January Peanuts, part 1

• Matthew has an overdeveloped sense of order. His friend's dad said he'd pick him up at "about 9" this morning, and since 9:00 sharp Matthew's been telling him that "your dad probably forgot; you should just walk home."
• Isaac's dislike of nuts-mixed-in-food extends to picking the pecan chunks out of butter-pecan ice cream. And yet, he'll eat plain peanuts by the handful.
• A naive father would expect a game called "hide and seek" to be about, you know, hiding. The way my kids play it, it's about yelling: "I wasn't ready yet!" "Isaac, go away!" "That's cheating!"
• 15 minutes early to church today for the first time in years -- I thought it started at 11, but it was really 11:30. Rachel's family calls this "the Grandma VanDuker method of punctuality."
• Melissa was carrying her scriptures, the picture she drew, and needed to put something down to open her candy. She handed me the picture: "Daddy, can you hold this for me? I'm full of hands."
• Isaac helped Rachel take the ornaments off the tree. At first, he tried to put them back on, which was funny since he spent the first two weeks trying to remove them. But then he got enthusiastic about it, and now we have several more ornaments to glue back together.
• Isaac likes to do the motions to "wheels on the bus," with an attention span far exceeding his parents'. His favorites are "round and round," "swish swish swish," and "wah wah wah." Yes, Daddy sings it in French, after looking up the word for "windshield wiper."
• Heavy Rain is probably the most intense game I've ever seen, as well as the most convincing rebuttal to Ebert's "games cannot be art" view. It also deeply deserves its Mature rating (though not in the gratuitous blood and guts way that most M-rated games do).
• Isaac and I agree that Thomas the Tank Engine is boring.
• I heard Isaac running the faucet in the bathroom. "Oh, well," I thought, "that's pretty harmless. I'll just keep answering email for a few minutes." Then he reappeared, grinning, with an armful of unrolled toilet paper. That's our little Mr. Entropy.
• Isaac _really_ likes Matthew's Woody doll after watching the Toy Story movies. My job is to put Woody's hat back on every two minutes.
• Crap. Now Rachel banned _me_ from eating in the living room, too.
• "Windows did not start up normally." That's because a two year old kept cycling the power before it finished. I feel bad for poor confused Windows whimpering to itself in the corner there.
• Rachel: " What's your favorite kind of rock, Melissa?" Melissa: "Shiny rocks!"
• Matthew: "... never mind; I forgot." Melissa: what is it you forgot?"
• Matthew: "Why doesn't Isaac trust me?" Me: "I couldn't possibly guess." Fatherhood is making me a better liar.