Our daughter Sarah Grace was a major surprise. Neither Wifester or I were expecting her to show up at all, so it came as a bit of a shock that Wifester started having morning sickness during a week long vacation to the Outer Banks. I honestly didn't understand why she was so queasy, especially on vacation (a super rare thing in our household), but when we got back she took the test on Easter of 2011 and discovered she had the baby bug. When she told me I thought I was going to have a heart attack...200 fears hit at once: How were we going to afford this? Would I be a decent father? All sorts of questions ran through my thick skull. But Sarah showed up and to be honest I just can't imagine how I went through so much of life without this awesome little kid. She's a toddler now, running about the house and wreaking havoc on anything that isn't nailed down .

Sarah's Likes:
Sesame Street
Strawberry Banana Yogurt
Graham Crackers
Arrowroot cookies
Scrambled Eggs
Spaghetti (specifically Rotini, the twirly pasta)
Galloping around the house on her private horse (Dad)
Music and Singing
Reading! (she has an impressive library)

Sarah's Dislikes:
Any food with a wet consistency
Going to bed early
Messy Diapers
Any structure made of Mega Blocks. It must be dismantled immediately.
Being spoon fed
When Dad goes to work

And a fairly recent picture of Sarah (and dad) watching Sesame Street.

Any structure made of Mega Blocks. It must be dismantled immediately.

Speaking of which, Evan and I went to our first play a couple days ago. Our host had a Lego Quatro Bucket. I had never heard of it before, but it's really cool (double the size of Duplos). Looking online it looks like it's no longer being made. Legos will definitely be a required toy in our household as Evan gets older.
Oh, and SL, you'll appreciate that I already have Candyland ready to go Just need Chutes and Ladders.

I have no kids (not married), but i have 3 younger siblings. None of them are that young any more, but of course we've all had our share of amusing stories; i think my favorite involved my brother.

My brother is a real sweetheart: easy-going, good-natured, all of it. At our old church it seemed like he always had this gaggle of littler girls following him around. One day, another boy closer to my brother's age was being mean to one of the little girls, and hit her. My brother (eight years old at the time) immediately said, "Don't hit! That's not nice!" He hit the other boy, and said, "See, that's not nice, now is it?"

We didn't hear this story until the little girl's mom called and told my mom about it. The little girl had told her older sister about it; the sister had wanted to know who the boy was, but the little girl assured her that my brother had taken care of the situation.

What a fun topic! And I love that photo of Evan, fantasia and am sooo thankful for the ongoing news of Evan's development and growth after his unexpected early start in the world.

But Sarah showed up and to be honest I just can't imagine how I went through so much of life without this awesome little kid.

Exactly. 'Tis true. SL, I remember PMing back and forth with you and listening to your understandable concerns about being a new dad, knowing that you would feel totally different after the fact. Children change your life completely and in an amazing way. They truly are one of God's most wonderful blessings.

Great pic, SL and Sarah.

Legos will definitely be a required toy in our household as Evan gets older.

Definitely! Our oldest son (24 this August) was our Lego-fanatic. Oooh, the creations he would concoct! And still, even though he is an adult now, when he is home from university and has the time, he will pull out the many Lego buckets (hurrah for Rubbermaid!) and build, build, build. Such a creative toy!

Arwenel, that sure is a good story about your brother. It's great to see that even though he is good-natured, easy-going, etc, he has that gumption and conviction to confront something that's wrong.

Briefly (I hope), we have three children:

*Kimberly/Nellie of Narnia here: 8 lbs 6 oz at birth, March 1985: she is one of the most caring, giving, compassionate people I have ever known (without being bias ); she was born with a congenital dislocated hip, which the doctor found the day after birth, so it was corrected during her first year of life with body casts. If he hadn't been so diligent (apparently many doctors miss this), she could have been a cripple for life.

*Geoff: 9 lbs 8 oz at birth, August 1989, literally the minute an earthquake was occurring, centered in Lake Ontario. I thought I was hallucinating in the intensity of the delivery, but was told after that the room really was shaking. Geoff will be graduating from the University of Ottawa this April with a major in Psychology (he started out in a Statistics major), possibly continuing at a uni closer to home to receive a minor in Stats, for which he already has a number of credits.

*Steven: 8 lbs 6 oz, June 1993. Steve is finishing his 2nd year at McMaster University, majoring in business, with a strong accounting focus. Honestly, he knew from around age 3 what he wanted to go in to when he grew up, as he has always adored numbers. Parents have bragging rights, yes? At age 6, he would be adding 60,240 + 20,125 (for example) on holidays, then when back in his grade 1 class would be given a sheet that was based on math problems for that age such as 5 + 4 or 2 + 6. Quite quickly, the teacher found out she needed to challenge Steven a fair bit more.

I have so many children stories, as no doubt any parent does: yes, fantasia, they will definitely come: write them down as many are priceless and so funny. One for now: when Geoff was a young toddler, he had trouble figuring out how a certain time term was pronounced. One day I asked him how long he thought it would be until Daddy arrived home. He emphatically stated "about a nour" because that's the way it sounded to him when we said it.

Okay, one more: Michael W. Smith was a favourite music artist in our home as the kids were growing up. We couldn't get enough of his early albums. The kids knew his songs so well that one night as Geoff was settling in bed, we heard him singing from Smitty's "Change Your World" CD a few lines from "I Wanna Tell the World", which talks about MWS meeting his future wife. Coming from a 6 year old, we cracked up when we heard him belt out as he was lying there ...
"I just want the world to know
Love has got me good to go.
I have got to get it out
She is all I think about".

Yes, two Geoff stories there, and even though Kim and Steve definitely have some good ones as well, Geoff seemed to have the knack of doing the greater number of hilarious things.

As for likes and dislikes for each of them, I will post those another time.

Uh, so much for briefly. that's what happens when you get a parents talking about their kids.

Enjoying the stories and the pictures!

And, oh the stories I could tell. I don't have kids of my own but have nieces and nephews, not to mention 'honorary' nieces and nephews among my friends' children.

One popular story in our group concerns a high school friend's oldest daughter when she was just a wee lass (this was years ago; this story even came up at her bridal shower in 2011).

This story probably is one better told in person than in text, but here we go:

Our group often camps together, and has done so since the kids were little. This girl was a year or two old and must have had a nightmare, for she woke up screaming. She had quite a loud voice - and the thin material of a tent offered little resistance to her volume - so I think everyone in the campground could hear her reply when her parents tried to calm her down and get her to go back to sleep: "I don't wanna be quiet! I don't wanna go to sleep!"

It took a very long time - which seemd even longer at the time - to calm her down. But the story still comes up from time to time, especially when little ones have trouble sleeping while camping.

@Arwenel, your story cracked me up! LOL

@SL, I think we have a similar back story... dislike of all children, except our own.

Must brag on my kiddo. Yesterday he did his first mini-pushup. I couldn't grab the camera cause my dog was close by and I didn't want her bothering him, but it was pretty cool. I tried to take one today but Evan was listing to starboard and was having a hard time keeping his head up straight. For a minute I thought he was gonna roll over but didn't do it.

His other favorite thing to do lately has been standing. Boy he likes to stand on those wobbly little legs. Obviously he's too small to hold himself upright, but if I keep him from falling over, he can definitely support his own weight.

I don't have kids but my friend recently had a baby. She brought her to our apartment for the first time yesterday. Aravis wasn't quite sure what to make of her. My friend was changing the baby's diaper. She put the dirty diaper in a plastic bag. Aravis promptly pounced on it. I removed the cat and the baby reached over grabbed the bag and started to try to chew on it. My friend said "see that is another thing you have in common with Aravis." The baby seemed to like petting Aravis with Mommy's help. Aravis allowed for a little bit and then left.

fantasia_kitty, aaaaa Evan is such a darling! How many months is he? AAAAA I just love babies

Pattertwigs Pal, you were lucky that she just petted the cat, when I was a kid I always went straight for the cat's whiskers and pull them . I don't why, there was just something facinating about cat's whiskers

I join the ranks of those who doesn't have children...yet! Someday when I'm all grown up I'll have lot's of kiddos of my own with tons of stories to tell
Although I do have a neice and nephew which I love to pieces! My niece Alyona is two-and-a-half and my nephew Kostya is 8 months. Both of them are soooooo funny! Kostya just learned to splash in the bathtub. He just LOOOOOVES baths! After he has a bath it's almost as if we had a flood in our bathroom . He'll have water in his eyes, mouth, and nose, but he'll be laughing because we just loves splashing around.

@De_De, believe it or not, he will be six months old here in just a couple days. Can't believe it. But his adjusted age (the age he would be if he had been born at his due date) is three months.
Six month vaccines next week. That should be loads of fun. /sarcasm

@Twigs, that's hilarious about your friend's baby and Aravis. Sounds like they would have gotten along just smashingly (literally perhaps? ). We've still be very cautious with Evan around our pets. Abi (cat) in particular is not a big fan. She's gotten over her phobia of him, she hid for a good two weeks after we brought him home, but she still doesn't care to be around him much.

awww Evan is really adorable, those eyes are enchanting

Love reading the posts and stories in this thread

So I'm part of the ranks of people who doesn't have kids, but like De said, we have a niece and a nephew and also I have De and Narnian_Archer, and there are some great stories with them when we were younger
I'll just post a few

Honestly, for funny stories, De takes the cake Once (when De was around five years old) we were playing hide and seek in the house and I was it and searching for the girls, I saw that all the laundry was heaped out of the dirty laundry basket and lying right beside it. Naturally, it was easy to conclude who was in the basket, but funny thing is, De was just shocked beyond belief that I had found her so soon, she had thought it was such a great hiding place and that it would take me forever to find her. Generally, De had this thing for hiding and making us find her. We would come into the room, De would be gone and we would have to look for her, though sometime her giggling gave her away Sometimes she would get stuck in her hiding places and we would somehow have to get her out of them.

And here's a more recent one of my niece
I had been in a pretty uncomfortable situation that had come out very awkward and I was very miserable about the whole thing. My niece noticed that I was very unhappy and she came up to me, grabbed my face in both her hands and said soothingly 'Ada (her way of calling me) be happy, be happy' seeing that this didn't really have the desired effect on me, her tone became more commanding 'Ada be happy, be happy! Happy, be happy' it was really sweet and her childish, two year old way of saying it made me crack up and smile

here's a picture of our nephew as De mentioned, he's 8 months old, he's really sweet and easy going and loves smiling at people, even if he doesn't know them. Compared to his older sister, he's extremely calm, but he demands a lot of attention. As long as people notice him, he's happy, but if ignored for to long, he starts getting upset This is probably going to sound very silly, be he looks SO Russian!!!! lol, such a slavic face He's got four teeth now, with another two pushing through, and just loves scraping them against each other the sound of teeth scraping against each other is really unpleasant to me, but there's no way to get him to stop!

oh boy, this has come out a very long post I'll end it here

LOL @ De hiding in the laundry basket. When I was little, we played hide and seek with my dad all the time. It was such fun! But my dad found the ultimate hiding place one day and we could. not. find. him. He hid in the air return duct in the floor (which was quite sizable, but we didn't think he could fit in it!). We finally found him when he started making funny noises on purpose.

Well, Evan got his six month shots yesterday. Poor little guy had a low-grade fever and was rather cranky last night. Don't blame him one bit. But the fun part of course was getting him to take Children's Tylenol. The last time this happened, he spit the whole thing out. This time Daddy was ready and just kept pushing it right back into his mouth. I took a taste and it's not even that bad. Especially compared to his vitamins and antacids. Maybe it's the texture?

Fantasia. My parents tell me I did that to them when I was a few days old.

I'm enjoying reading the stories here!

Well, like De said, being the baby in the family, I don't have younger siblings, and I'm still a kid. However, I worked with 3-5 year olds for some time, and that brought many hilarious circumstances. And we have a quite a few funny ones ourselves.

My parents would take a lot of videos of CS and I when we were little in order to send them to our grandparents, who lived halfway across the globe. One time, my parents said, "Say hi to your grandparents!" and CS ran up to the camera, looked in the lens, and said, "I don't see anyone!"

Over the weekend Evan discovered that fingers are wonderful to nom on. He spent a good part of his days with his fist jammed into his mouth. Perhaps he will be a thumb/finger sucker after all?
He also spent a good portion of yesterday eating! Oh my did he eat. I could barely keep up with him. Growth spurt? He feels heavier anyways
But my highlight of the weekend came last night when he let out his first giggle. I was so excited.

*bump*

I do so enjoy reading everyone's fun stories.

Well, I must send a big to peterpevensie and his wife who delivered their first baby this past Tuesday, a girl! So excited for them in this new adventure.