Fun with numbers

Here are some numbers for you. What do they mean?

5

14.45

5276

11,850

23,292

180,914

Okay - prepare to get your mind completely blown. With Max essentially potty trained now, I thought I'd figure out how much I have spent on diapers and wipes through the years. I hope you're wearing a diaper of your own right now as you look at the numbers again, because you may end up soiling yourself.

5 = kids

14.45 = years of continuous diaper changing

5276 = days of continuous diaper changing

$11,850 = spent on diapers and wipes during those 14.45 years

23,292 = total number of diapers changed

$180,914 = money that would be in my 401k if I had invested that "diaper" money with my 401k match at the average annual return that my 401k has returned.

There were some assumptions made in the math:

• For a couple of those years, I wasn't employed by a company with a 401k program


• For a couple other of those years, I wasn't even employed


• For a couple other years, I was employed by a company with a solid 401k program, but I wasn't smart enough to invest in it


• Knowing me and Andrea, any extra money would not have gone into 401k anyway, but instead would be blown on vacations, electronics and fun or funky stuff made out of iron shaped like wagon wheels or stars that Andrea likes to hang on our walls.

S0, we probably wouldn't have $180k sitting in the bank right now if our kids would have been smart enough to use the toilet right after we brought them home from the hospital.

Oh, I just thought of another number:

5823

That's the number of poopy diapers changed if you assume that one in four diapers has a special suprise in there waiting for you. Since Andrea and I have always just put poopy diapers in plastic Safeway sacks, that means we must have also bought nearly 6000 bags of groceries over that same period of time. Wow.

Now, for one last set of numbers:

69876

1164

48.5

If we consider that a diaper change consists of holding the baby's butt up to your nose, finding the diapers and wipes and wrestling them into some sort of judo submission hold before you actually even change the diaper, you can estimate each diaper change probably runs about 3 minutes. (Don't tell me I'm slow - think about all that goes into the process of changing a diaper. Don't forget to calculate in the time you and your spouse fight over who's turn it is.) Look at these numbers:

69876 = minutes spent changing diapers

1164 = continuous hours spent changing diapers

48.5 = continuous days spent changing diapers

I should establish that I have been a very active dad in changing diapers, so I'm confident in my estimations and feel good about taking credit for a chunk of the diaper changing time.

You'd think after all that, I'd be depressed. That's a ton of money and time spent completely on something that no one wants to do. But, I'm not depressed because of that. Instead I get sad when I realize that I don't have any babies left, that my kids are growing up way too fast and before I know it, I may even miss holding a little one's butt up to my nose to see if they've cooked up a nice little suprise.

Plus, there's another angle to the math. I'm 39 years old. In 14.45 years, at 53 years old I'll be hoping I'm closer to retiring. If I'm wise, during those 14.45 years I'll invest in my 401k the same way I have diapers and have an extra $180k to retire with.

Who am I kidding though? We all know how much I like to blow money on vacations and how irrestistable to Andrea the huge iron wagon wheels and tin stars to hang on the wall are.

Blast from the Past

Goin' all the way back to December 2009, this is our most recent family picture. Andrea and I should get some sort of Nobel prize for the perfect gene combination. Look at those kids!

A Rough Time of Year

This time of year is always rough for me. Holiday letdown, you ask? Nope. Sad that I’m a year older? Not really. Stressed that I still haven’t figured out what to get my hot wife for her birthday? Not at all.

The truth is my fantasy football season is over.

Go ahead and start laughing about how pathetic that is, but it’s the honest truth. With the exception of the 1990 and 1991 football seasons when I was on my mission, I’ve been in a fantasy football league every year since 1988. It’s become a part of the rhythm of my life.

Each year towards the end of August, two things happen.
1) We completely decimate our checking and savings buying back to school clothes and supplies and taking care of 3 birthdays in the last week of the month
2) We have our fantasy football draft

Draft day is one of my favorite days of the year. A fantasy football draft is nothing that anyone on the outside looking in can understand - you have to experience it to comprehend it’s awesomeness. After 16 years of marriage, Andrea is still perplexed by it. I’ll spare you the details, but what it comes down to is about 3 hours of a bunch of guys doing everything they can to make every other guy in the room feel as stupid as possible. Amidst all the insults and taunts, the goal is to choose a group of real football players that will determine your overall happiness for the next 12 months. That’s not an understatement. If you suck at the draft, your life will suck for the next 16 weeks for sure and will likely continue with a post-season nasty aftertaste that you will not be able to wash out of your mouth.

Any wife of a fantasy football player understands how much their husband’s mood depends on something so completely out his control. After draft day, the mood of a dedicated fantasy football player is dictated entirely by how well you did on draft day. If your players suck, then your team sucks. And if your team sucks, you are going to be completely ridiculed by everyone else. Our fantasy football league has a website where we can post pictures and articles to either proclaim how great we are or let everyone else know how lousy they are. I won’t share any of the things that have been written on the site because my mom and dad may read this and I value my church membership, but here are a few of the pictures that have shown up on there through the years:

Just a regular picture of a couple of my competitors working something out. Pretty normal behavior for them from what I understand.

One of the more flattering pictures of my cousins

Even I have had a bad year or two. When I'm not doing so hot, I tend to let myself go a bit...

In my opinion, the best pictures are when we a previous picture is used to fight back with a subsequent picture. In this case, after referring to me as "Monty Burns" I returned the favor to my cheerleading cousin a couple of days later.

The Championship composite shot.

A good champ always declares victory and does his best to mock everyone else in a single picture. That's me, as Monty Burns, claiming the championship trophy last year.

Two weeks ago, our season ended. Now, I have no outlet for my trash-talking and photoshopping projects. The other night I almost taunted Andrea on what she was wearing. It had been nearly two weeks since I had said something completely rude and insulting to anyone and I was going through trash-talking withdrawals. Thankfully, I caught myself just in time, so that the start of the sentence, “Dang, you look so…” had a happy ending instead of being an unimaginable disaster.

For the next 8 months, I’ll be wandering aimlessly through the sports fan wilderness trying to be interested in baseball or basketball and counting the days until the happy day when my checking account is empty and I’m making fun of how small my friends man parts are. August can’t get here fast enough.

Blast From the Past

Me and Lexie at San Francisco a few years back.

"Bless me not to say 'poop'."

This is Max and me at Disneyworld last year. He's pretty smooth.

All my kids are smart. I’m not trying to brag or anything, they just lucked out genetically and have turned out to be pretty clever. In the last few months, Max has discovered how funny he is as well. The dinner table has become his stage to put on a nightly performance for the family and unfortunately there is little that we can do to get him to stop. The problem is, no matter what he does, someone will laugh. This only encourages him to do it more. This has caused me to start yelling the types of things that I swore I would never yell at my kids. “Stop smiling!” and “You better not laugh!” are phrases I never thought I’d hear myself say. Yet on a nightly basis, one of the other kids is likely going to get in trouble for giggling at something Max does or says, while Andrea and I are doing everything we can ourselves to not laugh as well.

When you have older siblings, you also pick up a more varied vocabulary than Yo Gabba Gabba and Dora teach. So shortly after he started talking, Max started dropping words like “stupid”, “butt” and “poop” quite regularly. Seeing our reaction to those words was like hitting a jackpot on a slot machine for him – instant gratification followed with a growing addiction to hearing the ringing bells and flashing lights again and again. We decided to take him head on and break him down. Everytime he said one of those words, he’d be busted. We were making some progress with him – in fact he actually was developing the advanced skill of snitching. Now the only time he was saying “poop” or “stupid” was when he was ratting out his brother or sisters for saying it. At the time, I wasn’t sure if that was progress or not. Very quickly I realized it wasn’t progress at all as it became apparent that saying those words was the only goal for him. He wasn’t trying to get his brother or sisters in trouble – he just wanted an excuse to still say the words himself without getting in trouble. (I told you my kids are clever, right?) He’s barely 3 years old and he’s already discovered the art of the loophole. We’re in trouble.

In fact, before the tattling, he had already experimented with the loophole concept. He had figured out that by not saying the last syllable of a forbidden word, he wasn’t actually saying it, and therefore he shouldn’t get in trouble. For a couple of weeks he experimented with this loophole as much as he possibly could to find out what he could get away with.

“Mom, you’re stup……………” while he looked at her, just daring her to react.

“Dad, look at my buuuuuuu……..” as he studied my face to see how close he could come to making the “tt” sound.

So now, in the Nelson house, “stup”, “buuuuu” and “pooooooo” are bad words too.

And we thought we had finally won.

Then, the other night in family prayer, the 3 year old scored another point.

If you’ve never heard a little kid pray, it’s awesome. Our kids have blessed Han Solo, stuffed animals, video games, barbies, spiders, the moon and Indiana Jones. (We’re apparently big Harrison Ford fans.) As we’ve tried to teach our kids to pray, we just let them riff for a while in any direction they want, offering little bits of info to guide them along. (Letting your kids figure stuff out as they go is good parenting – you can look it up. I’m sure some psychologist that never had any kids would agree with me.) Eventually, we finally have to prod them to end it because the food is getting cold or the commercial break is almost over and I need to get back to my show.

About a week ago, Max found his next loophole in prayer.

“Bless mom. Bless dad. Bless Keeya (kayla). Bless me not to say ‘poop’.”

When we opened our surprised eyes to look at him, he was expecting us. He had the smug smile that a 12 year old would give you while they question why it’s okay for you to watch “The Matrix” even though it’s rated “R”. Then you could see the gears turning in his head. Mom and dad didn’t freak out.

“Bless me not to say ‘butt’.”

It was on. Now his smug smile was even more determined. It was like a cowboy duel on mainstreet at high noon. Sweat appeared on our creased foreheads, the safety was off and our fingers were twitching right next to the trigger. Who would dare blink first.

“Bless me not to say…….,” and he stared right at us, “stupid.”

Then a quiet giggle came from across the table. One of those stupid other kids could kiss my butt becaue they had just cracked. Under my breath I even said that other word for “poop.” Now everyone was laughing and we were screwed. Before the reinfocing laughter had even started, I was already wondering how I could tell Max that asking God to help him not say bad words was not okay, considering God is quite used to hearing me ask Him to help me not say bad words all the time.

Not only did Max have the perfect loophole, he had a loophole that made everyone laugh.

Stupid, clever kids.

Blast From The Past

This is Calvin when he was 4 at Disneyland. We bought him some thick soled Sketchers, put 3 pairs of socks on him (including one pair that Kenzie had to take off her feet) and made him just tall enough to ride the Star Tours ride. Look at those eyes - he was so happy!

For a couple of years I've been thinking I would start blogging, but the thought of getting that first post out kept me from ever starting. I mean, it has to be perfect, right? Something that just jumped out at the 2 people who read it, convincing them that I was cooler than everyone else that had ever attempted to string a couple of sentences together. But before I could come up with the perfect first post, everyone in the world started blogging, and since I've never wanted to be a follower, I couldn't start blogging based on principle. Plus "blogging" sounds dumb anyway. When someone is owning a guitar solo, they're "ripping" or "shredding" or some other really cool word. "Blogging" just doesn't have that same, look-at-me-i'm-a-pimp feel to it.

In fact, I'm sure if I told my buddies to check out my blog, they'd punch me in the nuts and ask me how much I like Oprah or whether I've sewn any more dresses lately. Blogging became a virtual impossibility, mostly because I was too busy sewing dresses, watching Oprah (she had Jenny McCarthy on again talking about how you catch autism from eating grapes or something - how can you miss that?!) and I really like not getting punched in my goodies. Then last night, when I was looking in the mirror checking out the sweet 'stache I'm growing, I realized I was just procrastinating. I've been doing a lot of living the last 16 years since I've been married and almost all those memories are just locked up (or lost) in my head. The procrastinator in me argued for a few minutes about how impossible it would be to catch up for all that lost time, so I should just give up and not doing anything, but I punched him in the "little Nelsons" to shut him up. Even if I just pick up from this moment forward, I'll still be much better off than letting all of this just get lost in the cobwebs of my mind.

So here we go! There are no guarantees that I won't completely waste your time, but at least I'll have something to do when my sewing machine breaks down.

*****

I think all posts should have pictures - especially because they'll distract you from my writing. I don't have our most recent family picture on this computer, so you'll have to settle for one from a couple years ago. There are two versions of it - can you spot the differences?

Blast From the Past

Since we've already established that I've virtually lost the last 16 years of memories to my fading memory, I thought at the end of each post I would drop a picture from the past for fun...

This is probably 6 years old from one of our great trips to the ocean. The house was in the sand so there was space underneath it for the girls (left-to-right: Lexie, Kenzie, Kayla) to play underneath it. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but this is just one of those pictures that completely captured the moment. I really love my girls.