Abby: You count and I'll hide, ok? Go!

Riley: 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. Here I come!

Abby: NO! Count to ten, ok? Go ahead.

Riley: 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 10! Here I come!

What makes this more funny is that Riley, although only 3, will routinely count to 20 without much thought, but I guess he doesn't see the point in giving Abby time to hide.

I just wish they'd stop taking all of the cushions off all of the couches in the house. Aye de mi.

Today was an interesting day for both Riley and me. Nana has vacation this week, and so she's not at the house to watch Riley during the day when I'm working. Normally, Berta would take off these days, but she's been taking off so many days on these occasions - from times that Nana needs off to times when I've got to be somewhere at the end of the day when Abby comes home from school - that it's becoming a burden to her work. So to ease that burden, I told her that I would watch Riley on the two days this week that he didn't have preschool.

I had originally thought that I would keep Riley at home and take the day off myself. I had mentioned to Nate that I might need a couple of days this week to be home with Riley, as I've described, and he suggested that I could bring Riley over to his house and his wife, Mary, would keep an eye on Riley while I got some work done. Riley would be able to play with his kids and it would be a good work day.

So that didn't work out exactly as planned.

I started to worry yesterday morning as Berta was rousing Riley for his extra day of preschool this week. Normally he goes only on Wednesday and Friday, but we added a day just os I would have him one less day this week. He was not having that. He did not want to go to school on a Monday, and put up a pretty good fight in the morning. Screaming a lot, Berta finally got him out the door, and had to leave him crying at preschool, something that doesn't normally happen on his regular days.

This morning, I let him sleep in and did a little work in the meantime. When he finally got up, I started laying the foundation. Would you like to go over and visit with Mr. Nate's kids? "No." How about some toast? "Ok."

Eventually, I got him to be not only willing to accept the idea, but enthusiastic to go. Actually, I have my laptop out on the kitchen table, and Riley was hurrying me along to pack it up and head out for his visit.

When we finally arrived, Riley was still anxious for his visit. He squirmed until I unbuckled his seat and let him out, then we both walked to the front door and rung the bell. Mary greeted us and welcomed us inside.

It was at this point that something in Riley snapped. He suddenly turned around, mumbling "I don't want to go...", and headed back toward the car.

The rest of the morning was pretty much like this. Mary did finally convince Riley to play with the kids and some toys in the basement, but when Riley came up for lunch and didn't see me where he left me, he kind of freaked out. He didn't want to eat a real lunch (just two slices of cheese and some pretzels), and he didn't want to play with the other kids at all.

So, I guess the little guy isn't ready to break from his routine with Nana at all. It might be nice to run him out on some unscheduled outings with some other people during the week, just to get him used to the idea. Maybe we should really have socialized with Nate's kids more before trying this and it would have worked out better. That's probably something we should plan on for the future anyway.

Oh well. I guess I'll have to plan something for us to do with Thursday. Hopefully, he'll not want to stay home all day, like he decided he wanted to do after today's outing.

Riley's going to be three in a couple of weeks. This should be interesting.

When we used to travel as kids, the entertainment in the car consisted of counting cows out the window, playing the "I'm going on a trip" memory game, looking at the maps stuffed into the pocket in back of the driver's seat, and as a special treat, those "magic ink" puzzle books. But what we most often did in family car trips was sing songs.

It's a very unusual idea now to think of singing songs in the car, since the advent of in-car DVD players, MP3 players, and the GameBoy, but for little kids who don't have the toys or aren't interested in those things, some interaction with the family via singing in the car can be fun.

This morning, the kids woke me up by playing a CD of kids songs and nursery rhymes far too loud. Some of these songs were songs we used to sing in the car on our long-ish trip from home to the Bay. There were many songs that we sang that were not on their CD, and quite a few nursery rhymes that I didn't know anyone had put a tune to.

Some sample staple songs include "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes". I also remember singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot", which seems like an odd traveling song to sing, now that I think about it. There were a few other tunes with religious overtones, like "Michael Row the Boat Ashore", which is interesting to think about as an adult who can better appreciate the origin of these songs.

I've had no luck so far with teaching Abby how to sing in the round. The best rendition of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" is still a bit out of reach. Also, songs that support harmony, like "You Are My Sunshine", are not quite ready. Maybe we just need to practice more.

Riley does a great solo job of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" these days. Often after school while waiting for Berta to come home, the kids and I would sit on the family room floor and see how we could change the sound of the familiar songs. For example, Riley was thrilled with the sound of "Baa Baa" when put to a "We Will Rock You"-like percussion pounded out on the family room floor.

We also learned a few songs in Scouts when I was younger. In particular, a song I didn't learn, but heard at camp once and loved, was called "The Cat Came Back". I searched for the lyrics recently, but without the tune to accompany it, it's hard to recall how it goes only having heard it once. It's a fun song, though.

Searching for "The Cat Came Back" in particular I've found that it's one of the few children's songs that uses a minor progression in the song (although they won't say explicitly what it is, which is bothersome for trying to figure the tune out). Exposing kids to different types of music is good at Abby and Riley's age, and I hope they are able to benefit from it.

It's only a matter of time until they're too old for kid music and prefer to sit in the van with their headphones on listening to top 40. I hope I can expand their musical horizons to the point where they enjoy more than just that, and perhaps in the future have the same happy memories of singing in the car that I have, just as I will look back on the happy days of them playing kid music far too loud for me to sleep in on Saturday morning.

A couple of weeks ago, I headed out of the house for a lunch meeting. It was 12:30 on a Friday, and both kids were at school. Being that it was a just a lunch, I didn't think much of how it would affect the rest of my day.

The lunch ran a bit long. I didn't leave until somewhere around 3:45, and I figured I would pick up a couple of things on the way home, including the weekend fish feeders that we needed for during our upcoming trip. Being that it was just lunch, it never even occurred to me that it was so late in the afternoon that Abby would be done school and waiting for me at home.

While driving home, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. Our neighbor across the street and a few doors down had heard Abby sobbing on our front porch. She took her up the street to stay with another of our neighbors, and that is who called me. How thoroughly mortifying.

It took me until 4:20 to get home, cursing traffic the whole way. I drove straight to my neighbor's house, where I found Abby playing cheerfully. I was very glad that we have great neighbors that would help out like this, but thoroughly shamed that this escaped me.

People are entitled to mistakes, but this is my kid. I am not a neglectful father. I don't know how to convey my utter humiliation at this happening, and in the eyes of my neighbors I am sure that I am a terrible person for doing this to poor Abby. Perhaps I deserve to feel bad, but it was truly an honest mistake.

Oh, how am I sure, you ask? Nana was watching Riley on the following Monday, and in the afternoon, she told me all about what I had done. She had heard it from one of the other neighbors. Not the neighbor that was watching Abby, nor the one who had found her, but yet another neighbor. Humiliating.

Last night, when we had given them instructions to play only in our front yard and explicitly not to cross the street, the kids decided to cross the street and play in the culvert near the road. We didn't realize they had done this, thinking them to be safe in the front yard. But apparently, they were playing in a ditch where they could easily fall and get really hurt, not to mention any amount of other troubles they could get into.

And of course, when we finally noticed them missing (I'm not sure for how long they were actually gone from where we thought them to be), there were the neighbors, talking to them about not playing in the dangerous culvert.

It's only a matter of time until protective services comes to the house because our neighbors are concerned about our kids' well-being. We're good to our kids. Perhaps we're a bit more loose on the leash than we should be, but we're not abusive and we do keep our kids safe. I feel really bad that they ever got out of our sight long enough to get themselves in this much trouble, but this is going to happen. Kids are going to misbehave, and like a moth to a flame, they seem drawn to danger. It's just a shame when they do it so publicly, and so on the heels of the last incident.

This last misbehavior is just another in a list of incidents where they've explicitly disobeyed us. For their own good, they're not going outside to get themselves into trouble for a while.