We have a new pet, Beatrice the hamster. Beatrice is very active and loves running around in her hamster ball. Her favorite food is carrot and she loves attention.

Categories: BJ
3 Comments »

Phoebe pretends to have a very large vocabulary. She doesn’t really comprehend everything she says but she’s more than willing to engage in arguments without understanding what she’s saying.

If you say something to her or accuse her of impertinence she will wholeheartedly refute your allegation with the best phonetic reconstruction of your accusation that she can muster.

She’s destined for politics.

Here’s a picture of her laying on our poor old cat.

Categories: BJ, Phoebe
1 Comment »

I was putting Sophia down for the night. We have a little procedure that she seems to love. When she’s sleeping in her top bunk she likes me to carry her “like a princess”, lift her up, and place her in bed. I like to mix it up a bit so sometimes I’ll place her gently on her bed and other times I’ll drop her unceremoniously upon her mattress. Last night I lifted her high above my head to where she could easily touch the ceiling. I then pretended I was about to drop her as I feigned a loss of balance. She began giggling furiously.

After laying her down and kissing her forehead she turned to me and stated, “Daddy, you do some crazy stuff… but you also do some giggly stuff, so I love you.” It’s nice to know she can quantify why she loves me.

(Sorry for the post as a facebook note when I’ve already updated my status to share this little moment but facebook is tied to this blog, so any updates get mirrored there.)

Categories: BJ, Sophia
1 Comment »

Sophia has finally hit the age where everything is of great importance to her. Holidays have become huge events with weeks of anticipation beforehand. As of today, November 18th, she has Christmas fever and is greatly anticipating the arrival of Santa.

She did however have a great time for Halloween. I made sure to teach her how to be a polite little ladybug (Phoebe was a pirate and as such did not need to show the same level of decorum as a dainty ladybug). Here’s Phoebe perfecting her AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! replete with a clenched fist swinging in front of her chest to punctuate the exclamation.

In the run up to the actual day of Halloween we were able to participate in one of the most crowded events I’ve ever witnessed. The fire department of our nearby town has a complete miniature town where sponsors were able to erect Hobbit sized businesses so curious young citizens could practice obeying traffic laws in power wheels with an entire town sized to their own dimensions. This town is called safety town.

Safety town opens to the public to allow trick or treaters to trick or treat in safety… or at least in a crowded miasma of more corporate sponsored candy giving in the hopes that we might sign up for junk mail on a whim. I am not opposed to the practice as it was a pretty good time. The wait was about an hour but the fine gentlemen of our local police and fire departments were doing their organizations a fine service by chatting with the little ones and even letting them climb on the fire trucks and figure out how to ring the bells on the front bumpers of the fire trucks (Sophia figured out how to ring the bell and finally had to be asked to quit because it was too loud).

I have to report a devastating loss at safety town. I lost one of Phoebe’s blankets while we were there. If you were not aware each of my children has some attachment to a blanket. Sophia is not as attached as Phoebe is but even Sophia becomes concerned if her blanket is not with her at night. Phoebe however, is very very attached to the feel of her blankets.

She slowly finds a “corner” and holds it in one of her hands as she rests her thumb in her mouth and rubs either her cheek or her nose with the corner. While at safety town I had draped her blanket over my shoulder. In the commotion of taking 1 photograph (it was pretty dark by then so I only got 1) and shuffling our children around I dropped the blanket and didn’t realize I had dropped it for quite a while. Sadly her blanket was gone. It has been replaced by other blankets and happily Phoebe is able to swap them out… provided the blanket has a corner.

The following week Halloween actually arrived and we carved pumpkins. I then took the little ones out to go around the block and trick or treat. They did very well. They were polite (except for Phoebe who was able to announce the she was a PIRATE!! and yell AAAAAARRRRRRR after saying trick or treat at nearly every house. I believe this is actually polite for a pirate to announce themselves before shouting AAAARRRRRR). They got plenty of candy and they both discovered a love of Chocolate.

Tags: family,Halloween,pictures
Categories: BJ, Weekly Family Update
1 Comment »

As you may have noticed there was only a single update to our family site in the month of October. This is really sad since we actually filled up every weekend with some sort of activity. Admittedly we had some downtime in the middle of the month due to my bringing H1N1 home and spreading it around after our trip to the State Fair.

Heather is working on a catch up post to fill in the October gap. I could lay blame on Heather as she has read EVERY SINGLE book in the Harry Potter series during the month of October… but I can’t do that without also laying the blame on myself. Sickness, school, and work have kept me busy. I’ll also admit that I’ve been a little preoccupied due to the release of Forza Motorsport 3.

Other items of note in the month of October. My youngest sister turned 18 and my mother celebrated the 24th anniversary of her 29th birthday. After we catch up we still have a lot of things to cover, like:

• Writing letters to Santa
• A visit from the Browns
• Our usable garage
• Why I’m so awesome at driving cars in a videogame
• The marshmellow test, and many other things

Tags: family,fun,games
Categories: BJ, BJ's Life
1 Comment »

I just wanted to inform anyone who reads our blog that Kib passed away last night. My mother bought him as a puppy when I was a senior in High School. It’s sad to see him go and I honestly don’t know how I’m going to explain his passing to my little girls since they were both very fond of him.

I’d just like to say that I don’t mind the loss of my hat collection, 3 playstation controllers, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 copies of Gran Turismo 2, belt, and 2 ties. In the end it was worth it.

Tags: dog,sad
Categories: BJ, BJ's Life
2 Comments »

Heather and I have decided that once any of our children turn 3 one of us will take either respective child out for the night and have a date night. So far these have been a resounding success. Heather and Sophia had a wonderful time watching UP in June, so in July it was my turn.

We can’t break the bank with these little outings but we can do something fun and unique. There’s a Chik-Fil-A in The Colony that has themed nights during the week. For example, Tuesdays are princess nights. On Princess night anyone dressed as a princess gets a free kids meal. I’m not 100% sure if this is limited to little girls only, but I haven’t had the courage to test the boundaries of this particular requirement.

Sophia had a wonderful time at princess night. She and I chatted about princess dresses, favorite types of juice, the value of love, the merits of winnie the pooh vs normal bears, remote control cars, sorcerors vs wizards, and the best kind of hugs. Just for your information the best kinds of hugs are hugs with love, with bear hugs and holding hugs coming in second and third respectively.

Sophia sure loved dressing up as a princess.

Tags: date night,hugs,princess
Categories: BJ, Sophia
2 Comments »

Heather has already explained that Phoebe loves pockets. Phoebe not only loves putting things in her pockets but also having her hands in her pockets as she travels about the house.

This backfired on her today. She had some little girl jeans on with pockets that barely fit even her tiny hands. She had to work to get her hands in there. Unfortunately she also had to work for a second to get her hands out of her pockets.

Any parent of a toddler knows they fall over periodically as their excitement outpaces their coordination. She tripped with her poor little hands in her little pockets. She couldn’t brace herself while falling and kissed the carpet. Poor little dear. I heard a very very sad cry start then I picked her up and comforted her. She wasn’t very hurt, just embarrassed at her loss of dignity.

Tags: falling,Phoebe,pockets
Categories: Phoebe
1 Comment »