Extra time with my boys…

This weekend the boys had a four day weekend. Friday was a PD Day, which is a day for teachers to get their crap together or something like that. Monday is an Ontario stat holiday, called family day. It’s not my weekend, but I volunteered to help and even take Ethan for the whole four days if she wanted. You see with both boys at the house on my weekends, Ethan doesn’t get much one on one with Dad cause I have to watch Jonathan like a hawk 24/7. So I offered to take Ethan cause I think he is dying for a little attention. At first she declined.

I got word from my brother on Sunday that she was having a rough day with the boys, so we both volunteered to take both boys for a few hours and let her take a nap. Chris and I took the kids to McDonald’s for lunch and then to the library for a few hours. The library here in town has a huge section just for kids and the boys love playing there. So we took both kids out of my ex’s hair for the afternoon. Here are some pictures of the kids at the library yesterday:

(Jon doing his favourite thing, check out the fishes!)

(They had a lot of fish, which kept Jon distracted…)

(Ethan took one of the comptuers in the kid’s zone.)

(He used the computer to make pictures like this one…)

When I brought them back, I offered to take Ethan for the last night of the extended weekend and return him on Monday. She said it was all right, so I took Ethan back to my place and we had a good night hanging out together. We did some painting, played with modeling clay and then watched Wreck It Ralph before calling it a night.

Later in the night, I was watching some movies on Netflix while Ethan was doing more pictures on my computer. The movie I picked was a classic, Conan the Destroyer, starring Arnold himself as the brawny barbarian. This was the one that also had Wilt Chamberlain in it, which was my personal favourite of the Conan movies.

While I was watching the movie, and there’s one part when the evil queen offers Conan anything he wants in exchange for his services. Conan replied that she had nothing he wanted. Ethan happened to be watching for a moment, and he called out ‘He could ask for a shirt.’ In this movie, Arnold was in the standard barbarian attire, which was not very much. After Ethan made his comment, I roared with laughter. My little guy says the cutest things. Ethan loved the part when Arnold punches a camel in the head and knocks it out cold for spitting on him. It’s a funny scene, but Ethan loved it so much he asked me to rewind so he could watch it and laugh a few more times.

While I was making breakfast this morning, Ethan told me it’s time for me to get a haircut. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s getting a little long but I’m not ready to cut it. Truth is, I have been auditioning for some movies lately and I’ve learned that it’s better to cut your hair when asked than it is to grow it out. So usually when I’m between movies, I prefer to let it grow out just in case the next role requires it. I can understand why Ethan would make such a suggestion since Leah doesn’t let Ethan and Jon grown their hair out very much. Here’s a pic of where my hair stands right now:

As you can see, it’s long enough to cover up my ears as I have this Sam Winchester thing going on with my hair right now. The back is long enough to make a small ponytail and while I’d like to cut it… the reason I stated above is enough reason not to just yet. While it’s a pain to clean, it would be even more of a pain to have to grow it back out for a role, better to get that work out of the way now while I’m not doing much to begin with.

So having Ethan here for an extra day or two has been fun. Spending extra time with any of my boys does not require any arm twisting. I’m happy to do it every chance I get. It’s been cool to give Ethan some quality time this weekend and he’s responding quite well to it. I’m hoping to do more weekends like this in the future, to give both Ethan and Jon their own weekend’s just with Dad. I think they would both benefit from a little separation just to keep the peace sometimes. I also think they’d benefit from some personal attention as well.

So that’s been my weekend here in the Hammer. I hope everyone else had a good one as well and I’ll be back later. Until then, take care!

Peter