It's a Snap

This one would be easy for sure.

I have done a lot of comparisons of the boys, just to see what kind of simple skills they have mastered.  Every single one of them Carter has shown some amazing ability. Whether it was wiggling his nose, his eyebrows, or crossing his eyes he has always seemed to get the better of his older brother Tyler.  The only thing that Tyler could do that Carter couldn't was hula hoop.

Well this next comparison was one that I thought would come easy for Tyler.  Being more than two years older than his younger brother I thought that would give him the advantage.  But I was sadly mistaken.

Hopefully this is something he will figure out later in life, otherwise he is going to have a hard time summoning a waiter, or calling a dog, or worse yet, when he gets to that part in "If your happy and you know it" when he has to snap his fingers; that would be very sad.

Carter on the other hand will have no such issues.  He picked up this skill right away.

So once again Carter shows off his amazing skills.  I swear this boy is destined to do great things in life.  If there is a job that involves wiggling your nose and eyebrows, crossing your eyes, bowling, and snapping your fingers, this boy will be the CEO.  As for Tyler, I just hope these lack of simple life skills don't hold him back at all.  He's pretty amazing too, in his own way.

John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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Bowling for Dollars

I always like to compare the abilities of my kids.  If you recall in the past I have tackled little things like crossing their eyes and wiggling their nose.  Carter has shown impressive abilities, while Tyelr has shown he needs a little more practice. Today I am taking on the issue of bowling.  In my family bowling is a big deal.  When I was a kid, I was in a league every Saturday morning and I loved it.  Both of my parents bowl and have been know to travel around the country to various National Bowling Tournaments. Before you get the idea that they are professional bowlers, you have to take into account that these events are held in places like Reno and Vegas.  I think they have other ideas in mind when they travel to these tournaments.

When I was a kid I don't remember having bumpers to use, so I can only assume that there were a lot of games where my ball was consistently in the gutter.  Kids nowadays have it easy, just throw it down the lane and let the bumpers guide it in.  Now that Tyler is getting older I am starting to work on his technique.  I am trying to get him to slow down and actually roll the ball, instead of just throwing it down the lane.

As you can see we are getting there.  It's going to take time to get the form down, and working on converting those spares is something that is going to take a lot of practice.

As for Carter, he is a little younger so i am not so much concerned about his technique. The fact that the ball is going in the right lane and does not get stuck somewhere in the middle is good enough at this point.  He does seem to understand the importance of converting his spares though.

Final score: Carter 10; Tyler 8.  Needless to say the results did not make Tyler happy at all.  Yet again Carter shows that he is picking up things faster than his older brother.  If Tyler wants to be anything like Grandma and Grandpa we are certainly going to have to work on his game.  One of these days we will find some ability that Tyler can master that his brother can't.  But so far it seems with Carter, we have created a superhuman child.

John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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The Nose Knows

Sometimes I feel really bad for my older son Tyler.  His younger brother Carter has these amazing abilities that he just can't seem to master.  Whether it's crossing his eyes, or wiggling his eyebrows, Tyler has not been able to match the incredible talents of his younger brother.  What can I say, Carter has been blessed with superhero type skills that will certainly take him far in life.

Take for example his ability to wiggle his nose.

I am certainly not surprised by this, as it seems that Carter can do pretty much anything that I can do.  He may look like his mother but when it comes to this simple life skills, this boy is all mine.  What this will mean for him later in life who knows, I can't say that I landed my wife due to my ability to wiggle my nose and ears.  Or maybe I did. 

Tyler on the other hand has the same abilities, or the lack there of, as his mother; he looks like me but he acts like my wife. 

Clearly this is something that we are going to have to work on.  I would hate for him to be put in a situation later in life where he was asked to perform this simple task.  

I've said this before but it really amazes sometimes that these two kids can have the same parents, yet not be have the ability to do the same things.  They really do pick up the best traits from both us.  Like wiggling your nose, some are more important than others. 

What do you notice about your kids?    

John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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Burp

People ask me everyday how I spend time with my kids.  Normally we play with Legos or video games like anyone else would, but I also have to try and teach them things about being a man.  Part of being a man is learning how to relieve yourself of gases inside your body.  I can't tell you how many times that my boys come to me crying that their belly hurts.  My first instinct is to get them on the potty and try to get whatever is causing this issue out of their system.  I know it's probably the eight pounds of candy that they ingest daily, but as much as I tell them that eating all that candy is going to give them a belly ache, they don't listen.

Sitting down on the toilet doesn't always work though and this is where training to be a smelly gaseous man comes into play.  I know that when my stomach hurts, not from Carter punching me but from something I ate, it's usually a gas bubble that has built up inside of me.  Kids need to know how to get this bubble out.

Let's first take a look at Tyler.  He is the older of my two boys and the one that complains the most about tummy troubles:

Clearly he needs to work on reaching a little deeper into his abdomen and getting that bubble out.  He could probably communicate with a whale, but that won't do anything the relieve himself of any man gases.

Carter is a little bit younger and he doesn't seem to complain as much as his older brother about his belly, but when he does the complaining is twice as loud:

Now judging between the two, I think Carter is much closer to accomplishing this challenging task.  As you can see he digs deeper into his belly and what comes out, while not a full fledged burp is much closer to what it should be.  It's not surprising that he would be more advanced than his brother based on some of his other abilities.

Obviously we need a lot of work on this and schooling will continue.  One day my house with be filled with a bunch of burping men and my wife will certainly be happy that I was such a positive influence in my boys lives.

I look at this, as bonding time between me and the kids, and THAT is how I like to spend my day.

John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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Me I Want a Hula Hoop

I've done a few comparisons of the kids in the last month or so, and most of the time it's Carter who has some amazing ability that Tyler has not been able to master.  Whether it's raising his eyebrows or crossing his eyes, Carter has shown incredible talents that his brother just has not developed, at least not yet anyway.

My wife was fortunate to have gotten a hula hoop from Santa for Christmas.  If you need to know one thing about my wife, it's that she loves the hula hoop.  Santa obviously knew that.  She once competed in an international competition at Disney World where she won a board game.  She was 34 at the time, and the eight and nine year olds that she competed against never had a chance.

She is that good.

Well it turns out that Tyler possesses my wife's hula hooping skills, which isn't surprising as he seems to be able to do, or not do, a lot of what my wife can or cannot do.  While he looks like me, he definitely has the skills of his mother.

This ability will certainly help him later in life with the ladies, trust me. If I could hula hoop like this, I would not have spent so many Friday nights parked in front of my TV waiting for the phone to ring. Carter on the other hand, seems to be destined for a life like his father, a poor, miserable, lonely one where the hula hoop gets the better of him.

Let's just say he's a work in progress. I pray that this is something that doesn't hold him back in life.

I would hope in the future BOTH of my boys will possess this amazing ability and start to fight over the hula hoop.  Isn't that every fathers dream?

John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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Dotting Their T's and Crossing Their Eyes

I brought this up a few weeks ago about how different my boys are.  One can do certain things that the other can't and vice versa.  They really are two unique kids with abilities they have picked up from both my wife AND I.  Not a day passes that we don't find out something new about our kids and some amazing ability that they are able to master.

While certain things like reading, writing, and drawing haven't come as easy to Carter as they did Tyler, it's the simple life skills that he has seemed to master so well.  Take for example crossing his eyes:

So yes Carter can be a little strange at times, even downright scary at others, but it's these abilities that make him stand out.  Tyler on the other hand will never have to worry about his eyes staying crossed forever, as it just seems this is something that he is never going to accomplish:

I'll give him an "A" for effort, but hopefully this is not something that will hold him back in life.  I would hate to see the day when he is asked to look at something on the end of his nose.  He might just make himself dizzy and fall down trying.

Kids.  They are so quirky.

John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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Raising Eyebrows

SAME parents two DIFFERENT kids

It always amazes me how different two children can be when they have the SAME set of parents.  Different habits, different mannerisms, different ways of doing things.  They get some of their most distinctive traits from both parents.  Carter has my wife's face but my ears and tongue.  Tyler's face looks just like mine, but he has my wife's ears.  You get the idea, there is a little bit of both of us sprinkled throughout our children.  I am sure it's that way with most families.

Sometimes I do wonder how these two kids came out of the same person.  Carter is much crazier and much more athletically built than Tyler, whereas Tyler is more artistic and cerebral than Carter.  I guess they are a good balance for each other, at least they haven't killed each other yet.  There are certain things that Tyler could do at Carter's age that Carter could not, like reading and drawing pictures.  However there is one thing that I noticed Carter could do that Tyler has no shot of getting down.

Notice the eyebrows.  Carter can easily make them go up and down.  Now my Mother in Law says he has bedroom eyes, but I am not so certain that I want to anoint my four year old Rico Suave.  It is quite an ability to have, and one that in the future is surely going to make the women swoon.  Tyler on the other hand might have some trouble when it comes to the ladies.

Clearly we have a little bit of work to do on this task.  I don't think he is going to make it through life if he keeps trying to move his eyebrows like this.  Where he failed at this ability is beyond me, my wife and I can both move our eyebrows up and down.  This is really starting to make us question whose child this really is.

What do you notice about your kids?

John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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The Bubble Gum Boys

Let me start by saying that I normally hate when people chew gum around me. The constant smacking and the incessant bubble blowing really get to me. It all stems from a former coworker of mine named Glenn Thompson. Glenn would chew gum all day, everyday and the noise coming out of his mouth was enough to drive me nuts.

Secondly I don't normally offer my kids gum as I am afraid that they might just try to swallow it. I don't want to digging around in their throats if it gets stuck in there if you know what I mean. Just recently though they took an interest in trying to blow bubbles, and as the parent I am that wants to make sure things like this art get passed from generation to generation, I let them.

The effort is there. We need to work on their technique.

John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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