“What are you doing?” I ask Wife. This is not an honest question. I know full well what she is doing, she is staring down the barrel of an old lever-action pop gun. The lever part is important. We’ll come back to that part. Remember that part. For those of you who don’t know what …
Isaiah to his mother: “Can I have some cereals?” Mom: “You want some raisin bran?” Isaiah: “Is not raisin bran, is raisins bran.” Another literal child. Lovely.
We are in the minivan, and Wife notices trees outside a store, trees with leaves made of lights, lights that slowly change color from emerald to scarlet to the richest purple. We’ve all been a bit glum, now that the trees and lights and wreaths have all but disappeared from the city. These trees of …
One in six children, reports the BBC, have difficulty learning to talk. In other research, exactly four out of four Woodlief children have difficulty learning when not to talk.
Isaiah, who is fond of my diptych of Jesus and Mary, puts it on my dresser. In his other hand he is holding a little plastic accoutrement from his brothers’ box of army men, a brown semi-circle molded to look like a miniature sandbag emplacement. He places this in front of the diptych. “Look,” he …
At the end of my workout, I see Stephen Caleb coming down the hall. Inspired that now might be one of those rare opportunities to change his musical tastes for the better, I put my iPod buds in his ears. Simon and Garfunkel’s “Feeling Groovy” is playing. Caleb screws up his face into something like gentle …
Stephen Caleb is now our willing accomplice in perpetuating the Santa myth. Some of you might recall my last year’s Wall Street Journal piece arguing that there’s something to be said for encouraging, for a time, your child’s belief in the magical. But there’s also a point at which a kid is no longer going …
I remember for a good two years being awakened two, three, four times a night by little Isaac. He would come stand by my bed, or lay down on the floor in my bathroom, and when I would sleepily ask him why he was up, he would say, “I don’t know.” So I would carry …
In a house with four boys, even the penguins go about armed to the teeth.
Well, I caught the bubonic plague, but it looks like I’m going to recover. As I write this, my two littlest boys, Isaac and Isaiah, have taken it upon themselves to clean the house. First there is the predictable fighting over the vacuum cleaner: “No Isaac! I do the cweaner! I do the cweaner! I …
Her suffering ended ten years ago tonight. A decade can take forever to pass, with each day stretching into the next into the next, yet you can come to the end of it and feel like all those things you lived and thought would kill you were only yesterday. Sometimes you still wake up and …
It’s guy night at the Woodlief house. Wife is gone, me and the boys are fending for ourselves. I’m making chili. Caleb stands beside me at the counter as I chop vegetables. He sees me pick up a fat jalapeno pepper. “Ooo, Dad, don’t make it too spicy.” I launch into a disquisition, sounding very …
Isaiah John, at two years old, was born to be a last child. If you are trying to get something accomplished, he hurls his body against your legs, slings his arms upward, and begs to be held. If there is anything sharp or spillable near the counter’s edge, he will lay hold of it and …
Recently discovered in a then six year-old Eli Woodlief’s home-school work: Q. Do you think that using an alphabet is the best way to write? Explain. A. No I sirtenly do not. Q. Would you like to visit the White House? Explain. A. No becas we are going to the faer. In more encouraging news, …
Five years ago, he became our laughter. He loves everybody, and everybody loves him. Today he is five years old. Happy birthday, William Isaac Woodlief. Thank you for reminding us how to love.
We are at the fair, and the sun has disappeared below the treeline, so that the illumination from the rides has become our daylight. We are watching Caleb twirl and spin about in some contraption that his brothers are either too afraid or too small to ride, and which his parents are too old to …
Eight years ago while the rubble was still burning and planes across the skies were being grounded, we went to the Kansas state fair. My family was already there; they’d gone that morning. I finished up at work, which really wasn’t work any more, just the lot of us fumbling around at mindless tasks and …
Isaiah has learned, whenever he detects a strong odor, to say, “Phew! That stinky!” This seems to have universal application. In a greasy spoon with the strong smell of grilled onions: “Phew! That stinky!” After intruding on one of his brothers during a bathroom visit: “Phew! That stinky!” Near the dog: “Phew! Sadie stinky!” Perhaps it’s more …
Caleb has reached that stage where he thinks everything he has to say is fascinating. It’s a stage, unfortunately, that most people never escape, as evidenced by the ubiquity of cell phones and, well, blogs. No, most people never escape that stage, nor, for that matter, do those of us around them. It’s just part …
Isaac is standing outside the door of a bedroom in our undisclosed vacation spot. He is clutching a pillow like it is a club. He is trying to coax his brother Eli into opening the door. “Open the door Eli! I’m not holding anything!” Much as I appreciate his attempt at stealth, it doesn’t seem …
In these troubled economic times, good wholesome family entertainment can be a difficult expense to bear. That’s why I’m especially pleased that we’ve discovered a way to have big family fun for under ten dollars. Yesterday we had friends over, and in advance I bought about eight dollars worth of half-inch PVC pipe and 90-degree …
There’s this scene in Jaws, when poor Chief Brody, chumming off the side of Quint’s boat, has his first honest-to-God encounter with the beast. “We’re going to need a bigger boat,” he mumbles. The thing is, I only have a 28-gauge shotgun. Yes, they come in 28’s. As some of you know, I’ve had an …
Six straight weeks of travel, several big writing projects, work, children, marriage, property in desperate need of attention, and one gun and machete battle with my resident ginormous pond snake have all conspired to keep me away. I was planning to post something last night, only an accidental overdose intervened. This week it’s DC, and …
I have just come home, and Eli runs up to me. “Dad, I left you a Boxcar Children book on your nightstand. It’s your Easter present.” “Thank you,” I say. He turns back toward where he has been playing. “Eli,” I say. “Where’s my hug?” He smiles, and walks back in my direction, slowly now. …
Isaiah is sitting on the floor surrounded by books. He opens one with a crinkle of its pages and says, “Shoo-chi-joo-sho-nay-nay-da.” He slaps it shut. “De end.” He picks up another, mutters out his own version of its narrative, and flips it closed. “De end.” This goes on for some time. “Joo-sho-nay-di-shoo-chi.” Slap. “De end.” …
Something special about the Wife and Eli, aside from the fact that they are mine, is that they have the same birthday, which is today. Eli has turned a big seven years old. Tomorrow he will come to work with me, sit at a table in my office, and do his schoolwork until we both …
The sky is steely grey, with sunshine spilling through where it can, at odd angles. It always finds a way through, this sun. She would be thirteen today. I can’t imagine that little girl as a teenager. She has a house full of brothers who have never met her, who miss her all the same. They are …
Isaac wallows on the floor, cradling his Lamby and watching his mother cut my hair. “Dad.” “Yes?” “How can you sit so still?” “Because I’ve had a lot of practice at it. Do you want to practice sitting still?” “No. I’m going to practice being wiggly.”
I think the pony who wandered into our yard saw our compost bin as a fast-food stop. He is cream-colored with curly hair, and very gentle, and he follows anyone who will feed him old lettuce leaves. We tied him up out back and I hopped in the truck with Isaac to drive around looking …
Today is Stephen Caleb Woodlief’s ninth birthday. I snuck him in to work with me, which is what I do with each child on his birthday. He is sitting at a desk in my office, diligently laboring over his schoolwork with the double-pencil that he recently invented. In a while we are going to get …
