I learned to ride my bike on a gravel road, and I wasn’t very good at it. My wife’s playground was a gravel and pavement-lined coop. Between the two of us, our childhood knees were basically scraped, bleeding and/or bruised constantly.

Add the family history to the fact he’s a total boy’s boy, and we shouldn’t be surprised our almost-four-year-old’s knees have been badly battered, smashed and sliced for almost a month straight.

Grant and I’ve been doing a lot of outside projects the last three days, so he has had ample opportunity to rip his legs up. On top of two bandages already, tonight he tripped on our asphalt alley and cut a hole in his left knee. That one merited a special trip to the drugstore just to restock the giant knee band-aids necessary to quell the gushers. They were buy one, get one, so I loaded up. It’s not like he and his brother won’t need them.

In honor of my sister and brother-in-law’s big move from ND to WV.