What do you want to be when you grow up?

The work is definately seasonal. It is very tough to sustain the job during the heat of the summer. After a good moist snowfall the barriers to entry are very low, so you can expect a lot of competition in your work. The pay is very low and you can expect lots of long days doing nothing after you start, but if being a snowwoman is really what you want to do we will do what we can to help.

**disclaimer: this was not a real discussion, but the below picture made me think she was thinking it. I am not sure if it was the insistance on wearing the snowman's hat or her wanting to stand there with her arms out that made me think she was thinking it.

Either way we are just glad to be able to be able to play outside again after a roughly two week cold streak. For the non-Minnesota readers among us, here are some specifics on the cold according the weather.com...six of the first ten days of the year had single digit highs, 1/2/10 took the prize in the Twin Cities with a high of zero and a low of -19, these temperatures are without windCHILL. During the cold we still tried to get outside, but it was usually for about five minutes and our goal was to see if we could make it to the end of the driveway and back.

In addition to acting like snowmen/snowwomen, the first day we got outside we celebrated the new warmth (15-20 degrees) by digging holes in the snow all the way to the grass, saying "Hi grass!" then filling in the holes and saying, "See you in the spring!" Mom will be so proud when she hears that today we dug holes then filled them in!?!?!?

Thanks to the Retica family for building the snowman!

Extra Steps

Lucy, like most kids, is into everything. She loves to help with laundry, making coffee, shoveling, cutting up veggies, and many other common tasks around the house. I am often impressed with her ability to focus once she starts a task. For example, she usually won't stopping until the entire Tupperware cabinet is cleaned out or every last book is off the shelf. Our approach, which isn’t different from many parents, is to having her participate in hopes that it helps her learn how things work.

My concern is that she is going to think that a broom is needed to make a pot of coffee or that when you shovel the driveway if you pick up snow and put it where dad just shoveled that is cool or the latest extra step in an otherwise normal process…that you can’t wear any clothing when you start folding a load of laundry!

Of course I know that all of these extra steps will go away as she gets older, but I have to document some of our current processes. We will certainly not be winning any operational excellence awards or qualifying for Six Sigma stuff. Productivity often isn’t nearly as fun!?!?!
____________________________________________

Making coffee starts with Lucy spreading coffee grounds throughout the kitchen(grounds on the counter and floor are pictured). Usually some coffee even gets into the filter.

While the coffee is brewing we take care of the additional step in our coffee making process...sweeping.

Folding clothes has taken on a couple of extra steps. Pictures below show Lucy trying on each piece of clothing including dad's shirt and shorts, mom's tie-dye socks (made by Lucy with love), and dad's socks on her arms. Not pictured is the refolding process, which often is a re-refolding process depending on what she wants to wear and when.

Toby Keith and the family tree

I would have to say that I am not a huge country music fan. I enjoy listening to music, but I am not the type of listener that always listens to the same thing or has ever fallen in love with a particular group or band.

Regarding country music the things the bug me include all the talk of losing your dog, truck, etc. and the disproportionate number of songs that are about high school. With the average life span in the US being about 78 years, there seems to be way too many songs about being 18ish.

As I was typing my last sentence I remembered that Tim McGraw has a song about being 30, so maybe I know more about country then I thought. In addition to that, I do love me a good “Standing Outside the Fire” by Garth Brooks, and apparently somewhere in my mental jukebox I have some Toby Keith. More specifically, the Toby Keith song “Who’s your daddy”. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your opinion of this song, I have passed this tune on to Lucy, although she likes to sing it a bit differently.

The refrain of the song goes:

Who’s your daddy, who’s your baby?
Who’s your buddy, who’s your friend?

Lucy often responds to me singing this by singing (with her best Toby Keith voice (which isn’t very close, yet very cute))

Who’s your daddy, who’s your mommy?

As Lucy gets older maybe we will be able to use this song to help her learn some of her more distant relatives. I am not quite sure if the below has the same ring to it though:

Who’s your daddy’s great aunts husband, who’s their baby?
Who’s your mommy’s cousin’s sister, who’s her dad?

We will work on it!?!?!?

In the meantime, based on a 30 week ultrasound where we opted to find out the gender of baby #2, we will work on Lucy started to saying, “who’s your sister?”

For the full Toby Keith song, check out below; for the full details of us having another girl, check out lib’s blog.

First name I got called this year...

Guppy, and next year it will be minnow.

I guess technically in the second video posted by Scott, a friend of the people I jumped with, he called us all stupid around 7 AM on 1/1/10. I think he had a point!?!?! It was about 2 degrees with a bit of a wind, and we jumped into water that they needed to cut away over 12 inches of ice to access.

Lib’s uncle (pictured right before me around the 1:20 mark of Scott’s video) has jumped into Lake Minnetonka six New Year’s days in a row. With each jump you move up the food chain. As you can see in the video (in addition to my red snowflake bathrobe, thanks honey!) my hand was marked with a G to signify that I was a Guppy or first year. Next year I will be a minnow, then a walleye, musky, baracuta5, baracuta6, 7, 8, 9, and then after 10 jumps you are a shark. There are special robe that the Sharks wear. It is really quite the event.

When I jumped in the water the cold really took my breath away. The most unique part was when I went to dry off my hair it was frozen! Ultimately I enjoyed the unique way of kicking off the New Year. I like the symbolism of jump starting the New Year by alerting all the senses and kind of saying here we go to 2010. Well, here's to guppy being the worst name I am called this year and the Ice Dive being the numbest brained thing I do this year.

http://www.startribune.com/video/80480777.html

Photographer in the house

About a week before Christmas Lucy really got into taking pictures. We had an old camera that she made her own. After taking multiple pictures of her own face, she figured out to turn the camera around. She eventually developed her skills enough that after taking a picture she would look at the screen and analyzes the picture. Common phrases said while analyzing a picture included “Looks Nice” and “Actually, pretty good”.

The final phase was organizing pictures. She spent a lot of time telling everyone where to sit or stand during our Christmas with Nana and Papa (Lib’s parents). A couple of times she even stopped playing with whatever she was working on, yelled “wait, wait, wait” to whomever else was in the room and ran to grab her camera. I guess when you envision a good shot you don’t want to miss it.

Below are two shots from Christmas Eve when we were trying to get a family photo. Whenever cameras where being used Lucy had hers ready and she insisted on taking them versus being in them.

With her new found passion for photography she couldn't have received a better Christmas gift...her very own camera. Thanks Nana! Although the camera pictured below does not have much of a flash or a zoom, its durability and color (pink) makes it a huge hit.To conclude the post about Lucy the photographer I thought it would be only fitting to include a couple shots taken by her on the new camera. Oh ya, it comes with a cord so you can upload the pictures. Moving forward I will try to include some more images from the "Lucy Cam".

A picture of my two sisters, Aunt Beth (left) and Aunt Emily, during a visit last week.

A photo of the Lucy and I during some AM play time.

Family photo

Punctuality has never been a strength of mine. In the past I have said that I was born on my due date and have been late for everything since. (In a related story, Lib and Lucy were also both born on their due dates. Hint, Hint: baby #2, who I currently refer to as Larry (Larry Johnson, aka Grandmama), is due on the 20th of March. Don’t forget to get your guess in on Lib's blog.) With that said here on January 4, 2010, I have decided to post a quick picture of Halloween. Looks for shots from Thanksgiving in April and from Christmas by late summer!??!?!

Lucy dressed as a monkey and has continued to refer to herself as a monkey ever since. Recently Lib told Lucy that she is a real “piece of work” while they were playing and Lucy responded, “No, Lucy a monkey.”

That is me dressed as Spongebob or “Spongy” as he is referred to around our house. We moved into a new house in September and one of our first house projects was to redo a bathroom. I kept the box from the new toilet with turning it into SpongeBob in mind.

In addition to punctual, another thing I am not is an engineer. I am not sure if my first mistake was under estimating the length of the box or over estimating my wingspan. What I am sure about is that I compounded the arm issue by cutting the arm holes roughly 12 inches too high. I have never been so happy that Lucy has the attention span of a two year old. I am happy to report (now that we are over 60 days removed from Halloween) that I have regained most of the feel in my arms from our ten minutes of trick-or-treating.

The Blog Effect

I am not sure how she does it, but Lucy seems to be following my blog. She can’t even read, yet listed below are a couple examples of things she has done after a post to communicate she is following along. Shortly after my post about her only tip toeing into potty training a switch flipped in her brain and she said she is all in.

Below is a picture of her smiling on the potty. I wish there was more of a story to tell about her potty training. We spent some time (couple weeks) talking about it and introducing the concepts and when she was ready (I suspect after reading the blog) she went for it. She loves wearing big girl underwear, even when we go out and for naps. We have only had one accident in the last three weeks and that was when we where hosting on New Year’s Eve. She was very distracted at the time. As you can see, overall she is very happy with her new skill.

The second example of her following the blog was the YouTube clip. The morning after I posted the Elmo video I tried to show it to her and she wasn’t interested. It was like she was saying that was so 2009. Her new favorite is listed below.



Happy New Year everyone!