.

I wrote about the potential move a while back at World on the Web, and faithful reader Coneen Brace was so excited for us that she went to my Amazon Wishlist and sent me Frederick Buechner's The Sacred Journey, along with an album by the Hackensaw Boys: "Love What You Do."

I wanted to take the latter as a sign from God that I should quit right now and just work on the books I've been writing, but the Wife noted that it doesn't rightly count as a burning bush if I picked out the album myself and put it on my own Wishlist. Plus there's that new land to pay for, and the baby needs new shoes, and when you get right down to it, women are far more practical, as a general rule, which is why more of us aren't starving. But the point is, thank you Coneen, for both your generosity and your optimism, because there's a good many people who know me better, and who are taking private bets about what will do me in first, a chainsaw or an overturned tractor.

And you people know who you are.

So it's off to the country in the next few weeks. Fresh air (allergies). Clean country living (well water). Nature in all her splendor (poison ivy, snakes, the frogs my sons keep capturing). Man in his natural element (real men, anyway). Praise the Lord, and God help us.

My nine month-old beat me up this weekend. It was only for a moment, but in that brief time I was clearly on the defensive, and he bringing the pain. He didn't mean any harm, he just likes to get rambunctious. I think it's the influence of his three older brothers.

He was on my lap, trying his best to bite my nose, when next thing I knew he did this little baby judo move, slipped under my arm, and clamped down on my nipple.

This is the same nipple that Caleb once latched onto as a baby. I don't know what my sons find so alluring, or perhaps threatening, about this nipple. It is basically the same size, shape, and configuration as your average man-nipple, although much more abuse and it's likely to get deformed. I've got a mild case of cauliflower ear from my unaccomplished wrestling days; I know from whence I speak. This nipple never hurt anyone, but still it's been a target of abuse from my children. I'm thinking I'm going to start duct-taping it until they're all well beyond nursing age.

So there I was, with a baby clamped onto my nipple. And the thing is, you don't just yank his mouth away in that kind of situation. For one, he's a baby. I'm beginning to think he's impervious to pain and dissuasion, but still. Furthermore, that thing he's clamped onto? It's my nipple. If you're having trouble getting the point, I suggest you clamp a vise-grip on your own nipple, and then keep reading.

I began to negotiate the release of my nipple, which only made the boy giggle, because it involved my fingers under his chubby chin. That's when he pulled his second kung-fu move; he reached up and grabbed hold of my bottom lip.

I know a thing or two about fighting. I can name you several places to inflict inordinate pain on someone's body. In all my years of training, however, I never covered the bottom lip pull. Thumb to the underarm, yes. Fist to the temple, all over it. But this lip pull maneuver is still relatively new to me, even though his older brother used to do exactly the same thing.

Now, those of you with vise-grips on your nipples, imagine trying to dislodge your tender bits while your lip is being stretched to your belly button, and you get the picture. I fought him off, and I only talked for half an hour like I'd been injected with Novocain, but the fact remains that my baby beat me up. I knew the day would come when they would be tougher than me, but I always thought I would have a little more time.

Since we have bidders on our house, we've gotten back into the habit of looking for houses in the country. The boys' favorite thus far has been a log cabin-style house in lovely Mulvane, which is the sight of the finest Italian restaurant in all of Kansas, and an elderberry winery to boot. The house looks like a giant got really creative with his Lincoln Log set. All it lacks is the little red plastic chimney. The inside corners even had criss-crossed log ends.

As we were preparing to leave, I looked at the corner nearest the door and whispered to the Wife, "How long do you think, if we bought this house, it would take Isaac to figure out that he could climb those corners all the way to the ceiling?"

Isaac crouched by the door as I whispered this, squeezing his shoes back onto his fat little feet. As he stood, he reached out a hand to balance himself. His hand settled on one of those log ends. He looked at it, then looked up to the ceiling. His epiphany blossomed into a beatific smile.

He was a quarter of the way to the ceiling by the time I scooped him into my arms. A fish swims, a bird flies, and Isaac climbs.

I really do love the little stinker, and so I'm hoping he survives to adulthood. Some days I'm not so confident.

Monday was Caleb's birthday. He is eight years old now. That morning I made breakfast for the family, and then took him to work with me. He did school work at the table in my office, and I did my own work at my computer. He finished first, because he is smarter than me, and a more diligent worker. So he took out a Lego spaceship kit that he got from his great-grandmother, and he put it together. After that, he built a hangar out of office supplies, and then built a paper airplane for me, to keep in the hangar. They're on my desk now, though Caleb is at home, busy being an eight year-old, doing schoolwork and reading everything he can find and getting bigger by the second, so big that soon I won't be able to pick him up and carry him to bed at night.

When we finished working we went to lunch, and then to Target so I could buy him a pencil sharpener he's been wanting. On the way into the store, he walked beside me, and even though my hand was dangling near his arm, he didn't take it the way he used to do when he was a little chattering boy. Now he is a big boy, and he doesn't need to hold my hand so much any more.

They keep getting older, if you're lucky, and so do you. Soon they don't need you to hold their hands or make their sandwiches or say their bedtime prayers with them. Soon you have all the quiet time you ever wanted, hours and days and weeks of it, interspersed with an occasional phone call, if you're lucky. Soon they are grown and they are gone.

I have years and years left with them, and I am sure they will grind me down to dust before the last of them leaves, but sometimes I am sad when I think about an empty house. I am happy too, in a way I didn't expect, because I know one day each of them will have his own house full of youngsters. They will crawl into his bed at all hours, and make messes and fill every room with giggles. He will toil and fear and laugh over each of them just as I have over my own children, and there is nothing better on earth.

I would give them anything, because their happiness is mine, and so I am happy when I think about their houses full of children, because I know that no matter what I do to make them smile now, there is an incomparable joy awaiting them, the joy of their own children. It almost makes it worth letting them go, not that I have a choice, which is probably best, selfish as I am.

That's a lot of philosophizing for an eight-year birthday, more than I did on my 40th. It's warranted, I suppose, because while I am simple and shot through with weakness, they amaze me. They come out so small and defenseless, and before long they are throwing crotch-level tackles and asking impossible questions, and healing wounds I didn't even know were there. We look far and wide for miracles and even rumors of miracles, and forget the miracles among us, the small lives that God is either foolish or hopeful enough to trust us with.

I've had eight years with Stephen Caleb, and five with Timothy Eli, and three with William Isaac, and less than one with Isaiah John, and I've not appreciated the time as I should. Let me appreciate the years to come. Let them be many, a great many, and forgive me for the time I've wasted. Forgive me for overlooking these miracles.

We could fill up a life with thank you and forgive me, couldn't we? I imagine we should say both every day.

It occurred to me that one day in the less-than-distant future, a young lady may decide to conduct an Internet search on the term: "William Isaac Woodlief." Said lady will be, of course, interested in marrying young Isaac, and itching to bear an entire brood of Woodlief babies. The last post might, naturally, give her pause. Being chaste and of good upbringing, she won't know how to, as it were, verify the goods. So in the interest of setting her mind at ease, I'm happy to report that everything is healed up nicely.

So tonight, in between stripping naked and getting into the tub, there was some jumping and general little boy rambunctiousness. I could hear them upstairs, and the thing is, I only needed one more minute for the task I was trying to finish. One more minute, and then I would be up the steps to supervise the bathing. One precious bloody minute.

It's those one-more-minutes that kill you as a parent.

Have you ever seen a bruised penis? I'd never actually seen one before tonight. It's not pretty, let me tell you. Whatever you're imagining, Isaac will tell you that his is worse. Somehow the boy managed to injure his penis, his face, both butt cheeks, and his big toe. In one fall. There were no steps involved. No baseball bats or blocks of concrete. Just a bed, and a push from his brother, and BAM: we're in a home triage situation. One boo-boo bunny to the face. Calendula ointment on the butt cheeks. Arnica cream all over the place. A package of frozen peas on the pee-pee.

I never thought I would have to hold a package of frozen peas on my son's penis. They don't tell you this may be a possibility in parenting class. It's all breathing and learning to count to ten and not freaking out when they get a diaper rash. But penis bruises? Nowhere in the manual.

I have to confess, it shook me up a little. I'm going to have a drink now. Maybe two.

A couple of nights ago I shot a cat. Lest you animal fetishists send me nasty email, or the anti-feline masochists among you send me packages of veal, I'll note that I didn't use my 9mm, but rather my Daisy Red Ryder underlever cocking BB gun, from ten yards out. You see, I thought he was picking on my cat. You might recall that we have a cat. The Wife would likely assert, were she reading this over my shoulder (which is, incidentally, not an advisable way to blog), that it is my cat.

It used to be that fat neighborhood cats would slink into our garage, beat up our kitten, and eat his food. He's grown a bit, however, and he still has his claws. Recently I found cat fur all over the garage, and assumed he'd beaten up one of those neighbor cats. The worm has turned, I thought. How now, brown cow? And other such exultant internal monologue. But the other night, I heard this curious keening from the garage.

Some of you are chuckling right now. I need you to understand that I never owned a cat as a child. If you read the earlier post about this animal, you will also notice that I used to think he was a she. I sometimes have this problem with humans as well, especially on college campuses. The point is, I am naive when it comes to the ways of the cat. Or I used to be.

So I grabbed my shooting iron, and went out to the garage. The noise was on the other side of the garage door. I opened it, and there in the driveway stood my cat, who is black, facing down another black cat. The problem was that in the lamplight I couldn't tell which cat was mine. I got a bead on one, and waited. They waited too. Then it occurred to me that if I moved toward them, my cat would stay, while the intruding cat would bolt. I took a step forward, my sights trained on what I thought was the intruding cat. She bolted. I shot her in the rump. She snarled and disappeared into some bushes.

At this point, I expected some gratitude from my cat. Instead, he looked at me as if to say, you idiot, and disappeared into the bushes after the first cat.

This was no food-dish raid. It was a booty call. Incidentally, I've since learned that cats like the rough stuff. This would explain that fur all over my garage, as well as my cat's new swagger. He's turned my garage into his playboy lounge. My cat is a player.

I understand at this point that several of you are already typing officious comments about how I need to get him neutered. But I'm hoping we can take him, naughty parts and all, with us when we move to the country at some future date, where he will sire a long line of mouse- and snake-hunting cats. So until then, the neighborhood ladies had best guard themselves.

This may be a moot point, now that I've gone and shot one of his girlfriends in the rump. I have to confess, it ran through my mind that this might not be a bad strategy toward young human ladies of questionable repute who come sniffing around my boys in the coming years. I understand that it is of dubious legality, but it certainly leaves an impression. I'm sure my sons would give me that same you idiot look, but they'd likely thank me for it later, don't you think?

Wednesday night I went with some of my uber-trendy, DC blogger friends to the Rock & Roll Hotel to see the 1900's. They have a great act, and those of you who live in real cities should go see them.

Afterward, I got interviewed by somebody from Spin magazine. They even put my picture on their website. Notice that I am the oldest person they interviewed. Then someone asked me the last concert I'd been to. The answer was Rush, in 1995, with my good buddy Bill Chandler. I couldn't hear for three days afterward. Explaining all this to my younger companions made me feel very, very old.

So I went back to my hotel room and went to sleep. In the morning, I showered, and scrubbed at the ostentatious black ink mark on my hand, the stamp I'd gotten at the club. It wouldn't come off. This led to some amusement among the fifty or so young people to whom I had to speak later that morning. Is that a tattoo? Surely he didn't go to a club, did he? Do they allow people his age into clubs?

This, too, made me feel very, very old. I suppose it's good to be humbled in this way. So I'm resolved to go see more indie bands in small, dark clubs.

This morning I stood in line at Starbucks, reading my Atlantic and waiting to order my customary grande hot chocolate with no whipped cream. My friend Ben recently explained that brain scientists believe happiness is generated by the successful pursuit of a goal, such that instant gratification — through video games, for example, or pornography — short-circuits the process, providing an initial boost of happy chemicals but leading quickly to a let-down, which perhaps explains the gloomy faces on all the overindulged teens at the local mall. I don't read science, because I have Ben for a friend. He loves science, and reads it, and then we meet at Starbucks and he tells me about it.

So I stood in line, enjoying both the instant gratification of holding and gingerly turning the pages of my beloved Atlantic, while working toward the happy goal of my hot chocolate. It was the perfect blend of immediate and future happiness that enables me to function. Writing is usually like that; there is the work of crafting lovely sentences, but also the immediate thrill of knowing that I am good at it, and that something holy may come from my unholy hands, and that it was what I was created to do.

The Starbucks guy was asking each customer if we have a busy day ahead of us. I like this Starbucks guy, because he is nice, and because once he gave me a free hot chocolate. I think if more people gave me hot chocolate, I would like more people. I like the Starbucks people in general, because they are refreshingly cheery. Someone at Starbucks is very serious about screening out the grouchy, slack-jawed doofuses one frequently finds staffing other such establishments. This is what hiring comes down to, in the 21st century: don't hire doofuses. It's harder than you think.

The cute, plaid-skirted Catholic schoolgirl at the front of the line apparently has a big day of doing whatever it is that Catholic schoolgirls do; I couldn't make out what she was saying, but she said it with exuberance. The business guy in front of me got to the front, and announced that he just wanted coffee, black, he didn't care what kind, and for them to leave room in the top of the cup. The Starbucks guy asked him if he had a busy day ahead of him. "Always," he said, gruffly, followed by something about being in his own business, or being a captain of industry, or being some kind of implement that one might purchase from Home Depot — I couldn't quite make it out, but I'm sure it supported the impression he wanted to create for all of us, which is that he is a Very Important And Busy Man who can't be troubled with coffee choices and Starbucks banter.

He took his cup without saying thank you, and strode out of the store, the long tails of his overcoat trailing behind him. He was the star of a movie playing in his own head, as I suppose we all are from time to time.

The Starbucks guy, somewhat chastened, took my money, but didn't ask me if I had a busy day. So I volunteered it. "In case you're wondering, I don't have a busy day. I'm going to shut my office door, drink my hot chocolate, and read." He smiled. It's not a bad day, I think, if you can restore the air when someone sucks it out of the room. And I think we all know I'm full of hot air.

This year, Santa decided that it would be great fun to leave whoopee cushions in everyone's stocking. I received two, perhaps one for each cheek, or maybe as a sign that I ought not to get a hot chocolate from Starbucks every day, even though it's how I talk myself out of bed in the morning.

The boys think this is great fun. You get to play a trick on someone, which is hilarious in and of itself, and said trick results in a fart noise. Whoopee! How aptly named is this device.

They are good sports about it, too, recognizing that a brother's enjoyment comes partly from the deception. Even though the whoopee cushion is always in plain view, the "victim" pretends as if he doesn't see it, and sits down extra hard. Forget the more expensive toys; most of Christmas Day's play consisted of my sons nonchalantly asking one of their brothers to "have a seat," or "come sit down," as if this is everyday conversation for young boys. "Sure," is the reply, and then the fart sound, and then they roll around laughing.

Eventually, Eli came to me with a mournful look. He'd become over-exuberant with his whoopee cushion, filling it too full of air. It burst. "Since you got two," he asked through his sniffles, "can I have one of yours?"

"Sure," I told him, as if I had a choice, as if I can say no to that sad little face. I suppose this means I really will have to lay off the hot chocolate.

Christmas night I made a pot of Christmas chili (it has red and green peppers in it). I played Handel's "Messiah" on the stereo. As I chopped peppers I could hear, mingled with the appearance of the angel to the shepherds, the sounds of farts and giggles. Somehow, this seemed right. That's part of the significance of the annunciation to the shepherds, that the King of kings was introduced to the lowest of the low, completely upsetting the hierarchies of man. Those shepherds were an uncultured lot, after all. Who knows, perhaps Handel might have incorporated the whoopee cushion, had it been available to him.

I like to think that more of our highbrow than lowbrow ways will rub off on our children, but maybe it's best if they get an equal dose of both. I can't imagine, after all, getting along with anyone who can't appreciate a whoopee cushion. In fact, once they're older, and serious about some young lady, I'll recommend that as the test. If she laughs, she's a keeper; if not, throw her back and keep fishing. Because we're rednecks that way.

There's probably some irony in writing an essay for a major international publication about how I am going to ease back on the throttle come this Christmas season, only to find myself collapsed in a chair at the end of December, praying for the quick approach of January 2nd. The plain truth of it, I think, is that being a parent of four boys is serious work, Christmas or no Christmas.

I'm still struggling to lay down my urge for efficiency, and be a full-time teacher. Instead of chopping vegetables in ten minutes, I need to work with one of the boys to chop them, and show him how to do so without slitting a finger vein. Rather than shovel snow in record time, I need to get my sons engaged, even if it means I get whacked in the shins — and other sensitive body areas — eight or ten times with the flats of their small but incredibly hard shovels. There is no speed in a family this size, except in the transmittal of vomiting- and snot-based viruses, which spread faster than rumors in church.

The work aside, however, it was a good season. A few days before my birthday we had a snowstorm, and the next day the boys and I had the mother of all snowball fights. I made a pile of snowballs, like Will Ferrell in "Elf," which I used to pelt the little whippersnappers. Isaac, not understanding the rules of war, kept toddling over to my pile, beneath his ten layers of coats and sweaters, and taking snowballs. He seemed so wounded, when I told him to make his own, that I just let him use mine against me.

Caleb, on the other hand, was a fount of knowledge about the rules of snowball war. There is, for example, a rule that says you can't hit someone else's snowball-in-process with your own snowball, which is one of my favorite things to do. I think of it as akin to when Jackie Chan grabs the bad guy's gun and takes it apart. There is also a rule about knocking down snowballs with your hand, another of my snowball aikido moves. Breaking these and other rules led to extreme displeasure expressed in no uncertain terms by Mr. Stephen Caleb. I don't know where this first son of two firstborns gets his rule-centered uptightness.

Eli proved the wiliest of the bunch. I could make the others scatter when I charged them, but he would stand his ground until he launched his snowball, and then scamper away. He also nailed me in a penalty round. The penalty round happens when you hit someone in the head. I accidentally pegged him in the noggin, and so I had to stand against a tree while he fired a snowball at me. He caught me square in the face. Then he giggled, looking very much like a snow elf must look, if one were to believe in such things.

On Christmas morning, the children were beside themselves, even Caleb, who has been having his doubts about Santa. More than once he's asked me if Santa is real. He's been hearing rumors, you see. I know lots of parents struggle with what to tell their children, and many try to walk a fine line by hemming and hawing about Santa being the spirit of Christmas, and so on.

I flat-out lie, and I have no problem with it. Santa, I explained to Caleb, is as real as you or me, and he is coming, so you'd better leave him some milk and cookies. Preferably chocolate chip. Homemade chocolate chip.

They were delicious.

Isaac was so excited, Christmas morning, that he did a little happy dance, capped by rearing back while I wasn't looking and punching me square in the groin. I think that's how Houdini got killed. The kid uses his hips when he punches; it's an innate warrior skill.

After I recuperated for a few minutes on the bed, we opened presents and emptied stockings and ate lots of delicious yummies and listened to Christmas music. It was a delightful day and we didn't miss driving from house to house one little bit.

Now we're observing the twelve days of Christmas, which means we have until January sixth to watch Christmas movies and listen to The Nutcracker Suite and read "The Night Before Christmas." Every night we also read the explanation behind the items in the song for that day (how the partridge on the first day of Christmas represents Christ, and so on). Then we hang an ornament depicting that item on a little tree. It's a nice complement to our Jesse tree.

We'll likely leave all our decorations up until the end of the month, because that's just how we roll. If our neighborhood busybodies don't like it, all the better. We'll slowly take them down, a little at a time, like we're weaning ourselves from a delicious drug. That can take some time, because we have a tree in every room. We heart Christmas, you see.

It has been a while, hasn't it? Insert the usual excuses here. Since the thought of composing a seamless essay is usually what keeps me from writing anything here for unconscionable gaps of time, I lured myself to the computer with the notion of writing you a disjointed, conversational little jaunt of a letter, much like what one sometimes gets from one's grandmother.

We recently had the big homeowner's association meeting, to vote on the oversized monuments intended to announce to the world that our neighborhood is just like every other insular white enclave of privilege. It was surprisingly civil, though one of the women on the monument committee proved to be decidedly ugly. Her vicious snippiness, however, was more than offset by the kindness of another monument committee member, who I now consider my new neighborhood friend.

During the spirited debate, my attention was drawn to a new resident, who has the distinguished, healthy-looking early gray of businessmen the world over. He seemed to be sizing up the crowd rather than the issue, as if he was looking to throw in with the winning side. Not a bad strategy for a new neighbor. So when he spoke up in favor of the monuments, I knew we'd lost. He parroted the arguments of the pro-monument side, and for good measure, accused one of the anti-monument folks of not attending previous meetings — a strange accusation coming from someone who had never been to a previous meeting. But it was what one of the pro-monument speakers had implied, and so he was just throwing in with the winners, and proving his mettle with a meanspirited jab. He'll fit in just fine here.

So yes, the side of reason lost, by nine votes. Adding insult to financial injury, a couple of evenings later I left my truck in our driveway overnight. In the morning, I went out to find that someone had let all the air out of one of the tires. Coincidence? Maybe so.

In other news, Caleb and I had a an appointment yesterday with our new dentist. While my hygienist scraped and fussed over my chompers, I listened to Caleb in the next room, quizzing his hygienist. He is in this ask-and-answer stage that I hope will pass before he needs to find a wife.

Caleb: "What's that big machine thing for?"

Hygienist: "Well, it's—"

Caleb: "Oh, I know, it's a laser, so if there's a cavity you can blast it. What's that pedal for?"

Hygienist: "You see, that's—"

Caleb: "I bet it's so you can turn up the lights really bright, when you want to see way way far down somebody's mouth."

After we were done, the receptionist offered us cookies and hot chocolate. This seems, to me, the equivalent of a car repair shop spreading one of those tire-puncturing nail strips across its exit. We like everybody in our dentist's office, though. They make me want to get more cavities.

My mother bought the boys a trampoline. I set it up a few weeks ago. It involved lots of pipes. Caleb organized the neighbor children into a platoon, and marched them into the garage, where all the pipes lay, and then out to where I was assembling the contraption. They love the trampoline. I, of course, think only about future dislocations and broken fingers and blunt force traumas to the head, but to them it's all about somersaults and belly flops. That's probably a better perspective on trampolines, and life in general.

Sometimes when I put Eli to bed, he whispers to me in long, breathless sentences all the things that I think he's stored up for the day. Recently I went outside with the boys, after the ice storm, and put them on thick pieces of plastic, and slid them down our driveway. When we came inside, shivering and ready for hot chocolate, Eli took my hand and asked me if we could snuggle until the hot chocolate was ready. It is hard to describe how it feels, to be loved that way.

Isaac hits me, all the time. He whacks me, and then he wraps his arms around me and squeezes. This is how he says I love you. I hope he finds a new way by the time he's bigger than me. Isaiah, meanwhile, has already smiled more in his first six months than I have smiled in my nearly, ahem, forty years.

That's right. It will be official in four days. I am going to be old. I'm actually sad about it, because I don't see what I've accomplished. The Wife keeps pointing out all these beautiful children, but then I remind her that God made them, not me, and it's my job not to screw them up, and we're a long ways away from being out of the woods in that regard. I suppose I won't be happy until they've survived my parenthood, and I'm in bookstores coast to coast, with perhaps a movie deal thrown in for good measure.

The Wife, meanwhile, is getting younger. All that stuff you hear about men aging well, and women going to pot? Apparently there's some kind of reverse-aging force field operating over our house, because the opposite is true here. I suppose that makes me a lucky man.

Yeah, it does.

Caleb, Eli, Isaac and I recently had a boys' night out. We made our way to our favorite diner and ordered up omelets and chocolate milkshakes. A favorite food item for the boys, as it turns out, is the maraschino cherry, replete with bright red stem to match its bright red skin. I noticed that rather than wolfing his down, however, Isaac was simply dangling his about. "You going to eat that cherry," I asked, "or just love on it?"

I meant it as a rhetorical question. Isaac smiled at me, then leaned forward and gave the cherry a little kiss. "Mmmwah." His brothers giggled. I rolled my eyes. The little ham spent the next twenty minutes, in between egg bites, kissing his cherry, cuddling it in his hands, and sweet-talking to it, all while casting mischievous grins in my direction.

Little smarty-pants. I don't know where he gets it.

We are walking across a parking lot. I am holding Eli's hand, and carrying Isaiah. Caleb has hold of the hem of my shirt. This is how we do parking lots. The wife is close behind. Suddenly she stops. "Where is Isaac?" she asks in a panic. That boy is forever wandering off, after all.

"Um, you're holding him."

She looks down at the boy whose arms and legs are wrapped around her trunk like he is a Koala bear. He grins up at her. She chuckles, that I-may-well-be-losing-my-mind laugh that is increasingly common in our house.

It may be time for a vacation.

Another scene you don't anticipate until you have a house full of boys:

Eli and Isaac are in the tub. I have washed Isaac, and now they are squirming past one another so Eli can get on deck for his scrub-down. "Ouch!" Eli squeals.

"What's the problem?"

"He stepped on my pee-pee!"

"Well, if you had been moving over like I told you to do, instead of just sitting there, it might not have gotten stepped on. Isaac, apologize for stepping on Eli's pee-pee."

Isaac gets a big I'm-really-not-sorry-at-all look on his face. "Sorry for steppin' on your wiener."

He may have heard that alternate word from me. I'm not going to confirm or deny this. I'll just say that the person who introduced that anatomical pseudonym to our household is a comic genius, because it never fails to elicit giggles from all the males in earshot, while making the poor woman in our house roll her eyes. Giggling, predictably, ensues. The trampled pee-pee is forgotten.

See how important humor can be?

This morning I woke to a Johnny Cash mood. I slipped into my black slacks and fitted white shirt, eased on my uber-trendy polished black shoes, shrugged into my black leather jacket, popped some sleek black sunnies on my face, and strolled out to my truck. I fired the engine and pushed in my Folsom Prison CD.

I was slick, I was bad, I was the dangerous beating heart of cool. I flicked on the windshield wipers. They skidded across a thin sheen of ice.

I don't care who you are, or how you're dressed — there's just no way to look cool when you're standing on tippy-toes with a bright blue window scraper in your hand, struggling to clear the center part of your windshield. I wonder if Johnny Cash ever had to clean his windshield.

I've got to start parking in the garage.

As I step out the door with Eli Saturday for our weekly trip to his violin instructor, he has his little violin case slung over one shoulder, and his sighted underlever cocking cowboy rifle over the other. In his hands he clutches an apple and a granola bar. He sits directly behind me in my truck. He crunches his apple and his granola bar.

We are comfortable with each other, Eli and me. Sometimes on these drives he has a lot to say, other times he is quiet. Today he is content to crunch and swallow, crunch and swallow. I am content to listen to him. I don't understand the feeling of completeness that washes over me when I hear my children eat, or when I lean over them in their sleep and listen to them breathe.

We are waiting at a stoplight now, at a busy intersection, and suddenly Eli stops crunching. I hear him pick up his rifle, cock it, and fire. One shot: clack. He puts the rifle down. He resumes crunching.

"What did you shoot, little man?"

"Monster."

"Oh." I look to our right and see an advertisement for the Halloween stores that are ubiquitous in low-rent storefront space this time of year. He just took out their giant poster of a mournful Frankenstein's monster. I think the monster probably appreciated it.

"You just needed the one shot?"

"Yep." crunch crunch crunch

We drive on our way. Eli is an observant boy. I suspect he saw that poster the last time we drove this way, and made a mental note to bring his shooting iron next time. And that's the thing about Eli — there's no bluster beforehand, no bragging afterward; he just brings his rifle, takes one shot to get the job done, and goes back to his apple, gentle as ever.

As I drive, I think about how I want to be like Eli when I grow up. I pray that I don't undo whatever it is that has knit him together so tenderhearted and relentless all at once. I wonder what the world would be like, were more men like that.

Wistful cowboy

Isaac is three as of last Friday. I took him to lunch and then to work, which promptly became "work," where he crawled under my desk and generally charmed and pestered everyone in earshot. Then it was back home for special Mom-and-Isaac time (they made sugar cookies) while I took his older brothers shopping for presents. There was a party, of course, with cake and cookies, followed by more fun with friends.

When I finally put him to bed that night, he was sweaty and frosting-flecked and sleepy. I think he knows he's loved. And yet he is, sometimes, for just a whisper of a moment, the wistful cowboy. It's in our genes.

Happy birthday William Isaac. Our lives are much more chaotic, and blessed, for your being in the world.

I am washing dishes when Eli sidles up next to me. He is a gentle presence, watching. Sometimes when he wants to talk you have to help him get his words started. "Where's Isaac?" I ask, not because I think he wants to talk about his little brother, but because I always get a little nervous when Isaac isn't in sight.

"He's sleeping," Eli says. "He's quiet; that's how I know he's asleep."

Which is one of the reasons the boy waits to talk until he catches one of us alone.

While at the Kansas State Fair, I was struck by the widespread obesity. How did we get so fat as a country? I pondered this as I ate my corn dog, followed by a basket of spiral chips, onion rings, meatballs on a stick, a slice of pizza, teriyaki on a stick (skewering just about any food item with a stick seems to make it taste better, doesn't it?), an ear of roasted corn, a bite of Isaac's caramel apple, and an entire funnel cake. Could this predisposition toward fatness be in our national genes? My jeans, in any event, are noticeably tighter.

The fair was everything it promised: the smell of sweat and axle grease and fried goldeny goodness thick in the air, the music and squeals and murmur of people, bodies and machinery in motion, an entrepreneur on every corner selling something, clusters of red-necked, thick-armed farmers in seer-sucker overalls, their stout offspring, the older boys with chew in their mouths and their hats rigid and proud, wide-eyed children everywhere, faces sticky with ice cream and cotton candy, some hopping with joy, all of us mingled together and hopeful, or weary, or both.

Caleb demanded entry to every big-boy ride his height would allow, including the spinning, dizzying kind for which I have no stomach. He looked like an astronaut or a pilot whirling through the air, blissful. Eli preferred rides with some heft and force — bumper cars, the child-size roller coaster, the rollicking slide. Isaac wanted what his brothers rode, until he got his wish, on a whirligig of a ride, his screams of terror so loud that the operator stopped it early. After that it was the motorcycles that go in a slow circle, and the carousel, and the flying elephants, but only with Dad tight beside him.

We came home late, and though neither the wife nor I voiced it for a few days, we both had the lingering sense that the fair hadn't taken. We'd rushed things, and let the older boys pair off with the children of friends we met there.

The fair, we realized, is an important part of our family tradition. It surprises me, the snobbery I find toward the state fair, from native Kansans, no less. I know several executives who pride themselves on never going. Having lived in states with actual cities, I have to stop myself from reminding them that they live in Kansas.

No Kansan is too good for the state fair. In fact, nobody is too good for the state fair, period, though perhaps the state fair is too good for some people. If you find it beneath you to get elbow to elbow with people who have not enough money and too many kids, and folks who work the earth, and greasy-fingered, shiny-eyed cheerful miscreants operating the rides, then perhaps you have too high an opinion of yourself, because we are all made of the same suspect dust, it seems. And if your mistaken opinion of your social position prevents you from getting a fresh corn dog and a hot steaming plate of sugary funnel cake, then it serves you right. Go content yourself with a pseudo-cosmopolitan meal in your favorite faux Euro-bistro with the cheap furniture, and pretend you live in New York. As for me and my household, we'll take the fair.

Friday night, this sense of incompletion still lingering, the wife and I decided to make another go of it on Saturday. If you can imagine how your children might react, were you to tell them that you were instituting a two-Christmas-a-year policy, then you have some sense of the elation in our home.

Saturday's damage to my waistline: one steak sandwich, one cheesesteak, a cherry limeade, fried mozzarella sticks, another basket of spiral chips, a healthy portion of Caleb's meatballs on a stick, and part of a funnel cake, the bulk of which was hastily consumed by my hypoglycemic wife as we drove home, after which she went promptly into a sugar-induced coma.

There were more rides, only this time we stayed together, the non-riders cheering for the riders. Each boy won a stuffed animal, which is good because the two goldfish they won Monday were dead by last night (funeral service to be held this evening). At the end, we all piled onto the Ferris wheel. Eli and Isaac snuggled close to me, and Caleb sat beside his mother to protect her and the baby. It carried us into the cool evening sky, where we sat quiet and peaceful. Lights glimmered below us, softened by the haze. In the distance, gentle rain clouds sat like mountains, and made me think of the thousand hills, and wonder how heaven can be any better.

I didn't think Isaiah cared much for my singing. The old standby, "Baby Beluga," has proved ineffective. "You Are My Sunshine" gets a yawn at best. My lovey-dovey voices work great to get a smile, but the singing, not so much.

Tonight, as I got Isaac out of the tub and prepared it for Isaiah, who was squawking and barking at the lack of interaction, I started belting out some Sam and Dave. There was a coo from where he lay. I came over to him, still singing, and he grinned. He wiggled. I hit the chorus, and he squealed. I took his wiggly hands in mine and helped him keep rhythm. I gave him some Otis Redding. He grinned even bigger. Marvin Gaye. Percy Sledge. Big hits with the baby. Big. Hits.

Isaiah's got soul.

I'm not sure that Isaac is actually sleeping in his bed. For those of you relatively new to SitG, Isaac is our two year-old (though he frequently insists that: "Tomowwow is my birfday. I'm telling the twuf. It is"). He's made a fairly regular habit now of climbing into our bed around 3 a.m. Understanding that this could become habit-forming, I've taken to waking him immediately, picking him up along with whatever toddler paraphernalia he's dragged down the hall with him, and plopping him back onto his own bed.

The other night, as I carried Isaac back to bed, I noticed that Eli's sheets were strangely askew, and he was scrunched up against the edge of his bed. Like a two year-old had been sleeping beside him. A two year-old who likes to scoot up right next to his sleeping partner. Curious, I peeked into Caleb's room. Same thing.

The next morning, I asked them if their brother had crawled into bed with them. As it turns out, he's making pretty regular rounds. He's like a hobo, sleeping in one place until he gets rousted, then moving on to another. Apparently he's big on the snuggling, and well, one can't snuggle by oneself, can one? I'm waiting for the night I discover that he's crawled into Isaiah John's crib. It's only a matter of time.

Isaac is such an affectionate boy. He's going to make some sweet girl very happy. He'll also drive her crazy. As I think on it, she'll probably need to be beefy as well as sweet, because he doesn't seem to be developing any gentle skills at all. All the more reason to sell our house and move out to farm country, where the girls, I hear, are tougher.

The other night I moved into that syrupy space between wakefulness and dreams, and thought that the Wife was roughly snuggling me. There was frenzied movement, interspersed with a tight little squeeze around my chest. There was also something metallic that occasionally whacked the back of my head. She's on the wrong side of the bed, I thought to myself.

Finally I woke to find Isaac snuggled in behind me, his ducky in one hand, his cowboy gun in another. Even when he sleeps, that boy can't be still.

Later I had a dream that Eli was kidnapped by a gang of carnies who travel by train. I have no idea what that means. In my dream I stepped into my bedroom long enough to grab my two favorite guns. Then I called a couple of men I know, and they brought their guns, and then we went and got Eli back. What's nice is that I'm confident each of those men would help me bring violence if that's what was needed, without hesitation. It's good to have friends like that.

Eli is bringing me another bookmark, a long piece of white paper cut all the way around with craft scissors to give it a decorative border. I have hundreds of books. I think soon most of them will have a bookmark made by Eli. It's what he does sometimes, just sits at his desk and quietly sings and makes bookmarks, like we are all in danger of losing our place. Maybe we all are.

"Do you know why I make you bookmarks?" He asks me.

"Why?"

"Because I love you. Do you know why I make them long and thin?"

"Why?"

"Because you're long and thin."

I love that he is sweet-hearted and innocent, and believes that the world can be a good place. I love that he is my son. I love that he helps save me from losing my place.

I'm teaching Isaac the beginnings of swimming. He likes for me to stand in the pool, close to the edge where he is crouching, his arms outstretched toward mine, hands twisting, beckoning me closer Daddy, closer, and then he jumps and I catch him, letting his head dip beneath the surface before I pop him back up into the sunshine and my arms. Then we "swim" back to the steps, my hands on his hips while he splashes and kicks. When I first told him to swim like a doggy, he kicked his legs and went Woof! Woof! Woof! until I explained how doggies swim.

Once he slipped off the bottom step while I was helping Eli swim, and for a second he was suspended in the water, only his hair above the surface, his feet stretching and not finding the bottom. Then I had him in my arms, and he was sputtering and crying. He knows what "deep" means now. He jumps toward my arms every time, knowing that it's deep water he's hurling himself into. It's stunning, if you contemplate it, how they trust us so completely. It's stunning as well how many of us set about betraying that trust with our neglect, or anger, or perhaps a seemingly innocent desire to see them fulfill our dreams.

And yet this little boy still jumps, when I hold out my arms. I hope I never fall short. I like that "sin" means "falling short of the mark." It suggests an immorality in what I see among too many parents, and often myself — the falling short. They set out meaning well, and hoping good things, but in the daily grind they — we, I — fall short of the mark. Our children jump, and we aren't there to catch them. So they jump less and less, and then not at all, and their eyes take on that look of sadness or resignation you'll find on an abundance of faces in any high school, so much so that many parents tell themselves that's just how teenagers are.

It always fills me with a deeply peaceful feeling to be around our friends whose teenagers are happy and sociable, who don't have that look of being set against the world as a consequence of having come to believe the world is set against them. It's good to know parents who have stayed the course. It makes me hopeful. Are you staying the course?

What people don't tell you before your first baby is that you don't always feel lovey-dovey towards him when he arrives. So you feel guilty for a few days, until one day you look at him and are overwhelmed with a Mama or Papa Bear feeling, because at the center of every cell in your body you feel rooted to this squirming little thing that clings to your fingers and burrows into your skin looking for a breast.

The Wife was in love with him the moment I put him in her arms, and now he's starting to grow on me as well. I'm not sure he likes me yet, however; I sit with him bundled in my arms, and he gazes up at me with a suspicious expression, as if he is thinking: "You are not the Mama." Once he gets past the need to eat every two hours maybe he'll find me more interesting.

I've tried to spend more time with the boys these past few days, to remind them we still love them. They've all taken to baby brother, though until he can wrestle he's of limited use to them. For the most part they pet him the way they pet our kitten, or they take his head in their hands and say Hello, baby Isaiah, and give a pretend squeeze, because by now they've heard Mom or Dad tell them to be gentle, for God's sake, about a million times. He likes to watch them, maybe because they are smaller, and closer to his scale, or perhaps because something in his genes is already called out to do little-boy things, only his muscles won't yet respond. So he watches them with a slightly less suspicious look (because they, too, at the end of the day, are also not the Mama).

Another piece has been added to our puzzle; this is how it feels, as if all along we were waiting for this boy to arrive and make us more complete. This is why we are parents, the Wife and me, and many of you reading, why we endure the terror and heartache and deprivation, because we are not completely us otherwise. We trade a world of black and white for a world of color, and become more fully ourselves and more fully something better at the same time. This is what they do for us even as they drive us crazy. But it's a good crazy.

Father's Day morning, the Wife brought me homemade blueberry muffins in bed. I sat reading short stories and eating blueberry muffins, and it was blissful. Soon I heard them conspiring outside my bedroom door, the little ones and their mother the ringleader. In marched a little troupe of celebrants, each bearing a gift. They perched themselves around me on the bed, each clamoring for me to open his gift first. They gave me a big bucket of bubble gum, some metal collar stays, a Hemingway-style pocket journal, and a cheerful little book published in 1902, titled The REAL Diary of a REAL Boy, by Henry Shute. It's written in the language of a schoolboy, and has entries like this:

December 15. Micky Gould said he cood lick me and i said he want man enuf and he said if i wood come out behind the school house after school he wood show me and i said i wood and all the fellers hollered and said they wood be there. But after school i thaught i aught to go home and split my kindlings and so i went home. a feller aught to do something for his family ennyway. i cood have licked him if i had wanted to.

I love old books, the feel and weight and texture of them, and the knowledge that they were born when people read, and when they read something more intelligent and edifying than Danielle Steele or Robert Ludlum.

We went to church and happily it wasn't a sermon about how none of us men are good enough as fathers. After that we went to our favorite Wichita restaurant, and I had a Dr. Pepper and didn't feel the least bit guilty about it. Later that day there was more short-story reading and then a run with the boys, Caleb and Eli on bicycles and Isaac in the running stroller and me doing the hard work in between wheezing at them to look both ways before turning onto a street, and to be extra careful because that SUV coming at us is being driven by a teenager, and for God's sake to look up at the road and not down at how fast their feet are pedaling.

Later that evening we had my favorite meal: hotdogs and the Wife's extra-special macaroni and cheese. As an added bonus her grandmother, who is visiting, made me creamed corn. Still later, I attempted to make The Perfect Tom Collins, according to a recipe I found in The Wall Street Journal, but I put in too much gin and then tried to compensate with more soda and sugar, but then that threw the squeezed lemon into too small a proportion and so by the time I was done it was something more like a soggy sugared pine tree than the perfect anything, but liquor is liquor and it tasted especially good because I bought the gin the next county over, because Wichita forbids alcohol sales on Sundays, unless one happens to own a restaurant or bar, which likely inclines one to contribute generously to city council members, who in turn are more likely to stick by their moral position that alcohol should not be sold on Sundays.

One day, in heaven, I'm going to sip a Tom Collins with Jesus on a Sunday, and we're going to have a good laugh about blue laws.

Still later, some friends and I watched a man movie, although it wasn't really because there was far too much kissing and love lost for my taste, but the moral of the story was good, plus more than one bad guy got skewered, so it was certainly a good use of two hours.

Around midnight I realized that while I may be an okay father, I am a very bad son, because I didn't call my father or stepfather. I'll try to remember how easy it is to be swept up in the chaos and bliss of being a father to all these young ones, so that my feelings aren't wounded when they are too busy being fathers to be sons.

I lay awake for a time after the house was completely dark and silent, thinking thank you over and over in my mind, whispering it to God. And he must say I know when we thank him for our children, because he is a father too. It is good to be a father. More fathers should try it. If I can get this right, I keep telling myself, the rest of it doesn't matter. Be a good husband. Be a good father. The rest of it fades away almost as soon as we are cold in the ground. Help me get this right. That's what I whisper to God in between the thank yous.

Eli woke up crying last night, growing pains in his legs. I remember those pains, and my mother giving me two chalky St. Joseph's aspirin, the ones with orange flavoring. There's something about being cared for by your parent in the middle of the night that almost makes the hurt worth it. So I gave him medicine, and rubbed his legs, and told him a story that my grandmother used to tell me at bedtime, about a little mountain boy who liked to chop wood, but who got careless (this being a grandmother's story, and perhaps more to the point, one of my grandmother's stories) and chopped into his own foot, nearly taking off a toe. But, through hard work and determination, he not only recovered from his injury, he entered the wood-chopping contest in the state fair and won first place, despite being the smallest competitor.

"Does he have muscles like me?" Eli asked, yawning, the pain disappearing in a cherry Tylenol haze.

"Yes. Big muscles for a little fellow."

"Did you ever chop wood?"

"Yes." I showed him a scar from cutting wood. He showed me a recent ouch. I curled up next to him on his bed, and we whispered to each other about little boy things, until his eyelids began to flutter. I put my face down on his pillow, and breathed in his smells of soap and toothpaste and the slobber dried into his beloved blankey. I thought about how one day too soon for me, and not soon enough for him, this will be over. He will lie on a bed with his own child and tell him about the little woodcutting boy, and I will be Grandpa, who visits sometimes and barks at the television news and always has chewing gum or candy to share.

I remember holding Eli once, or perhaps it was Caleb, or Isaac, or maybe this realization has happened with each of them, and the Wife coming up and helping me hold and hug him. I remember the smile on his face, eyes closed, a look of bliss. "I have no knowledge of what this must be like," I told my wife. Neither does she. We have never been held by a mother and father at the same time, both loving us and loving each other. It is an alien gift that we give our children, yet we sense its power in the peacefulness that comes over them.

The only thing better than feeling that embrace, I imagine, is giving it to my children, and knowing that they will never hold their own children and marvel, without experience, at what that feeling must be like.

This is part of the discovery, as I've written about our family, here and in the pamphlet (and have you ordered your copy yet?) and in pages that perhaps one day someone will read — that it is possible to build a foundation on razed ground. Perhaps it even makes us more careful, knowing how easily a home can crumble. Each brick matters very much to us. We have a generational vision, not only of how far we can get our children along a path free of neuroses and fear and insecurity, but how far they in turn will take their children. I think you have to have that vision as a parent — am I laying the foundation for my children and their children to live full, meaningful lives, or am I just feeding them the seed corn, set as I am on my own comfort and temporary success?

These are the things I thought about as Eli drifted off to sleep. They wonder sometimes, I think, why I watch them, why I search their faces. That's one thing I'll be happy for them never to know, that endless question: Am I getting it right?

Yesterday was the last day of a four-day basketball camp for Caleb and Eli. On the whole I think the major American sports (football, baseball, basketball) are a source of more harm than good when it comes to character-building (see this interesting study about cheating by student athletes, for example). But I believe this has more to do with the low moral qualities of the adults involved, and besides, I want my sons to have the rudimentary skills even if I'll hesitate to let them get very involved in these sports as they get older. And while they think I'm an awesome basketball player because I routinely dunk over them on our seven-foot rim, I can barely dribble. So, basketball camp.

I noticed something interesting as I watched them go through various competitions. There were nine groups of children, segregated by sex and age, gathered around hoops, competing to see who could do the most lay-ups in two minutes, dribble around obstacles the fastest, etc. In all of the boy groups, I saw intense competitive concentration. Through the din of a hundred basketballs slapping the floor, however, I heard a melodic sound that was out of place. In the youngest girl group, you see, they were cheering for each other.

It was endearing, and for a moment I wished the boys could support each other like that, instead of being so intently focused on winning. But then my internal man slapped my internal chick and told her to get hold of herself, that civilization is not built solely on nurturing and acceptance.

This is a challenge in raising boys, to love and nurture them, but also to prepare them for a world where they must struggle, where triumph is not guaranteed, and where a great many wicked people will be set against them. We have to raise them to face challenge and danger without shrinking, to continue striving in the face of defeat, and to crave victory. I want my sons to be gracious gentlemen, to be sure, but the difference between a gentleman and a coward or weakling is that a gentleman can pound a lout into submission, though often he may choose not to.

I'm tempted to write more here about some of the things I've realized about finding the balance between toughness and nurturing with my boys, but instead I'll direct you to (and have I mentioned this already?) my pamphlet on the subject, available from the New Pamphleteer.

C'mon, you had to know that was where I was headed.

Overheard while driving:

Isaac: "Twust me, Eli. Tomowow is my birfday."

Wife: "Isaac, your birthday isn't until September."

Isaac: "Is that tomowow?"

Wife: "No, sweetie. It's a lot of days away."

Isaac: "Oh."

And then later, while Eli and Isaac flop around like otters in the bathtub, periodically splashing either me or my newspaper, or splashing each other:

(splash, splash, splash)

"Stop, Isaac."

(splash, splash, splash)

"Stop. Stop. STOP."

(splash, splash, SPLASH)

"Stop doesn't mean do it!"

"Oh. Sowwy."

I have a two-foot shadow, and his name is Isaac. When I mowed on Saturday, he insisted on sitting in my lap the entire time. When it was time for the push mower, he followed behind with his little plastic mower, the one that clicks as its wheels roll. He even had on his goggles (he calls them "gobbles") and a mask. (For the record, I know that I look like a dork mowing the grass with a mask, but the alternative is misery, and I have now reached the age where comfort trumps cool. Not completely, as it turns out, because at the same time I am moving away from wearing shorts in public, having decided that one simply cannot look like a real man in a pair of shorts.)

When I got out the trimmer, Isaac fetched a plastic hockey stick and followed behind me, pretending to trim. In the back, where a slope leads me to keep him from riding on the mower, he follows behind on his tricycle, gobbles and mask on, pretending to mow. It's the seriousness that's most impressive, how the boy pretend-mows row after row. He's no gentleman farmer, this one.

Then it was on to some pipes around the pool filter that were leaking. I got my tools together, and he ran to get his little plastic tools, along with his yellow construction hat. I sawed and cursed under my breath, and he chirped at me while whacking away. No matter where I went, he was right there with me, all day.

All. Day. (I love my son I love my son I love my son)

It can be a little unnerving, like having one's own leprechaun, except that instead of dispensing wisdom and hints about a pot of gold, this one asks roughly one billion questions per minute and likes to drop his trousers and pee whenever the mood strikes him. If they had any doubts before, our snooty neighbors now have confirmation that we are in fact a family of rednecks. The practice mortifies my wife, but I admire the boy's frontier spirit. The problem is that he doesn't hide behind anything. Wherever he happens to be when the need arises, that's the place that's getting watered.

By Sunday, I was a little spent. But Sunday was Mother's Day, so my job was to give the Wife a break for a day. It's interesting, isn't it, how we celebrate a day by not doing the thing it was named after? Mother's Day. Labor Day. Thanksgiving. You get the idea.

But I figure the poor woman has earned it, if only for putting up with me.So I needed to give her a break. Caleb's been pestering me to build something, and so I figured that might be a good thing to occupy everyone's time. What, I asked him, did he want to build today?

A cannon. The boy has instructions on how to build a cannon. So off we went to Lowe's, where we bought approximately 10,000 PVC parts, some of which are actually the right shape and size. Isaac insisted on carrying a big length of pipe. As we made our way down the aisle, him staggering under the weight, me trying to keep him from whacking anyone in the crotch, he declared, "I strong. I two. I Isaac Woodlief."

I am man; hear me roar. Or in my case: I am father; let me sleep. But the mission was accomplished — at least insofar as Mom got her rest. The cannon still needs work. I'm trying to help Caleb understand that no project is worth anything unless you have to make at least five trips to Lowe's to get it finished. He's not convinced.

That night, before bed, each boy gently hugged his mother, careful of her swollen tummy and the wiggly creature inside. They're all very sweet to her. I'm trying to help them grapple their way to manhood, and to being good husbands themselves one day. This will be nothing short of a miracle, because I've not been much of either, a man or a husband. This is the miracle, that they are changing me as I try to raise them. This is why the sleeplessness and the fatigue and the lack of privacy are all worth it, because without them I am something far less. Yesterday was Mother's Day, but it was also Father's day, and it was good.

Caleb wants to build things: robots and rockets and bug traps. I can barely build a sandwich. Thankfully our friend Lyndal will be able to teach him how to weld when the time comes. For now he's content to make things out of construction paper and tape, or use whatever else he can find in creative ways. A few weeks ago he buried his plastic bucket in our front yard, up to its lip, and then positioned three rocks over it like a little carport. His theory was that an unsuspecting bug would toddle under the rocks for shade and fall into the bucket.

That didn't work out, but something nice about Caleb is that he is not easily daunted. His latest quest is to catch a cricket. He hears them through his open window at night, and he's decided he should have one as a pet. Around nine o'clock last night, as the last sunlight was fading, he put on his froggy boots and went outside with his little plastic terrarium. He was going cricket hunting, he said.

There are precious few times in a parent's life when even the dullest of us understands that we should grab this experience or that moment with our child. This was one of those moments, and so I put on my shoes and followed him out. He had intended to go it alone, but I could tell he was glad for the company. We held hands and traipsed through the dark, and I whispered to him that the crickets always seem far away because they're hiding from us. Caleb was certain that somewhere there must be a guidebook on how to catch a cricket. "Maybe you could look it up on How to Catch A Bug dot com," he offered. "Or maybe Bug Trapping dot com." We don't let the boy surf the Internet, but somehow he's gathered that it has everything you want to know, so long as you remember to put a "dot com" on the end of your question.

(I wish this were so. I'd start with www.HowDoIKeepFromScrewingThisFatherhoodThingUp.com and work my way over to www.SurvivingWhenYourPregnantWifeCan'tHaveChocolate.com.)

We couldn't find any crickets, but as we returned to the front porch, we spied two Junebugs (I think) clasping the stone wall beside our door. "Do you want a Junebug?" I asked him.

"Sure," Caleb said. He shivered as he looked closer. "It might get you."

"I don't think it can," I said. I steered him over to the bug, until his terrarium was positioned just beneath it. Then I lightly flicked at the bug. It wouldn't let go of the wall. Then I noticed it had little pincers, and was trying to bite me with them. "Whoa," I said, "it's trying to get me."

"Be careful Dad!"

I flicked it again, and it bounced off the top of the terrarium and onto the ground. Caleb and I jumped back. We carefully approached it again and tried to coax it into the terrarium. "Pick it up," the Wife goaded me, having ventured out onto the front step to observe her two brave men.

"I'm trying," I groused. I attempted to nab it by a back leg, and then by the rear of its shell, to no avail.

"Ooo! Dad, be careful." I tried again. I hate bugs. They're so . . . crawly and creepy.

Finally the Wife stepped in, scooped it up, and dropped it in the terrarium. That's probably just as well;