Violet & Henry: The Cuteness Continues...

Violet is doing super. She basically always sleeps through the night. She is becoming extremely agile in the Johnny Jump Up. She is also able to sit upright for a short time if we prop her up. She is starting to do the body movements that are gearing up towards inchworm movements. She will do pelvic thrusts and leg kicks and she loves to grab her feet lately. I think she may be over her cold and infection stuff finally.

Henry is a firecracker. Have I mentioned that sometimes he will say "Whatever" now? It also cracks me up when he says "sure" when we ask him if he can do something. How accomodating.

It has been increasingly difficult to get him to stay in his bed and go to sleep at seven o'clock. He is learning that he can get out of bed, turn his light on and goof around. Sometimes we can hear him reading books or playing by himself. Other times he will sneak out of his room and spy on me and mama. He thinks he is pretty sneaky. We have been giving him big boy status and leaving his bedroom door open and letting him fall asleep while listening to his favorite jams. Now we have to threaten him with closing the door to get him to stay in bed.

We recently got carpet in our bedroom and moved our bed into our actual bedroom. Woo hoo. We had just flopped our mattress on the floor on the loft level next to the kids bedrooms. Before, when Henry woke up, our bed was right outside his bedroom door and he would just hop into bed and start jumping on our heads and poking our eyelids. Now, if he wakes up early in the morning or in the middle of the night, we were worried he would wonder downstairs in the dark and fall. So we had to figure out a way to enable him to turn on lights when he woke up. That is where "light stick" comes in. I invented "light stick" since he is just a whisker too short to reach the light switch. Now when he wakes up we can hear him scamper around upstairs, grab his light stick and start flipping switches.

Henry is still generally uninterested in the whole potty training situation. He likes to pee on the potty mainly as a novelty act and he realizes that it is a gimmick that allows him to prolong the 'going to bed' routine. The other day we were letting him fly commando in his sweat pants and he dropped a duece. It amazes me that a person can poop and not realize it is happening.

Henry is a creative genius. He excels at many mediums, but seems to prefer finger painting. Let's just say he is awesome and leave it at that.

Too bad our Christmas photo shoot at Babys 'R' Us didn't go this well.

One of Henry's favorite games is where he will hop in a box or something and tell me to carry him around. I put him in a clothes basket and threw him up on the fridge. He was confused. I think the sepia tone really captures the moment...

Henry had his buddy Luke over last Saturday. They are really close in age and both a new big brothers. It was fun to watch the two boys get rambunctious. They would look at each other and just start laughing and jumping up and down. At one point one of them said "C'MON, let's laugh and run!!". And that is exactly what they did for about three hours.

Henry had Grandma Judy over the other day to partake in Christmas Cookie Madness. I am not sure what Henry is thinking in this one...

This is the first ever multi-child bath experiment at our household.

We are an EXTREMELY festive family.

RIP Ike Turner.

Oh, Yes. We Have A Tree.

Here we are at Sandgren's Tree Farm this past Saturday. It is a "cut your own" joint a little ways down the road. The tree we picked is in the picture right behind us. You don't realize how big a tree is until you are trying to balance it in a tree stand. This would later prove to be a formidable task. We posed for a picture with my brother's family in the warming shack while we sipped hot cider and ate sugar cookies.

Violet was a good sport for a young gal battling a double ear infection. We could have changed her name to Boogers Mahoney.

You may not notice it unless I point it out to you -- there is a chainsaw in the background. Yes, I did use it in the house. Things were a little tense for a few minutes. Our tree stand was too flimsy and we needed to borrow Grandma Judy's. In the end, I did manage to get the tree upright. Although I would be very careful standing next to it if you find yourself at our house. I think it could tip at any time.

Henry and I did most of the tree decorating. Momma went to work with something that involved garland, ribbon, and berries. Henry was very fired up about the tree decorating. Although he took equal delight in taking decorations off the tree and testing his throwing arm.

Shoveled a lot of snow on Sunday. Should get a plow or something. We have a big gravel driveway. Not cool. The goats are doing swell. After the snowfall we still had plenty of areas for them to browse for food. Their coats are thick and I put some extra hay in their house.

Tournament of Champions

We are closing on our house today. Yah. Still not as "done" as I imagined I would be at this point but I have learned to stop caring.

We are hosting our very first Thanksgiving. I am baking the turkey and I am guessing it is going to be super good... Our gala event will also feature a 'running of the goats' ceremony and the 1st Annual Johnson Family Ping Pong Tournament of Champions.

Violet has been making the transition to baby foods. It took a couple of weeks of just going through the motions. Her favorite is peas. She also likes squash.

She is too big for the bouncy chair now and has graduated to the 'exersaucer' and 'johnny jump-up' for baby display and containment. She is getting very smiley and is very vocal. She coos a whole lot and is very quick to voice her concerns when she is annoyed or displeased.

The other day I sent Henry to daycare in his vintage leisure suit and people were laughing at him and he apparently got shy and embarrassed and sad. I guess it is time to stop dressing him for my own amusement. Sigh....

We have been battling the pink eye recently with both of the kiddies. Not fun.

Otherwise, all is fine and dandy. The goats are fine. Ike is OK, but still one false move from the glue factory.

We survived a minor mouse invasion. I trapped four of the little bastards in three consecutive days with no current signs of mouse activity.

Pumpkins & What Have You...

I like wearing cheesy wool sweaters that were handmade by Scandinavian people when I work outside. They are super warm and I find them at thrift stores for a couple dollars. People seem to think this makes me a loser. I guess mainly the wife makes fun of me. Anyway, now I have Henry on board with this look and I must say we are warm and fabulous.

Henry will pee on the potty most of the time. Still no poops. A while ago Henry even started emptying the pottychair into the toilet after seeing us do it a few times. This was really cute and fun until "the incident". Have you ever watched something and known what was going to happen right before the event starts to unfold? It also tends to feel like it is happening in slow motion. Henry had decided his potty chair was full enough to empty (NOTE: ALWAYS EMPTY POTTY CHAIR AFTER EACH USE). I won't elaborate on the whole story but it involved about two cups of urine splishing and a splashing all over the bathroom. After Henry said something like "Uh oh. Henny Henny fall down."

Here is Henry clowning around with mom's Halloween costume props.

Momma was Angelina Jolie note the multiple ethnically diverse dolls in baby bjorn -- a nice touch. My costume was kind of ambiguous and thrown together at the last minute. How can you go wrong with a fake moustache? I initially thought old school Kenny Loggins, then the Captain from Captain and Tennille, and I also had several people say I looked exactly like Bernie Lomax from Weekend at Bernie's. I just went with it. I was wearing white wicker shoes which are not in the picture.

Violet likes to make motorboat noises.

She has been sick lately and it made her cheeks super rosie. For being really sick she has been in pretty good spirits.

Here I am unlocking the secrets of the art of pumpkin carving to the next generation.

Henry did not strike me as a novice at all. I think he was paying attention to the pumpkin carving routine last year. I can't exactly remember what was going on in the picture below. Henry had a lot of fun but kept stacking the pumpkins and throwing them around the house. That might be what my look was all about.

Pumpkin stacking! It was fun. Looking at the pictures, my expressions are deceiving.

Henry was a lion and Violet was a pumpkin.

You can tell Violet was really into it this year.

Here is the posse of cousins. We went trick or treating to actual houses this year. Henry was a little shy, but managed to hold his own.

My wife had the amazing presence of mind to jump behind a bush and snap this picture of Henry in action.

Field Trip Fun and Why I am Now Mad at the World...

Henry went on a field trip to the Pinehaven farm with his daycare chums. He regularly makes outlandish claims now. After his field trip he told us that the llamas and goat bit him. He also does not cotton to any of his fellow daycare chums touching his new shoes. He has confided in us that at his daycare Lulu kept trying to touch his shoes and that he had to hide them in a closet. This was confirmed with his daycare provider.

Henry "graduated" from his gymnastics class.

His sleeping routine (or lack thereof) is getting increasingly out of whack. After we read him about 100 books and tucking him in despite his pleas of "ONE MORE BOOK!!" he will get out of bed and push a little stool by the light switch and turn on his light and start going crazy in his room. He also gets up in the middle of the night and I got into the bad habit of going in his room and laying down on the floor next to him until he went to sleep. I think he feels burned when he would wake up later and I would be gone. So, now he seems to rest with one eye open and make sure I don't leave -- it's just bad news. We decided to stop the insanity and have implemented tough love and now he just has to go back to sleep on his own.

Last weekend Henry and I made a midday trip to Menard's to stock up on low quality but competitively priced goods and at the check out I impulsively grabbed two boxes of Oatmeal Cream Pies thinking they would be a nice and quick snack so I wouldn't have to stop while I was working on the siding. When I returned home I made two crucial mistakes in judgement: 1) I forgot to grab the Oatmeal Cream Pies (OCP's) when I unloaded the car, and more importantly, 2) I forgot to roll up the window.

Basically, we are talking about 24 vulnerable and unprotected OCP's in my crappy, crappy automobile. An automobile with a value that fluctuates with the amount of gas in its tank. I am guessing I could get maybe $200 for it to an uninformed buyer.

It may be worth noting that the OCP's are individually wrapped to ensure freshness.

Anyway, I returned from Menard's and went back to work on the siding without realizing I had left the OCP's in the car. A couple of hours had passed and I was walking around the garage to grab something when I noticed my dog Ike in the car. Normally, this isn't a huge deal. For some reason, he likes to hop in the car in hopes that I take him for a ride or something.

Let's just cut to the chase. I quickly realized something was rotten in Denmark and rushed to the car to survey the carnage. Now imagine opening 24 individually wrapped OCP's without your hands and smearing them all over in a rabid feast of excess. The interior of my car is already very far from pleasant. Needless to say, it was pretty gross. I won't describe it in detail because it hurts to much and it is still too fresh.

I don't think I have ever lost my temper quite like that before. I said things to that dog that cannot be unsaid. Even though I have always loved my dog and I can't seriously blame him for a simple indulgence of opportunity, I don't think things will ever be the same between us. I kind of hate him now.

To add insult to injury, as I hastily cleaned up the worst of the mess I accidentally threw out my drivers license which was loose in the car because of a bank transaction and I forgot to put it right back in my wallet. So after I had cleaned up the mess, I realized I was missing my drivers license and had to dump out the mess on the garage floor and comb through it to find my license.

This event has left me bitter and angry with a lingering resentment towards my dog. I think the worst part is that my car is such a pile of crap that it really bothered me to have to clean it. If it happened to our nice and sensible car at least the effort would have been worth something. I guess I can take comfort in thinking that down the road at some point it will be funny to think about.

Oh wait, it gets worse. I was so angry with Ike that I was going to make him sleep outside instead of in the garage. My wife decided to let him sleep in the garage. What do you think happens when a dog consumes 24 OCP's in one sitting? We are talking about a historical case of runny stools. Runny stools mixed with bits of wrappers. I think one of the piles of poo was roughly 24 inches in diameter. Thanks again, Ike. You are one classy dog.

*********************

Violet can look cute in any old thing. Below she looks like an absolute heart breaker in her wool sweater and aviator hat as she tours Pinehaven Farm in a stroller. She is a good daughter and is sleeping through the night more often than not.

I don't know where Henry came up with this. He will hide behind a piece of furniture or something and squat down and fill his diaper while occasionally getting up and running over to us and yelling "NO TEASING!" Maybe some of the kids at daycare are teasing him or something. That seems to be part of his personality. He is kind of shy and self-conscious.

Seacrest out.

And the Lifetime Acheivement Award for Overall Cuteness Goes to...

Momma snapped this fun series of pictures. Henry likes looking at the pictures on the camera display screen right after we take them. "Henny see!"


I have been trying to teach Henry to speak like a voice over guy for movie trailers. "Nick Nolte and Josh Brolin in BLOOD DIAMOND...RATED R!!!" He still has a ways to go but it is an amusing process.

He is speaking pretty well and amazes us every single day with a new word or phrase. However, he is unable to say the "F" or "TH" sounds. The other day at gymnastics (yep, Henry is in a community ed. "Tumblin' Tots" class) momma was relieved when a stranger could not understand Henry when he said "Henny sarted. Henny sarted."

The gymnastics classes are on Sunday afternoons. Momma has been taking him since I've been working on the siding on the weekend when we have good weather and daylight. She says that he turns into an absolute terror at gymnastics. Otherwise, he seems like a well mannered young man.

The goats get to free range when time and weather permit. They seem to enjoy it. I did swear at Drama the other day when he peed in the garage. Not very gentlemanly.

The other not so cool thing about free ranging goats is that they like to climb all over on the porch and in the garage and will occasionally make a deposit of their little goat turds in a non-discriminating way. It could be worse though. Goat turds are like little cocoa puffs -- really tiny. Our dog Ike can sometimes poop the size of a house. It's one of his least attractive qualities.

Below, Henry and Eli chill with the goats in the garage. You have to visualize LOVE 105 blaring in the background. I believe it was a Bee Gee's song. Our goats enjoy music.

I have to imagine we freaked out the pizza guy pretty good when he pulls up into our driveway and he is surrounded by a pitbull and three dwarf goats. He rolled down the window and said "Hey, is the dog cool?". I said "Yeah, but keep an eye on the goats. They are shifty."







I was just happy to find out we are within the delivery range of a pizza place. We are about six miles from town so that was nice.



Dave takes brief pause for a picture as we worked on the siding. His benevolence knows no bounds as he has been helping out most weekends for the past month or so.








My brother in his Macho Man Randy Savage T-shirt and Willie Nelson headgear.

There's me wondering when this will all be over with... I have an awesome idea -- WE'LL BUILD A HOUSE!!

You can't really see it in this photo but the woodstove is burning in the background.

Baby Violet rolled over a few days ago. We also started feeding her cereal. She has been eating pretty good lately and has slept through the night the past two nights. She is getting super at lifting up her head and is becoming cuter by the minute. Her head is starting to get fuzzier.

Henry made this pumpkin at daycare. He is very proud of it. The other day some firemen came to visit them at daycare. When I came home from work Henry screamed "DADDY, DADDY!" then proceeded to dive on the floor and roll across the great room. He wanted to show me his stop, drop and roll technique. It is comforting to know that Henry knows what to do in the event that he should become engulfed in flames...

Henry sprained his ankle or something last weekend. He was running around with his cousin Eli most of the day while we worked on the siding. The next morning when he woke up he was crying and had to crawl out of bed. He crawled across the floor and just seemed confused. He had a noticeable limp for about two days. It is weird to see a toddler looking gimpy like an old man. Thankfully, he has quickly regained his championship form

It has really been a bad year for Great Grandparents in our family. Grandpa Walt recently passed away after 90 good years of living. I was asked to deliver the eulogy. It was easy to write but hard to deliver/read. I've never been fond of public speaking, let alone at a funeral.

I had hoped to bring the kids so I could look at them if I needed to regain composure as I delivered the eulogy. However, we left both kids at daycare in consideration of Henry's track record at the last couple of weddings. The wife was thinking ahead and gave me a copy of the photo below to bring up with me to the podium to help keep me loose.

All Aboard the Night Train Express!

Henry sometimes finds himself exhausted from simply being too awesome. Here he is in his favorite Stones shirt and his floppy moppy, butterscotch stallion hair. He has become a miniature person -- a miniature person in need of a haircut. Last weekend momma took him to Poik's Barber Shop. Poik has been providing the Chisago Lakes area with quality barbering since the bronze age. He gives a pretty solid haircut for a reasonable price ($10).

Henry looks like a totally new man with his new haircut and has completely shed his hippie image. He sold his ferrets and his Grateful Dead tapes and has abandoned his drum circle buddies. We walks a pretty straight line these days.

Below, Henry demonstrates the simple yet effective Ranger Choke Hold with a neck twist on Baby Sister.

The other day we sat down as a family to enjoy an elegant meal of Mac 'n' Cheese with wienies. I was faced with the difficult task of making a wine pairing. Grape Mad Dog 20/20? Strawberry Hill Boones Farm? Wrong! I went with a sweet 2004 Night Train Express.

Henry was served with a plate that had a compartment filled with a mixture of ketchup and mustard for dipping his wienies. He soon grew bored with eating and decided to start dipping his hands in the condiment mixture. Julie grabbed the camera to capture this candid moment of family fun. "This is CRAAAAZZZYYY!!", says Henry. Also, note the haircut.

But soon this whimsical moment spiraled out of control and into a world of pain. Henry started slapping his face and lathering up. His inquisitive joy quickly turned into confusion and pain. The wife did what any mother would do: followed the developing action with the camera...

I swear, if you took off his shirt, shaved his head and sewed some sausage links to his belly button, this could be mistaken for a delivery room photo! Poor little guy...

Quickly, I grabbed Henry and tucked him under my arm, sprinting to the kitchen sink. I can only imagine what could have been going through Henry's mind as I held his head firmly and sprayed water directly into his eyes.

"DADDY! WHY?!?!"

After the dust had settled, Henry was left visibly shaken and pretty confused but with a new outlook on life . I told him that he was a very brave young man and that mustard was the devil. He normally looks very confident and proud wearing his Bob the Builder "Big Boy" undies.

The last couple of weekends Davie has been helping with me put up siding on the house. Here Henry enjoys a moment with Davie and daughter Gracie.

Not bad for a couple of small town white boys.

The maple trees have reached peak colors at our place.

Despite our continued pleas, Violet continues to refuse to consistently sleep through the night. Here she is with her pumpkin hat.

The other day I was singing "Chocolate Rain" to Henry and he actually mocked me with his own version called "Chocolate Milk". He only has the chorus so far but it was pretty funny.

A brief note on goats...

I should have named those little buggers Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and Jimmy Garner because they are total escape artists. Last weekend I beefed up the fence and they still escape at will. I don't even know how they do it. I suspect they could be shapeshifters. I really have to step up my efforts on fencing if I expect to contain them. I have actually started just letting them out in the evenings and weekends so they can just browse around. They are pretty easily rounded up with a little scoop of goat chow and seem to like to stay in their house over night.

I have been kicking around the idea of starting an online magazine. Through a brief Google search, I have noted that neither Goat Fancier or Goat Aficionado are taken or used titles or product names. Which one sounds the best? I think they both sound like potential winners. Could this be my ticket to becoming an internet millionaire? I'm guessing it's a little obscure. Oh well, a man has to have dreams.