The Bottlecaps and the 3 Bears

- Sippycup and his cousins (Cassidy and Chase) are raucously playing in their grandparents' living room - 

M.O.M.: "Ok guys!  How about we play a quiet game?"

Sippcup: "Like what?"

M.O.M.: "Why don't you guys pretend that you're out camping?"

Sippycup: "Yay! This is awesome!"

Cassidy: "Let's lie down in our sleeping bags!"

M.O.M. (whispering): "But you have to be quiet!  You don't want to wake up the bears that are sleeping outside!"

- Chase runs to the window and stares out intently -

Sippycup (whispering): "I love camping!"

Cassidy (whispering): "Me too!"

Chase (turning from the window): "Ain't no bears outside!"

M.O.M. (laughing): "What?"

Chase (quickly glancing out the window before turning back to us): "Ain't no bears gonna eat us! Ain't no bears outside!"

Me (turning to the M.O.M.): "Fantastic.  You've traumatized our nephew."

Shiver His Timbers

This past Saturday, Lil Sippy Cup was invited to one of the Bottle Cap's birthday parties. 

As expected, it was an amazing backyard affair, full of pirates, hidden treasures, face-painting and motorcycle gangs (you'll see).

I've said it before and I will say it again: surrounding yourself with awesome parents and their amazing kids is a sure-fire way to make sure you are an awesome parent of an amazing kid yourself.

Please follow the jump for more pictures.  Enjoy.

The Company You Keep

When your son's best-friends are this awesome, it pretty much guarantees he'll be pretty damn awesome himself.

Future Flashback

My hope is that, one day, they'll look back at this picture and smile.

Happy Birthday Princess

You've met this lovely little lady before ( here ).

She is the Beauty to Lil Sippy Cup's Beast and (just as important) she is my niece.

Today is her birthday.

This is our way of telling her that we love her and that we hope she has an amazing day and evening full of building "ninja princess ballerinas" at Build-A-Bear, eating ice cream cake super late at night, and keeping her parents up until the wee hours of the morning because, damn it, it's her birthday and she can do it if she wants to.

Have a great day sweetie.  We love you.

Mr. Cufflink the Clown Slayer

On Sunday, one of Lil Sippy Cup's Bottle Cap friends celebrated his 3rd birthday.

How did his parents mark the occasion?  By staging a full-scale carnival in the backyard. 

That's right.  A carnival.

There were games, a moon bounce, a hot dog cart, a cotton candy machine, an airbrush fake tattoo artist and a cake covered in M&Ms.  Yes, that's right, M&Ms.

Lil Sippy Cup, as expected, nearly lost his mind from the over-abundance of awesome.

And I learned a very important lesson as a parent: always make sure your parent friends are way cooler than you.  It'll keep you humble.

More pictures after the jump.  Prep your eyes for the awesomeness.

It Takes a Village

Lately, Lil Sippy Cup and I have become semi-professionals at doing things completely last-minute and on a whim.  In celebration of this new-found appreciation of unplanned adventuring, we decided to have a picnic on Saturday. 

Without even checking the weather, I invited everyone on Friday afternoon.  We bought all the supplies and food Friday night.  By the grace of the weather gods, the Northeast was not hit by a hurricane on Saturday, which I will safely assume is what would have happened if I had actually planned this event in advance. 

This post could easily have turned into something sappy about the importance of family.  You see, my best-friends are, in fact, my cousins.  Not guys that I just call cousins because we're so close but actual, bona-fide, shared-DNA cousins.

I remember writing in an earlier post (here) that the true measure of a man is the company that he keeps.  It's thanks to these people that I've become the man that I am.  And that Lil Sippy Cup will surely follow in my footsteps.

More pictures after the jump.  Have fun.

Lil Sippy Cup and the Bottle Caps

Lil Sippy Cup runs with a pretty tight crew.  I call them the Bottle Caps.

As the temperature continues to climb with the approaching summer months and, subsequently, as his play-date calendar becomes booked with appointments, I will begin introducing the various members of the squad.

Today's Bottle Caps: AJ (the muscle) and Jayden (the advisor).

AJ

Jayden

In spite of the fact that they are all toddlers (or, perhaps, because they are toddlers), they each have a brutally honest approach to personal communication, a deeply-seeded sense of loyalty, and a true appreciation of mud and potato chips.  They're also really good at sharing which, as I have come to learn, is the foundation of any successful human being.

If the true measure of a man is the company that he keeps, then Lil Sippy Cup is obviously on his way to becoming a pretty amazing man.