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I took Asher to the Frisco Dr. Pepper Star’s Center last Saturday afternoon for a ‘Dad’s and Lad’s’ skate. It was the first time for Asher to get all suited up in his hockey gear and get out on the ice with stick and puck. As a father, it was a moment I’d been looking forward to since the day we found out Sarah was preggo. I am so proud of him!

Asher had a blast and did great for his first time out. It was a little slow going at first, but he got the hang of it as the session went on. He scored his first goal and even threw his first body check!! (2:40 into the video!). 

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When I grow up, I am NOT going to marry a poor person!

jryarbrough.com is celebrating it’s 5th birthday this month!!

I created the original site using Dreamweaver with crappy, crappy frames. 5 years later, I finally went back to the drawing board and revamped the site using wordpress. I love it so far, but I’ve still got a lot of work to do to get the site looking just the way I want it. So you may notice lots of tweaks (big and small) as I tinker around with the aesthetics of the site.

Let me know what you think of our new look in the comments. Thanks!

(I wrote this a while back and forgot to post it)

8/01/2009

Dear Asher,

Happy Birthday my little man! 3 years old already – I can’t believe it! Part of me feels like we were just bringing you home from the hospital yesterday, but another part of me (the bigger part) can’t remember what my life was like before you came into the world. Watching you grow up these past 3 years has become my favorite pastime. I still can’t believe I have such a wonderful son, and I can’t, and probably never will be able to, describe in words how you make me feel. I can only hope you get to be a dad yourself someday (in the very, very distant future).

You got one heck of a birthday present earlier this month when your little sister Avery was born. You love her so much and have been the best big brother in the world. We have a video we took at the hospital of the first time you met her and it is the cutest thing ever. Like any three year old, you sometimes have trouble being gentle with her, but you try really hard to be careful. You are already very protective of her and you always try to make her feel better when she cries. I feel sorry for Avy’s future boyfriends… you and I are going be a protective force to be reckoned with.

As I write this, you are sitting 3 feet from me on the couch playing Star Wars Battlefront II on our Playstation2. It’s a perfect example of how you shatter my ‘pre-kid’ ignorance on a daily basis. If someone had told me three years ago that before my son was three he’d be able to play Star Wars on the Playstation2, I’d have told them they were crazy. You are more intelligible and composed than I am most of the time. For the most part, you are completely autonomous. You can dress yourself, go to the bathroom by yourself, get yourself food and eat it by yourself, surf the internet by yourself (only pbskids.org of course!), use the TV remote control, and a TON of other day-to-day things. Each and every one of them is simply amazing to me. I had no idea that a kid would be able to do all these things at three. You were somehow able to completely bypass the terrible twos. I think I can honestly count on one hand the number of terrible moments you had in the last year (although your mother might have a LOT more being home with you all day).

We went to see the doctor today for your three year appointment and Avy’s three week appointment. You were so brave and you knew it too because you kept telling everyone on the way in “I’m brave”. You handled all the poking and prodding like a champ. My favorite part was your eyesight test. They have a poster on the wall with shapes instead of letters and they make you stand on a line and tell the nurse what the letters are. Thankfully you have terrific eyesite and could see all the shapes with no problems. The nurse would point and you would get all worked up and yell the name of the shape. As she moved down the poster, she pointed at a moon shape and you yelled “crescent!!” Seriously? Crescent? You are soooo your mother’s child.

Your vocabulary continues to grow and you say some really funny stuff. One of my favorite Asher-isms from this month happened the other day when you were playing with your fishing pole. I asked what you were fishing for and you told me “seahorses Dad” like duh, what else would you be fishing for. So I asked what kind of bait you were using. You thought about it for a minute and replied “Seahorse treats.” “What do they taste like?” I asked. Again, you thought for a minute and said in a deadpan voice “M&M’s.”

Love,
Papa

Our new addition should arrive sometime in early July! We couldn’t be happier!!

Dear Asher,

Wow, this past month has been insane. Do I say that every month? Well, this month for real! Your mom and I found out that in about 7 months, you’ll be a big brother!! That’s right, you’ll have your very own little one to boss around. We are so excited and can’t wait to find out if you’ll have a little brother or a little sister… We told our friends and family, but I’ll save those stories for next month’s letter.

You are becoming quite the little hockey player. Your wrist shot is already better then your old man’s! All you want to do is play hockey. Last week I made you your very own “real” stick from am old broken shaft of mine cut down to size with a junior blade stuck in the end. We spend hours and hours out in the garage passing and shooting the puck. One of your favorite things to do is to ‘Faceoff’. You either want to pretend you’re the ref and drop the puck for me, or you want to be the center and take the faceoff. You are already working on perfecting your goal-scoring celebrations. You are a master at the fist pump, but you have yet to master the ‘ride the stick-pony’ move.

I’ve had a ton of 7pm Sunday hockey games lately, so mom and you have been coming out to watch a lot. I don’t think you actually watch very much of the game, you just like being there with your little stick and puck. After one recent game, I took you out on the ice and you took a couple shots on goal. It was awesome the way your eyes glimmered as I skated around with you in my arms. After the game, we usually go out for pizza or wings with the team. Last time we went, you apparently weren’t feeling all that great… I thought you were just tired until you erupted like Mt. Vesuvius while sitting in my lap. It was gross… I had puke ALL over me. We got you cleaned up and bailed as soon as we could, but you let loose again about half way home in the car – projectile style. I swear there was puke on the windshield… I spent about 3 hours that night cleaning up yarf in the car, yarf on you, yarf on your mom… Poor little guy… Our house was vomit city, and you were the mayor for about 4 straight nights. I finally figured out that I needed to carry an emergency yarf bowl with me at all times. You are a total trooper though, you’d yarf, then just keep on truckin’ like nothing happened. I admire that.

The last couple of months you’ve started this weird ‘boycotting’ of daddy thing. I try not to take it personally, but it is soooo hard. At least once a day, something happens and you want nothing to do with me. “no daddy” you say. “Go Away”. I guess all working parents go through this at some point, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I think a little piece of me dies each time you scream “I don’t want Daddy”. You usually make up for it later with lots of hugs and kisses though, so it’s all good…

I had such an “I’m turning into my father” moment the other day. You were standing up on a kitchen chair and I kept telling you to sit down on your bottom. I tell you this for your own good because I know, in all my vast wisdom, that standing on kitchen chairs is a very bad idea. Sure enough, it took about 12 seconds for you to tumble head fist off the chair and land with a loud thud on the tile floor. You immediately began to cry, and as I picked you up off the tile, I heard myself say “and that’s why we don’t stand on kitchen chairs!”. Oh God, did I just say that? Here you are, crying in my arms, with a potentially serious injury, and I just told you “that’s what you get for not listening to me”… I am so much like my father in a lot of ways, for better and for worse. And for the record, you cried for about 12 seconds, then you went back to standing on that chair!

Work has been really crazy-busy lately. I’ve been working late quite a bit and when I get home, the first thing I do is to check my email and set up my laptop so I can do more work. A couple weekends ago, we had a power outage in my office building, so I got to work an entire Saturday, shutting down our datacenter and bringing it all back up. You asked me several times after that day, “is the power on daddy?” ”Check email daddy?” “Go to work daddy?” Each day when I get home now you ask me if I was at work in this strange accusatory tone… it’s like you’re checking up on me, making sure I wasn’t out doing something fun without you.

I guess I’ll have to start including info about how your little sibling is coming along, and how your mom is handling it all. We should know a lot more next month!

Love,
Papa