For those who have inquired, I’m definitely still doing Randall Goodgame shows. In fact, I’m recording a new project with all new material in a few weeks. However, I have been truly inspired over the past year as I have begun to develop the Slugs and Bugs brand with a tour, new songs, and an active presence on facebook and twitter. Creatively, delving deep into the head space required to consistently create art for kids has been richly rewarding, and consistently hilarious. And I while I have not been here, I have been over at www.slugsandbugs.com writing about that and other kid-related stuff… (a lot of parenting stuff). Click here and it will electronically transport you there.

I’ve now written enough Slugs and Bugs songs to fill up the Christmas record (coming soon) and a follow-up to Slugs and Bugs and Lullabies, but because of the greatness that is the brite revolution, my very next project will be a live recording of all my newest RG material, (including the song I sang at the Ryman last Christmas, With Jesus). I have been collaborating significantly with the great Jason Eskridge, and I can’t wait for you to hear him on these tunes.

So, shoot me an email (click on that big box in the top left corner) if you want to find out about booking a show, either RG or S&B. I’m having a ton of fun either way.

Yesterday, February 28th, marks three months in Tennessee with our son, Ben. My dad and I brought him home from Ethiopia on November 28th, 2009.

Yesterday also turned out to be a milestone day in a few other ways as well. I planned to take the three kids to church while Amy stayed home and worked on the taxes (so much for sabbath rest). The day began when our friend Jamie Peterson called and offered to take all 3 kids to hang at their place after church.

Now, we have a pretty great back yard, with a creek and bamboo everywhere, but the Petersons have a stinking outdoor extravaganza, with an enormous hill that falls into a forest with a zipline tucked away down one of the trails. My kids LOVE hanging with their kids, and oh yeah, inside they’ve got this newfangled electronic contraption they call “Wii.”

The snow in Nashville has melted, Sunday was indeed sunny, and needless to say, our two oldest, Livi and Jonah, were jumping at the chance to escape the “laundry party” we had planned for after church. But Ben? He’s only 2. Surely he can’t go. That’d be too much for Jamie, and besides, he takes a nap every day at 1:00! But I saw Jamie at church and she was completely unafraid of no-nap Ben, and again suggested that she take all 3 kids. I called Amy.

Meanwhile, Ben was also having his first solo-Sunday school experience. I lifted him over the guard-fence thing and he slipped right into the lap of one of the (very sweet) volunteers. It probably helped that it was snack time. Ben really likes to eat.

For at least 20 minutes, I hung back away from view and Ben played with blocks and cars alongside the other kids, and it wasn’t until he heard my voice around the corner (talking to Amy on the phone) that he started to get upset. I went and got him and after a few minutes he actually wanted to go back and finish playing! It was the greatest.

In the end, Amy and I were so intoxicated by the idea of a quiet Sunday afternoon, and Jamie had offered the perfect scenario for us to see how Ben would do away from mom and dad. He’s had grandparent babysitters before, but he’d never gone to “a friend’s house…” and he did GREAT! We showed up 5 hours later and the kids had all had a great time together between the forest, the clubhouse, legos and the Wii. Oh, and Jamie said she wasn’t sure how many apples Ben ate, but it was a lot. And he had a full plate of spaghetti, and he decided that the bowl of pretzels Jamie left out for everyone was just for him.

But I digress. After 3 months, all in all, I’d say our our two biggest questions have faded into irrelevance. The first was, “How is Ben going to do?” And he is doing amazing. He is fun and happy and snuggly and so pleased to be Ben, he is a joy to be around. The other question was, “How will Livi and Jonah do?” And we are humbled by their unquestioned acceptance and love for him. Now, he is 2, and he drives Jonah nuts when he keeps messing with the buttons on the tape player as they’re listening to Harry Potter. And he stole some chocolates out of the heart-shaped box a boy gave Livi for Valentines day (I told her not to leave her door open). But that all seems pretty normal, and they seem to get that too. We are so thankful.

The picture below is from a recent trip to Krispy Kreme. Sometimes everybody just needs a doughnut. I think Ben would say, all times everybody needs a doughnut.

My hands are so tasty!

I don’t know about your kids, but from time to time mine will play too rough with one another. I suggested to my 2 older kids, Livi and Jonah, that they come up with a code word that they could say when someone had crossed the line. Upon the uttering of the code word, all play had to stop immediately until everything was deemed cool.

They immediately started thinking of words that were silly and made them laugh, like “sticky bottom” or “booger brains,” but after a few trial runs, those code words proved ineffective due to their silliness. So I told them to try and think of a word that was boring so they wouldn’t be distracted from the point of the word. The code word they chose… the most boring thing they could think of… “white paper.”

That is brilliant, and hilarious.

Now, from time to time, I’ll hear the two older kids arguing,

Stop it! I said “white paper!”

I didn’t hear you!

I said it loud! WHITE PAPER! WHITE PAPER! WHITE PAPER!!!!!!

And it makes me giggle.

The last 4 nights, Ben has slept through the night. Let’s start there.

For the first month, he needed to be on top of Amy or me in the bed in order to fall asleep. If he caught us trying to escape he would rocket into a panic attack, and if we got out undetected, he still woke up 2 or three times a night and one of us would have to run get in the bed and calm him down and get him to sleep again. Then, two weeks ago we changed it up. I still read and snuggle with him for a bit, but then I get out of Ben’s bed and into Jonah’s (yet unoccupied) bed and stay there till he falls asleep. So far, so good. We can now begin to imagine a day when we can kiss both boys goodnight and leave the room without incident.

Also, Ben saw his first snow last week. A few inches of snow fell and stuck on Nashville, schools were closed for 2 days, and we hunkered down, built fires and took short excursions out into the powdery white stuff. Ben wanted to get down in the frozen creek with Livi and Jonah, but it’s pretty treacherous down there, and the temperature lingered between 10 and 15 degrees, so I never had to do much convincing to get him back inside. MAN that’s cold.

Sibling-hood fits Ben like a glove. He absolutely loves his brother and sister, and gets super excited when they play with him – usually some form of chase or peek-a-boo or tickle. If either Jonah or Livi gets upset about anything, Ben will find random toys around the house and bring them over in an attempt to console them. They are all quite capable of annoying one another, but it is far more common for them to enjoy each other. I should also add that, amazingly, Ben does not mess with Jonah’s Legos – even if they are all spread out in front of him. He has figured out that Jonah is quite protective about them and pretty much stays clear of them. Now, the light-up light saber, on the other hand… Jonah has pretty much ceded authority over the light saber to Ben. And Ben just walks slowly around the house with it pointing up and glowing blue, or red.

Whenever we are in town but don’t go to church, we do home church. It usually consists of some songs and prayers at the beginning and end, and a chapter from the Jesus Storybook Bible in the middle. Ben has done very well staying on the couch and hanging with Amy and the kids while I lead us through it (though last week Amy led the singing on her little parlor guitar). Ben’s current favorite song is “This is the Day That the Lord Has Made.” He sings it with his stilted 2 year old English, and it’s like he’s a walking devotional. I don’t care what is frustrating your day, if you heard this little guy spontaneously break out into “Dis iss sa day,” and “ah will rejos” It would lighten your burdens, if only for a moment.

And speaking of English, I couldn’t possibly recount all he has learned. He soaks up everything we say and repeats it like a parrot. Amy is great about getting him to learn a word instead of grunt or whine for something, and he learns the stuff as fast as we can teach it. Mama, Daddy, Livi, Jonah, doggy, car, all the parts of the face, blanket, star, giraffe, elephant, turtle, some more, please, thank you, eggs, apple, orange, banana, cookie, come, hat, snow, ice, water, milk, cup, diaper, wipes, socks, shoes, shirt, pants, sunglasses, jacket, and he has been connecting words for a couple of weeks, like… Ben’s neck, or Mama’s cup, or bye-bye eggs, when breakfast is over. That’s probably a tenth of what he says… but those are some prominent words that come to mind.

Just this evening, we were marveling at how much has happened over the last 6 weeks, and just like the older two, before long, we won’t remember what it was like without him.