TSC is selling chicks for a buck. #dadstr #kids #4h

In response to me explaining what Maundy means, “Mandate”. “Well Jesus was kind of on a man date on Maundy Thursday, bunch of guys sitting around together drinking wine” - well played eldest kid, well played

I’m ready for Upril before Downgust

I had my Claude bot create a web app for tracking Easter eggs. Take picture and track gps coordinates. It was basically one-shot and I tracked 40 eggs across 5 acres for the kids. Looks like I’ll be doing more of this. That worked out too well!

When the church asks you to preach one Lenten Wednesday on one of the petitions in the Lords Prayer, you should say yes and help your pastor out. It’s a wildly busy season for him and an honor to be counted among those who can teach.

5th kid is almost a year old. It has become increasingly clear that I have been severely limited in my career and money situation by the number of kids I have. I have had a baby in diapers for 10 years. I could have stayed in the Bay Area and played the game. But I moved to the middle of nowhere with no neighbors to control my territory and raise a clan. Before long on this quest that started in earnest10 years ago, Christ found me. And now I see that if I should I have a sixth I would be more wealthy, and in fact already am. Not just in terms of right now which I am due to my daily time with my children, but also in the future 15-25 years from now. If God’s grace continues and allows me to see this mission through. The love of this family compounds unlike anything I have seen of wealth otherwise.

Having “the conversation” with our oldest two daughters tonight. Oldest is mostly pissed off that our last baby wasn’t just a random gift from God. Yes dear there is a human initiative. I’m grateful we didn’t wait another month.

Go to the creek with your family

My wife was still on free ChatGPT until today, just asking about an old friend in Minnesota and it tried to hedge random unrelated crap about the events in Minneapolis today. They clearly have to pre-prompt wacky stuff to manage the onslaught of internet sleuthing during things like this. Anyway I got her set up on Routstr and topped it off instantly with my LN node via Zeus. Now she can ask anything uncensored and free. It makes perfect sense that the first thing I will regularly pay for in sats is uncensored intelligence.

Pray your longest prayer of the day when putting the littles to sleep. Take as long as you need. They’ll go to sleep in the best of way. Your list will grow and grow. You do maintain a list right? And you will come to cherish this time more than any. Someday it will be gone but the greatest habit will be indelibly seared onto your soul.

I took a break to sleep train my 7 month old three times in the last 3 months. He might be our last. I can’t deny my wife that bittersweet joy.

Pacifier’s are an anti pattern. Give them to less than one year olds for something to do. Never use them as long term comfort. Pull that shit out of your 2+ year old it is destroying their jaw, teeth, and speech.

The Avalon Q was worth every sat. Home is heated entirely by firewood and miners now. Even turned a 3 season sunroom into 4, now my office.

5 months old, waking 3-4 times a night. Wife exclusively breastfeeds. I dropped the hammer on that little baby last night. He moved into his room, the 3 yo boy moved out of the girls room in with him. And so did I, for a few days anyway. This is my 5th child to sleep train. I can literally do it in my sleep. Wife is showing renewed energy, signs of life. We waited long enough. Yeah he cried for 30 minutes while I progressively backed off my verbal re-assurances, sleeping in the unused top bunk that will be his someday. Yeah the 3 year old slept right through all of it. He startled once to a new room confused, I laid with him back to sleep. They won't even really remember their old sleeping habits in 3 days. The first night is always the roughest but when you hold the line it's over before you know it and you have good sleepers. (as long as they are together)

As a Christian, I am called to share my wealth with neighbors in need. She’s running the local 4-H meeting today while I’m at home with the youngest two. Truly the jewel of my crown. (Proverbs 12:4) #dadstr How has your wife brought Christ and you glory today?

Update on moving back home to work near kids: The second grader can do math sitting next to the 5 month old. Next to me. Holy shit this is the exact answer to all of the dread we had about how to scale our homeschool. It was under my nose the whole time!

I got a tiny rural office building to get away from my homeschoolers several years ago. Coding means holding a ton of fragile context in my head and the little interruptions here and there were truly destructive. However, I've recently started working from home again and I realized the job is completely different now. LLMs hold the fragile context, I just hold pointers to the architecture in my head. It's 100x easier to drop in and out of flow state. So I'm thinking about moving the office back home. The school-age kids get to do their work by daddy while he works. It certainly eases the weight of my wife, the teacher, who is also exclusively nursing a baby (no bottles for us, that's a different thread). Her job will only get harder in the years to come. I kind of can't believe I'd move back home.... my precious little space with the bookshelves and desk and vibe. My little work sanctum, my "territory". Screw it. Give me the messy papers, the school books, the little faces, the break moments to teach basic math and science. I'm running back as fast as I can now that I realize it's possible now. This homeschool is going to scale so well. Is this dying to self and living #ToChristAlone in my journey? #dadstr #dadstrong

I've sleep trained all prior kids at 4-5 months old. This 5th baby smiles so much and I'm a completely different man with a lot more freedom... I don't have it in me yet. Might just bring him into bed for a few weeks. (Could totally change my mind in a week) I'll do a note on sleep training if someone asks for it.