My friend recently turned 40, and he’s in need of a little help. Through his twenties he worked with many women in their childbearing years and was often told “don’t wait until you feel ready to have kids, just have them - you’ll never really be ready, and if you wait too long, it’ll be too late.”

Thankfully, my friend didn’t wait too long; he has two beautiful children. But there’s a problem: I guess my friend never realized how life affirming kids can be. Or how their presence in your life forces you to focus on the truly important things and let all else slide. Or how they can motivate you to do better. Be better. Try harder.

I think he may be addicted to children. And the worst part is, the making of the children is really fun for him, too. In a nutshell, he wants another baby. Bad. But his wife is his chronological equal, and while she loves the two kids they have, she doesn’t think they should have anymore.

How can I help my friend to convince his wife that the swollen ankles, stretched tummy, lack of energy and lack of sleep will be worth it? Should he just “surprise” her one night and forget something? Should he clip baby pics from magazines and stick them everywhere in the house?

What do you think would convince my friend’s wife? He could really use the advice.

Gotta hurry up and get in this post before the Great Pumpkin shows up.

So, we went to pick apples at a place that also had these:

So far this year we’ve been to three places that sell ‘em. But on this day, DJ was wanting to hoist ‘em up onto the hay ride trailer:

This was the largest pumpkin he could possibly lift with one hand, and that’s as high as he can make it go - he’s busting his ass as hard as he can to plunk that pumpkin on that trailer like dad just did. He was frozen in that position for about 4 seconds, straining every muscle in his body to will that pumpkin higher - twice, so dad could get this picture. You’re a trooper, DJ.

And dude would look like he’s five, except for the bit of pacifier sticking out of his mouth. Even so, he thought he was pretty badass for lifting that pumpkin that high, and had a strut for the next few minutes. We got him a “Don’t Fuck With Me” tattoo on the way home. No, a real one.

They had animals, too. And every time we see a llama I ask the same question. Why do dad jokes suck so hard?

Buds. Until the boy gets cooties, anyway.

A couple weeks later and we’re carving our pumpkins. Agalia and I carved Obama:

Diane carved Nutmeg after McCain wins the election:

We just had a 4th birthday party for Agalia, and one of her presents was a Fisher-Price digital camera. In 24 hours she’s taken over 200 photos. So yeah, I think she likes it.

I’m so loving seeing what a young pair of eyes wants to capture from the world and turn into pixels. Here’s a few of my early favorites:

Each of the photos in this post is Agalia taking a picture of the monitor displaying a picture she took earlier in the day. Say hello to Mr. Monkey.

This one has something to do with pirates. Or poison. I’m hoping for pirates.

This is the photographer.

Later I’ll post a series I’m calling “Feet”.

The words are reverberating loudly: “Two weeks inpatient.”

Out of sensitivity for my extended family I’m not comfortable writing much about this, but it’s something that’s weighing on all of us, immediate and extended family alike.  What I think I can say is it’s a young girl with problems a girl this young shouldn’t be having.  And I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it from this distance.  And even if we were geographically closer, our hands might still be tied.

I’ve heard it said that you should not judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. My hearing has never been that good, because I often enjoy a good judgment every now and then.

I used to hate it when I’d visit one of my favorite blogs and find the author trying to leverage my loyalty by asking me to go somewhere else and read some other thing that author wrote. Like they were trying to squeeze me for every bit of traffic data they could, in the hopes they could parlay that into fame and fortune. Dirty sneaks.

Please allow me to present to you my new walking shoes. They’re only good for about a mile, but they helped me to understand the other side of the extrasite click request. As it turns out, that author of one of my favorite blogs probably put a lot of effort into that post somewhere else. So much so that the author probably didn’t have the time or energy to scratch together something interesting on their own blog. So instead of putting out garbage (though, hello? Don’t confuse that author with me - I put out garbage all the time), they point you to a link where there’s a post they wrote that you just might like.

So without further ado, please stop over to The Cheek of God, where I made a guest post for Brian who is currently without computer. I posted about how Some Call Me The Macgyver of Love. It’s probably garbage, but it’s the finest garbage a tall kitchen bag can hope to hold. It’s the kind of quality refuse you’ve come to expect from Family Clay.

By the way, the haircut? (gotta click over to see it)  I guess I’d wanted my hair to be just perfect before my class pictures, so the night before, I took matters into my own hands.