And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

Many things happen in a typical day when you have kids. You wake them up (or they wake you up), feed them, clean them, take them to school, play with them, and sometime near the end of the day, you put them to bed. Some of these things happen once, some multiple times. But in between these things--the necessities--other stuff fills up the space. When people talk about the challenges and rewards of parenting, this unnamed, unquantifiable stuff is what they're talking about.

For instance, here are bunch of things that happened yesterday.

G2 and I read this book… 15.62 times. Why the .62? Because after the 15th time, he only wants to close the book and open it to the Chewbacca page and bark like a dog.

The Wookie/X-Wing spread is one of only three spreads not tainted by the prequels.

G2 loves lamp. Carefully squeezed between the entertainment center, firewood carrier and dog bed in our living room, we have a very skinny floor lamp. G2 has discovered he can move this lamp. So he tried to knock it onto the dog five or six times before I put a toy bin in front of it. He has yet to discover he can walk around this.

LG and I finished a tower. Her LEGO play hasn't yet developed into the full-blown obsession I was hoping for. In fact, I think we've been working on this tower for almost two months. A buddy of mine and his son assembled the Millennium Falcon in less time. But it's a start.

Now we just have to hope G2 doesn't get his hands on it.

LG became a dog for about half an hour. At some point in the afternoon, she decided she was a dog, and refused to pick up anything with her hands or say anything other than "Bark." The whole incident lasted longer than I would've liked, but I appreciate her commitment to the bit.

G2 follows suit. One of his three primary animal sounds is an insistent "Uf! Uf!!" So he barked at his sister, then insisted on staring at a picture of my cousin's dog in a family calendar my aunt made us for Christmas.

LG made unprompted art. While I was giving G2 a snack, LG asked for a paint brush and water. A few minutes later, she came back with this. I'll be honest; the kid paints and colors a lot of stuff, but this is the first time I was really impressed. To paraphrase a well-known quote, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like."

And I like it. I like it a lot.

At some point, I realized LG was wearing rain boots, and they were on the wrong feet. Note: we had not been outside.

LG does not like hummus and bread. LG likes hummus. LG likes bread. DO NOT PUT HUMMUS ON HER BREAD. Evidently these two things do not go together, and you should really know this by now, Daddy.

Upon returning to the living room after dinner, I found this. Yes, those are stencils. Of dinosaurs. Markers were not involved, thankfully.

LG swears she has no idea how they got there.

G2 loves dog bowls. Unrelated to the other dog-based shenanigans, I probably stopped G2 from tipping the dog bowls at least three dozen times. On Facebook yesterday, I noted, "Saying 'NO' in firm, loud voice briefly had the intended effect of stopping my son in his tracks. Now it just makes him move faster." This is what I was talking about.

LG changed G2's name. And he's a girl now. They are so close to being able to play with each other in a meaningful way. But right now, they're dependent on LG's imagination and capacity for inventing nonsense to get any enjoyment from one another. For example, yesterday she decided G2's name and gender should be changed. "Daddy, his name is Comma. Comma is a girl. Come here Comma. Comma…  Comma…  Comma… You're a girl, Comma. Comma, come play! Comma! Comma! Hey, Comma! Hey, Comma! Hey, Comma! Hey, Comma! His name is Comma. His name is Comma. Comma."

G2 discovered lint. While I was making dinner, G2 cruised around the kitchen and discovered the laundry room. He cruised back and forth in front of the washer and dryer. He inspected the shoe bin. He examined the double stroller. He was quiet for a while, and when I checked on him, he was just out of my eye line, sitting next to the dryer and the wastebasket with a small pile of lint next him and his slightly sticky face covered in the stuff. Did he eat lint? It's altogether possible.

And thus it was that the dog gate became a baby gate.

After all of this, the kids go to bed. There's still work to be done, adult dinner to eat, dishes to clean, and then mercifully, a sitcom or two to watch. But then you look down on the floor in the living room, and you discover this.

What is this? It's a silk belt, stuffed into a plastic sandwich bag, stuffed into a tissue box.

Why? Because you have kids. That's why.