I mean, seriously, when did we all decide that it’s not cool to wear a construction paper headband with kangaroo ears stapled to the sides?

Alisa and I are (obviously) awaiting the arrival of another little boy. Could be any day now. We’ve both been thinking a lot about what it means to be a parent, and what it means to get these kids raised in such a way that they can (a) function, (b) succeed, and (c) rock this world. It takes time and it takes patience and it takes a willingness to make all kinds of mistakes, but it is really the coolest thing I’ve ever done, which is why we want to do it again.

Sure, there will be lots of crying and sleeplessness, and poop, but there are also moments you get when your shy daughter gets on stage to sing and dance and when your son says, “Wait, let’s stop and clean my room, Zoë. If we don’t, I won’t be able to have any screens tomorrow.”

I have more to say on my style of fathering (cheeseburger + Marvel Comics iPad app), but suffice it to say, I’ve been feeling kind of glowy and happy about being a dad lately.

Hint: BBC America

The thing is, this stuff (hair, screwdriver, etc.) is pretty much all his idea. Even the pose here was 100% his. He got all set up like this and marched off to church, gaining all kinds of attention, mostly from old ladies who wanted to gobble him up and lick the sweetness off their fingers.

More photos from the shoot at Facebook.

Here’s the five-year-old, Ike. Next will be to catch the elusive critter, Zoë Ingrid.

But you’d be wrong. Dead wrong, actually. After a little questioning we discovered that these are actually the young artist’s rendering of a pair of Cylon Raiders.

Innocence restored, for a season.

Sorry, America. Football is boring.

Here’s a secret video of her song rehearsals. She chose Priscilla Ahn’s song “Wallflower,” which isn’t really a Broadway hit, but we don’t listen to many Broadway hits around here. In this respect, Alisa and I are useless to her budding career in musical theater.

Zoë’s Audition Practice from Todd Robert Petersen on Vimeo.

We’re proud of her. She auditions at 5:15 on Monday. Wish her luck.

Learn how to manage your kid’s career by taking a few courses through one of the many accredited online universities. A class or two in management and your number one star will be on the way to fame.

Thinking I am the only one
still awake, I walk the house
until I find a canted box
of light painting the hallway
in front of my daughter’s room.

I stand in the doorway
with an elbow against the jamb,
fist to my temple.

She’s contorted in her bed,
angling a book toward
the lamp. One sweep of her finger
reveals an ear.

She turns one page, then
another. How long until she
is just a snapshot on the fridge?

The photo above is a simple shot of the world through my front window. I’m not sure there are many jobs for which I am trained and suited that can outstrip having that view available. There are plenty of other reasons for wanting to live in a place, and the job should be in support of living in a place that makes everyone in your family feel right. So, that said. I’m really happy here. Who knows what that’ll mean in the future, but for now, we’re very happy.

This means I’m not necessarily going to say no to new projects and appearances, but I’m going to start selecting things that fit into the “create mode” rather than the “present mode.” There is a time and a place for present, but I feel like I’ve been presenting myself into a place where my store of created material is becoming depleted pretty fast. The tank isn’t on empty, but it’s not on full either.

I want to finish a collection of interlocking stories I’ve been working on for a really long time. It’s called Small World, and there will be six long stories of about 25-30 pages each. In each story a character and/or situation from a preceding story will take center stage. In fact, each successive story will add to the plot and subtext of the earlier stories. Yes, it is a little bit like LOST in story format.

I want to throw myself into the blog a bit more. I am working on short memoir posts. On my trip to DC this week, I’m going to be sketching these things out. I’m also working on some ideas about how a creative life and family life spark when they bump into each other. I’ll have a long first post out this Sunday.

And finally I want to work on my retelling of the old folktale “The Little Red Hen.” In my version, the hen asks for help from a pig, a cat, a goose, and a coldwar-era Soviet tactical robot.

Ike did not deny it but agreed, saying, “I put in the bones and the scary parts.” Zoë harumphed and stomped off. I don’t like to side with one kid or the other, but the Halloween parts are really the most amazing thing. It’s pretty great blown up, too. We might print it and frame it.

Zoë, without a pause, said, “Rabbit season.”

Just as quick, Ike said, “Duck season.”

Back and forth they went until Ike said suddenly, “Wait, stop. Okay, Zoë now it’s rabbit season. Boom!” Then they both collapsed into fits of laughter. It was a pleasure to watch.

I was beaming. This meant that my labors had been successful, at least partially so. You see, this is a triumph in parenting for me. I have been trying to give my kids what could be called a classical education in cartoons. I started them with Steamboat Willie and moved them on to Felix the Cat and Fleisher Brothers Superman serials. They are well acquainted with the more contemporary Pixar and Miyazaki. Thanks to YouTube and Netflix, I have been able to widen the survey to include Warner Brothers.

I had no idea if any of this was working until that morning. I am so proud of these kids. Nothing shows me a literate mind more than getting a joke. And, did they ever get it. Bravo, kids. Bravo. You make your old man proud.

1. You can’t say no to parents.
2. No throwing unless it’s a game, and the other person wants to play.
3. No one can remember rule #3.
4. No one can remember this one either.

The new principles are coming out like this:

1. You are responsible for your own mess.
2. The dining room table is not a storage unit.
3. If it’s not yours, ask.

We are also working on one kind of additional practice with the kids. They are getting frustrated a lot these days. So, when frustration mounts, particularly with something we are helping them with, my wife and I are trying to train them to say, “Thanks, but that’s not how I want it.”

We want them to say this instead of screaming.

It might be too much to ask, but if we don’t start now, it’ll just be terrible for the next 15 years of our lives.

When my wife and I married and moved to our first apartment in Utah, I started a French levain, which is a kind of mild sourdough. With just a dash of yeast and a bunch of smashed grapes and flour, I nurtured a colony of local yeast, which I have kept actively going for just about seven years (just about the length of time I have been working on my novel).

During the summers, when I’m not actively baking, I keep the levain active by changing it out at regular intervals.

I make one large boule, like this one, and two small baguettes. The first one we usually devour with butter and jam, which we did yesterday. The other baguette made it until today, when my most excellent wife handed me a turkey and blue cheese sandwich on the rest of the second baguette. I ate it slowly, and that is the treatment it deserved.

The big boy, pictured above will accompany the butternut squash soup, which is on the menu for the evening. Match that with some fresh made apple cider mixed with sparkling mineral water and an apple pie (apples from the backyard) and you have the best kind of meal, simple, fresh, homemade.

The kids were eating some almonds. I was right there, because you just don’t cut kids loose with nuts. I think they actually grill you at the pediatrician about it. You get a list of everything that a child can choke on. I thought it would be easier to list the things they can’t choke on: The Astrodome, Belgium, a crane, two shipping containers, and a rhinoceros. Zoë is nearly six and Ike is nearly three, so a person has to relax a little bit and let them try things with supervision.

Well, as it goes with old gun argument, the problem wasn’t the nuts, it was the kids. As they were sitting at the breakfast counter in the kitchen, something happened: a shoe dropped or somebody was sitting too close to somebody, and Ike started screaming at Zoë.

As he was screaming his eyes went suddenly wide and his tongue lifted and began poking out of his mouth like the tongue of a chicken. There was no sound, nothing. He didn’t know how to make the “I’m choking” universal throat grasp.

Zoë said, “Something’s wrong with Ike.”

I was right behind them both, literally 8 or 9 inches away. I reached around Ike’s middle and gave him the Heimlich three times, then looked at his face. No change. He was getting scared, and Zoë said exactly that. I picked up Ike and kicked the stool out of the way and flipped him upside down and gave him one, quick smack, right between the shoulder blades.

The next thing I heard was a scream.

I don’t know if something shot out of his mouth or what. But Ike was really pissed off at me for hitting him, until Zoë said, “Ike’s breathing again. He didn’t choke.” Then Ike figured it out and leaned into me. I stood him up and he hugged my neck. I hugged him back and listened to the snot bubbles fill and snap against his lip. I felt his little back swell and collapse. I was never more glad to hear sobbing in my life.

I said, “Buddy, that’s choking. Are you okay now?” He nodded.

Ike pointed to the ground and said, “Daddy, pick up dat stool.”

I’m pretty useful in an emergency. I go into this space I call the funnel. I don’t freak out, and in fact, the worse things get, the calmer I get. Sometimes people misread this: because I am not freaking out, I don’t understand exactly what is going on, or don’t care, or don’t value other human beings. In essence, I become a robot, usually a command-giving robot. It’s useful, but it takes a while for me to come down.

You go there, do this, then come back. You do that, this way, then do a second thing a second way, then stand still and wait for my next set of instructions.

When Ike cracked his head open, I did that to my wife. I had all the kids in the car, and we were going to the hospital. I called my wife at work and said in a very even voice, “Meet me behind the library in five minutes. We’re going to the hospital. I will explain when you get in the car.”

Later, I realized that such a phone call is probably the worst thing you could ever do to somebody. But when I get into the funnel, there is no context. There is only the next thing to do—that’s what keeps me from freaking out—there’s no time to think, what if this or what if that? There is only do this, do that.

This time, as I got down and picked up the stool and righted it and moved Ike back onto it, I had a moment to come out of the funnel, because the next thing to do was check on Ike’s breathing, which was there. I had the time to think, what if he would have choked? what if the next thing for me do have done was to call an ambulance? call Alisa and tell her Ike was dead? These were not options, the option was hold him until he calmed down enough for me tell him again, “That was choking. That is why we have to be so careful while we’re eating. We don’t want you to feel like that again. It’s too scary.”

One thing I have to keep in mind, now that I take at least a part of every day and think about how easy it is to lose a kid, is that you can’t hover over them or quarantine them or chew their almonds for them? It’s really like one of our family rules goes: “Have fun but be safe.” It goes in that order on purpose. We’d all be really safe if we just stayed in bed, but aside from the occasional extra hour on a Sunday morning.

Zoë was outraged and started calling for help. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, “Ikey’s sitting on me.”

I said, “But he has a little bottom.”

She said, “But he’s very, very heavy.”

To which I replied: “He ain’t heavy, he’s your brother.”

I was the only one smiling, but I was really, really pleased with myself.

But the cold snap that’s been getting us here in Southern Utah has motivated my wife to get pie-crazy, which is fine with me.

This pie was absolutely amazing, but our history with pie has not always been so good. When Alisa and I first got married and first started having pie in the house, we found them less than appealing. The crust was either too dry or grainy or mushy. The filling was almost always runny, though the taste was often wonderful. This led Alisa to spend a lot of time with her mother and with other members of her family trying to find all the input she could get on the making of pie — inside and out.

As Mormon people we probably ought to have been playing something by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or a Disney movie. But we weren’t. Instead we were whiling away the sabbath with jazz. This Motian record was in the CD tray right after the Chet Baker Christmas album Silent Nights, which I believe should be in every Christmas-observing American home, along with the Nashville Superpicker’s Picking on Christmas and Vince Guaraldi’s masterpiece soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas. The only thing better would be a Hellcaster’s Christmas Album–I’m drafting a letter to Santa in the morning.

So, we were about halfway through the Sunday dinner when the song changed. The new track was in a minor key with a melody vaguely Jewish and John Zorn-like. Zoë (who is three) looked up with a piece of chicken in her fingers and said, “Dat song sounds like Chanukah music.” Then she popped the chicken into her mouth and chewed it up.

My wife and I looked at each other, listened intently to another two or three measures of the song, and confirmed that the melody did, in fact, have a Jewish cast to it. Then I nearly started weeping–my wife, too. I said, “Zoë you are the most wonderful little girl I have ever met.”

Zoë smiled and smiled. I was so happy that this little person could fit into my family so well. Later, as I got myself ready to draft this entry, I began thinking that my daughter is fast on her way to being a High Horser, a snob in the first degree, just like her parents, and that’s okay, I think.

I want to reward that kind of thinking. I want her to know that the connections that fire in her head are like gold to her parents. I want her to know how wonderful it feels to make connections no one else is making. I want her to know how valuble her uniqueness is.

Maybe then, during the unrelenting Saturday morning barrage of commercials for Bratz dolls and all the other dreck that is contributing to the trade deficit, maybe my child will continue to announce, “We don’t need that stuff, Dad. We have our projects. We don’t need all that. It’s just junk.”

I swear, those are her words not mine. I did not coach her on them any more than I told her that the Paul Motian was Chanukah music. My first child is becoming a marvelous person, a really wonderful girl of the first rank, someone who will probably be a horrible teenager but a wonderful, wonderful woman.

1. Zoë nicknamed one of her orange crayons “Seventy-six Thousand.” She was just moving through the house calling for it.
2. Ike has become fond of (and quite good at) spitting his food in a fine spray. One blast can coat an adult’s entire head and face.
3. Zoë was sitting on the potty the other day, saying “Gross, gross, gross, gross” for close to five minutes.
4. I’ve been jonesing for American cheese for the past few weeks. Why? Wasn’t I brought up better than that?
5. I’ve been getting very good at making accurate predictions using mathematics, and I have always been ham fisted when it comes to math. Always. So this is a curiosity.
6. A few weeks ago, I was teasing Zoë, told her that if she kept eating her yogurt with a fork she’d turn into a blueberry. She looked at me right in the eyes, her lips coated in creaminess, and she said, “Dad, you know that’s not a fact.”
7. I’ve been getting up at 5 in the morning, so I’ll have some quiet in the house. The other morning Ike got up at four. He’s going to be a gambling addict.
8. On September 26th at 9:00 p.m. Zoë asked the following question: “How are people made?”
9. I have come close to perfecting a barbecue version of pizza.
10. Zoë reiterated the “how are people made” question on October 6th at 11:00 a.m. My guess is that the answer given in September was insufficient.
11. Earlier in November we harvested apples from the trees in our backyard, but I should amend that statement: we harvested the best apples I have ever tasted from the trees in our backyard.
12. Zoë has decided to name her children Ted and Lilly.