It’s Cutler’s World

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And we are all just happy to be a part of it.  As he gets closer to turning four he is really growing up quickly and developing quite the entertaining and sometimes aggravating personality.  I realize it has been a long time since I have posted anything so I thought that the best way to break my writer’s block/laziness was to just throw together a couple of highlights of living in Cutler’s world in a lovely bulleted format to help hide my babbling state of mind.

  • One of his favorite phrases right now is “Oh Cheese!”.  He is meaning to say “Oh Geez”, but it always comes out as cheese and he is usually quick to include the face palm to show his frustration.
  • He has a lovely aggravating side to him where he knows just how to push Mason’s buttons and you can see his mind formulating before he starts to push.  He clearly knows what he is doing.  (he clearly gets this from his mother)
  • My pet name for him is monkey and this morning reminded me why as I was trying to get him dressed he was running around slapping his hands and just making noises and laughing.  The only difference between him and a monkey in the zoo at that point was that he wasn’t throwing his pooh everywhere, but please don’t give him any ideas.
  • He is also starting to show some unexpected wisdom.  Last Friday he and I were at Red Robin, he calls it Red Robins, for dinner and when we went to wash our hands he asked why the soap was blue when the place was called Red Robin.
  • On a sad note, Cutler has now decided Thomas is no longer necessary to exist as Batman and other super heroes has completely pushed away the need/desire to play with trains.  He has given us permission to give the trains away, which is kind of sad to me as it is a sign of him growing older and it’s always more peaceful for him to play with the trains than it is to play super heroes with him.

That’s pretty much it for now.  We are off next week to give skiing a try.  I expect Melanie and the boys to excel and am setting my sights on avoiding any broken bones.  Will post pictures sometime next week, provided my hands are not in casts.

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Brothers

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On the weekends we let the boys have slumber parties with each other and they usually chose to sleep in the movie room, but tonight Mason wanted to sleep downstairs in the guest bedroom so he convince Cutler that it was best to sleep down there so they could cuddle.  I had assumed it was just Mason trying to manipulate his brother into chosing what he wanted, until now that is.  I just went in to check on the boys and while they weren’t cuddling they were pretty close to each other, however Cutler made a bit of a whining noise and Mason quickly rolled over and put his arm around him.  I love that despite the constant bickering that occurs throughout the day, they still love each other enough to want to cuddle.

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And A Star Was Born

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I got the initial shots back from Cutler’s Make-A-Wish photo shoot.  As a reminder, they took some with him in normal clothes and the other photos are of him dressed as batman.  As these are unedited photos, you will see that he was in fact in a darth vader body suit with the batman cape and mask.  They are planning on editing out the darth vader chest controls before the finals are done.  Either that or Cutler is a heavily conflicted super hero.

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Cutler Is Batman!

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I’m not sure what color the sky is in Cutler’s world, but I’m quite sure that it is covered with batman logos.  The kid is obsessed with Batman, but not just any Batman, he must be black batman.  He is so proud to be batman black that I walked into the living room the other night about the same time he came running from the other direction shouting black power.  We all sleep better around here knowing Cutler has the power of black batman and apparently the backing of the black panthers to protect us from the plethora of bad guys perusing the suburbs of Dallas.

Using Mason's shoulder pads to help fight crime.

Using Mason’s shoulder pads to help fight crime.

Still The Ladies Man

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I took Mason to the Stars game last Saturday and before the game we walked past the Stars Ice Girls and when I looked at Mason I noticed his gaze would not leave the ladies and he just had this look on his face like wanted a picture.  I didn’t say anything and he finally looked at me and asked if he could get his picture with them and then turned on the charm with each set of them.

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White Shadow

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Mason recently decided it’s time to start wearing a headband to help improve his game and naturally as we were shopping Cutler decided he must make the same move towards sweat management.  Of course Cutler has taken it to another level and is now wearing it to school as well.  You can never improve too much.  Below is a video of them both showing their skills complete with headband and all.

 

 

Vaccine?

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In consecutive months Mason has proven that vaccines are sometimes fruitless.  Right before Christmas he came down with the flu despite being vaccinated and now he has come down with what we believe is chicken pox…also despite being vaccinated.  So now he gets a long vacation from school and finds all sorts of interesting things to do around the house.  Today he got out one of my old boxes of baseball cards and spent a couple of hours sorting them by team.  When I walked in and saw him sitting there I couldn’t help but smile and think back to the many hours I spent doing the same exact thing.  He’s already talking about how he will hand my cards down to his kids who will hand them down to their kids and so on.  I love it when my childhood obsessions are brought back to life by my boys.

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Our Retirement Plan

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Make A Wish has struck again with another great outing for Cutler and myself, this time local.  In preparation for one of their biggest fund raisers of the year they are putting together a brochure of some of the recipients which requires a professional photo session.  Naturally, thanks to his good looks, Cutler was asked to participate and it was such an incredible time and experience.  Even better is that it was a super hero themed shoot where the kids would dress “normal” for some pictures and then dress as their favorite super hero for the second half.  As Cutler is in a huge Batman (the black one, Cutler’s words), this was his choice.  As they didn’t have a Batman costume big enough for him, they put him in a Darth Vader suit with the Batman mask and cape and my assumption is that they will edit the photos later to get rid of the Vader outfit on the front.  Fortunately they were there as this provided tons of entertainment for him when one of the assistants acted as if they couldn’t see him when he hit the “invisible” button.  Cutler was quite the hit with the ladies and now I am thinking if I work him hard enough we could get some future underwear ads out of this deal.  We have ordered the PX90 video set so he will have the abs ready when the agents start calling.  🙂

Once we get the final pictures I will be sure to share away.  For now you will have to suffer with my behind the scenes photos below.

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Cheap Labor

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Is it a violation of child labor law if the children aren’t paid?  Are family?  This was my justification as I pulled an old Tom Sawyer move and convinced the kids that it would be fun to dig a trench for me to bury a downspout.  Actually the kids asked me if they could dig, after I had already finished the job, but I couldn’t help but feel like Tom as I sat there in my lawn chair watching the football game while the kids dug away.  Mason, as it turns out, was great at digging and was able to get the trench a little deeper for me while Cutler was great at following him and knocking the dirt back in from where it was just dug.

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We also discovered on this day that Cutler is not, as of yet, set to be the next King Arthur as he was not able to pull the mighty Excalibur shovel from the tight grasp of the earth despite his vocal effort.

Don’t Try This At Home

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What do you do when it is snowing outside and you have fry a turkey?  This is the problem I was presented on Christmas afternoon.  For those of you not familiar with the age old tradition of dropping a 14 lb turkey into a boiling caldron of hot peanut oil…oil and water DO NOT mix well.  So doing this in the snow was definitely a problem.  My overly anal neighbor would point out that I could have set up a tarp to cover the area I wanted to use as he has done just to keep himself dry, but I decided I was smarter than this and decided to go against all of the State Farm commercials and decided to set up inside the garage…right next to the fuse box (as my mother pointed out).  As you have probably gathered with the fact that I am typing this several days later, it was a success, but then again I am a professional that overheated the oil and at one point had to put it in the snow in order to cool it down before dropping the turkey.  What is surprising is that my extremely risk averse father went along with the idea and helped me in the process.

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