Scooters

These randomly discarded rental scooters everywhere are turning all of L.A. into my backyard.

Healthy

I'm starting to eat more healthy ... now whenever I get an ice cream sandwich I ask for it to be lettuce wrapped.

YouTubes

My 8-year-old has become addicted to those annoying YouTube channels where he watches someone play a video game and they incessantly talk the whole time. Now, directly because of this, when he himself plays a video game he feels the need to narrate everything he does as if he also has his own imaginary YouTube channel. And this isn't annoying at all.

Rollecoaster

My 8-year-old just told me he found some POV rollercoaster videos on YouTube and I told him he wasn’t tall enough to watch them. He was not amused.

Oldies

My 13-year-old daughter just told me she loves oldies music and I thought oh, cool, like doo-wop, but then she said she made a playlist on her phone with “like, you know, songs from the ‘80s.” Uh, yeah.

Towel

13-YEAR-OLD: I got you a towel out of the dryer for your shower this morning, Dad!

ME: Wow, thanks! (takes towel) It’s still wet.

13-YEAR-OLD: Well you’re gonna get it wet anyway.

ME: 😐

Belated Three Kings Post

Overheard this morning:

WIFE: Hey, it’s Three Kings Day!
8-YEAR-OLD: What’s that?
WIFE: It’s the day the three kings found Jesus.
8-YEAR-OLD: How’d they do that?
WIFE: They followed the star.
8-YEAR-OLD: In a rocket?!

Meditation

Discovered my 8-year-old meditating in the backyard. On top of the free-standing punching bag. Wearing an Angry Birds shirt. There’s at least a couple layers of irony at work here.

Christmas Present (Another Belated Christmas Post)

My 8-year-old told me this morning that he wants me to open the present he got for me first, saying it's the one that looks like a movie, but it might not be a movie, but it's in shape in the movie ... but it could be something other than a movie. I wonder what he got me.

Proud and Painful Moment

While getting ready to take a shower this morning, my 8-year-old plowed in and started to talk to me excitedly about something. He did this while jumping from the toilet to the bath tub rim (because he's part monkey), then lost his balance, grabbed the shower curtain, fell into the tub and pulled the shower curtain rod down hard on my head. While rubbing my head and making sure he was okay, I was filled with a sense of pride when he recognized how Three Stoogian the moment was and we both shared disappointment in the fact that my head didn't make a "boop" sound when the rod hit it.

The Little Things

While in the car with the fam, the 8-year-old shouts out from the back seat ...

8-YEAR-OLD: Mom, do you have any pens?!
MY WIFE: No, go fish.
8-YEAR-OLD: (annoyed) Mom, stop.
ME: Why are you fishing for pens, that's weird.
8-YEAR-OLD: (even more annoyed) DAD! STOP!

It's the little things (like tormenting your children) that make life worth living.

Hell Boy

Watching previews at the movies, my 8-year-old leans over and tells me he wants to see that “H-word Boy” movie.

Shelf Elf Fail (Belated Christmas Post)

I recently put our Elf on a Shelf in the cockpit of my 8-year-old’s X-Wing Fighter toy, thinking he would get a kick out of it when he found it the next morning. Instead he got upset and yelled at the Elf cause that meant he couldn’t play with that toy the whole day. Good job, Dad, good job.

Food Critic

“I don’t really like this rice, but it’s sort of good except I don’t like these green things in it because they feel weird in my mouth.” — Riley Larson, Food Critic for the Larson Times

Wasting Electricity

What is it with my kids always wasting electricity ... I swear if I open the fridge and see they left the light on in there again I’m gonna lose it.

Judging

My 8-year-old, after riding several full-on roller coasters at Six Flags today surprised us all by then requesting to also ride the little kid choo-choo train. Before we could say anything he immediately followed it up with, “DON’T JUDGE ME!”

Cold Hands

Spent the day at Six Flags and it was a bit chilly. When the 8-year-old and I hit the bathroom this evening, moments after he walked up to a urinal he yelled, “Holy geez, my hands are cold!”

Mornings

How much do I not like mornings? My phone's facial recognition never recognizes me when I try to unlock it immediately after waking up. That's how much.

Ninjas (Belated Halloween Post)

Spirit Halloween has 427 variations of Ninja costumes and my son seems determined to work his way through the entire collection, one Halloween at a time.

Shirts

Some time ago, my kids were shocked to find that, in my vast t-shirt collection, there wasn't a single Star Wars themed one in the bunch. I recently remedied this by buying 3, count 'em 3, Star Wars shirts. When they arrived in the mail, my 8-year-old was quite impressed/jealous with my selections and said, "Dad, can I have those shirts when—" and here's where I thought he was going to say "when you die," but instead he said, "... when you grow out of them?" So does that mean he thinks at some point I'm gonna get fat and they're not going to fit any more?

Precious Moments

My 8-year-old, at the end of an impassioned rant about something, leaned back against the fridge and was the perfect height where his head triggered the water dispenser and a stream of cold water dribbled down on top of his head. These are the precious moments.

Wake Up

Nothing like being gently awakened on a Saturday morning by the soothing sounds of a kazoo being played loudly right next to you by your 8-year-old.

Clock

A while back, my wife and I realized there was a certain area in our house that necessitated a clock. As a quick fix until we could find a much nicer one (which has yet to happen), my wife picked up a super cheapo, off-brand (Peakeep?!) alarm clock at Walgreens. Now every time the power goes out (of course) we have to reset the time on it, but unfortunately we have since lost the instructions for it. Each time, my wife and I fight over who gets the pleasure of struggling with feelings of sheer inadequacy in our efforts to reset it based on, in my opinion, an extremely unintuitive button labeling system. Today was my turn. I mean, I feel like I'm a moderately intelligent person, but I can't get the thing to stop saying it's P09 o'clock. As I was frustratingly toggling through it going from blaring a static filled AM talk station to an FM station back to an AM station playing Mariachi music to the alarm going off and not being able to figure out how to turn it off for what felt like several mind-numbing minutes, my son eventually walked into the room and excitedly ran over and asked me if I was playing a video game. Yes, son, like the worst video game ever. I'd love to say that at this point he took it from me and effortlessly set the time in a matter of seconds, but he just left me there to pitifully struggle with it for another 20 minutes.

Chatter Something

My 13-year-old confessed to me this weekend that she talks a lot. She said she gets it from her mom because she's a "chatter bag" too.

Kayak Experience

Whole fam camping with my son's Cub Scout troop this weekend and I hear my 13-year-old tell one of the people running the kayaks that she has tons of kayak experience because she's done it on the Wii like a million times.