So who knew...Santa rides a chopper! (Not at Northern Baby's house - at Grandma's house. Northern Daddy is looking for the sport bike version for his house!)

Can you believe he took my toys?! I wuz just minding my own biz, passing time at Grandpa's, and this little punk pulled a crawl-by and snagged my toys.

Our very first Northern Baby-New House Christmas tree. Cut right out of the front yard of N.B.'s grandma's house! (I'm not kidding. My father-in-law cranked up the chainsaw the morning after Thanksgiving and served us up with a super-duper tree!) (Okay, it's not as pretty as a tree that has been groomed to be a Christmas tree, but it has that family connection that makes it special!)

Hmmm....pics of the kid?

Okay, so someone in the DEEP South mentioned that a blog that chronicles the raising of a Northern Baby should maybe have a few pictures of said baby. (Hey, Aunt Diane: LOOK!)















Santa's new helper. He looks so happy, right? I'll be sure to post a few pics on Christmas morning when he gets coal in his stocking! He deserves it for yelling at me all the way home today as I was trying to keep from sliding off the road in the snow and ice!










A photo from this summer, when Levi and I were discussing whether or not to head up to the country store for a few more pints of Ben and Jerry's. (We had just decided that it was a grand idea, and then Mommy nixed our plans.)

The "suggestion" to post pics of Northern Baby has been noted, and there will be more photos in the future.

To round out today's entry, I submit a list of clues to help you determine if you are indeed raising a Northern Baby. This is by no means a complete list, and will refer mostly to cold/snow clues, as it is (bad word) COLD here in moose land. (The high temperature today was 16 degrees.)

1. A happy, fun-filled gathering to watch Santa arrive (by tractor!) and light the town Christmas tree is cut extremely short by the desire to keep from freezing one's (umm...let's say 'happy place') to a block of ice. ( You can justify bolting for the car by telling Mommy that little Northern Baby probably shouldn't be standing out in the blowing snow with a negative wind chill rating!)
2. The thermometer has a "-" in front of the number displayed.
3. If salt spread on the road will not melt the ice, that's a small clue that it's cold.
4. If your little one thinks it's normal for his view out the car window to suddenly spin 360 degrees at random points on the ride to daycare.....
5. If the inside doorknob in your mudroom is covered in frost, you might be in the north! I'll bet that there are relatives of Northern Baby that rarely see frost, much less on the inside of windows. Heck, another clue would be that you have a mudroom-or a door yard.....
6. If the weather forecaster calls for temps to reach 42 degrees, and you think "hey it's going to be WARM"!
7. ..........................................................I can't continue without getting deeper into despair and resorting to using foul language...and that just isn't the example that we want N.B. to see, so I'll sign off for now and go hang out in the basement with the oil burner.

Michelin (Little) Man

Saturday morning, we woke to find that the flurries forecast by the weather man turned into five inches of fluffy white cloud poop (that would be SNOW for those not in the gravitational pull of Canada). {Don't we all stand in amazement that the weather forecasters consistently get it wrong? I mean, they have training, right? And the ones up here have Super-Dooper-Snow-Sniffer-Triple-Doppler Radars, and fancy wall maps with squiggle marks on them, and really nice hair-can't they at least tell us when we're going to have to shovel our drives? (I almost wrote "dooryard" in place of drive, but I have to admit that I will stay just Southern enough to never, ever use the term dooryard!)}

Okay - deeeep breath - where was I? Oh yes, Saturday morning we woke to snow on the ground. It was cold, too. Mid twenties. Whipping winds. Got me thinking about how much of an inconvenience raising a baby in the northern land can be. If you undertake the task of parenting in California or Florida, I bet you just pop the child right out the door and run about your day. In northern Vermont during the winter, you have the daunting duty to bundle your baby up against the cold.

To dress little man properly for an outing, start with his basic 'inside' clothes: diaper, onesie, pants, and socks. Now, add one parka (with liner), a wool hat (with earflaps), and booties (it's gotta be women who name this crap...onesie, booties, etc). Got it all on? It only takes ten minutes or so.... So now we prop him up, step a few paces back, and....see it? Don't have to squint - back up another step. Yup, there he is: the Michelin Man! Poofy as all heck with his arms sticking straight out from his sides. It's downright impossible to hold onto him - all that's in your grip is puffy...stuff. Think just a little farther through the process - out the door, open the garage, and you're faced with: the car seat. Son-of-a-gun! Just try to strap Little Poofy Man into that seat!

If anyone in a southern (WARM) climate would like to experience this Poofy Problem (if you yourself have a different poofy problem, I would recommend Depends adult diapers), contact us, and we can arrange for your own stay in the authentic igloo that we reside in....just be sure to enclose two one-way tickets to Hawaii(for my wife and me) in the envelope with your application!

Television Dilemma

Ever wonder if you're making the right choices as a parent?

After this morning's local news was over, Maury Povitch's show came on. The intro was all about how this fine upstanding young man might have offended his perfectly innocent and loving wife ("when she woke up from a nap, she caught him having phone sex with another woman..."). A few seconds later, "and he gave me a STD when I wuz pregnant..." - okay, got the gist of the show.

CLICK (only one click, because we get two channels in this house!)

"Now on VPT..." (Okay, for those of you who might live outside of the qualifications of having a 'Northern Baby', VPT is Vermont Public Television - a fine channel by any standard, although today I kinda wish I could be watching a warm, sunny beach in person instead of viewing VPT and a snow flurry) Anyway, the option on VPT is some kind of children's show about learning letters and words and good moral lessons.


SO,.....do I let Levi watch Maury or VPT? Maury offers lessons in honesty, conflict resolution, and real life. VPT offers lessons in honesty, spelling, and - in this particular show - extreme boredom. Maury will feature screaming, fighting, and possibly some "skank hos"- in short: entertainment. VPT's show will feature me screaming at the impossibly slow and dense cartoon characters, no chance of entertainment, and the only fighting is Levi wrestling for control of the remote so that he can change it back to the Maury show.

Boy, I'm stuck! Maury or VPT? Which show is looking out for the interests of my beloved young son (who at seven months old, should not be watching TV anyway)? This parenting thing is waaaaaay harder than anyone lets on....


As a side note, I have a totally new idea for children's television programming. It's a hybrid show, combining the current crop of shows (Sesame Street, Clifford the Big Red Mutt, etc.) with a little bit of something that will engage the fathers of the tykes - something that encourages us dads to tune in with our kids and really take charge of educating our little ones. I think the element that gets blended in to make these great new shows should be....(drum roll, please)... Grand Theft Auto! (ta-daaaa!)

Now think about how awesome a learning tool this could be: Shootem-up Sesame Street. Bob the Builder? How about we change that to Bob the Bomber?! New characters: Dora the Drug Dealer. Elmo the Junkie. (wait a minute - Sesame Street is on right now, and we've just segued into Elmo's World. Watching this guy, I think that Elmo is already a tweaker. Maybe my hybrid shows would be easier to create than I think!)

What dad wouldn't PAY for the chance to sit side-by-side with his child and immerse themselves into a land of real-world learning about choices, consequences, and quick decision making? Just imagine..........two fuzzheads on the screen ask if you know the Spanish word for butterfly...quick, son, toss a grenade! BOOM!......some weird shaggy red Muppet asks if you can find the letter E (when it's on the screen in four inch font), and then w a i t s for fifteen seconds to let you look for it: well, my boy, I believe this calls for a quick double-tap in the forehead with your MP5. Good shooting, son! The possibilities for learning and father-son (or daughter) bonding are virtually limitless!


So, even as I wish for quality interactive programming on my TV, I still find myself confronted by parenting dilemmas (Maury or VPT?).

Thank goodness that Levi's nap time came up before I had to commit to one of the shows! There's always a convenient distraction to help with parenting dilemmas!

Now, if only someone could fix the problem of having to change diapers....!

There's always formula to buy...always a diaper to change...always a little one that needs attention...

There's never enough money...never enough sleep...never a minute that you're not on call...

Sometimes, it seems like raising a son in Vermont (or anywhere) is just an unwelcome hassle. There's always something that needs to be done - preparing a bottle, dressing the little guy, laundry, cleaning, arguing about diaper changes (landfills have a more pleasing scent than a baby's butt bomb!), and a million other things. Each day seems to be like the last; a drudging repeat of the same tasks. Just as you're wondering why you ever decided to have a child, he'll do the cutest thing that makes your outlook change. A beaming smile, an impish grin as he does the exact thing that you just asked him not to do (don't tell me a seven-month-old doesn't understand what I tell him!), frantically waving his arms until you pick him up, or gently snuggling his head into your shoulder as he drifts to sleep. It sounds so cliche (sounds downright idiotic), but little things like that make all of the trouble worth it.

Hey, wait a minute...there's too much estrogen floating around this house...have I turned into a big *****? What happened to the manly biker dude that I used to (think I was) be?! What of the impatient oaf and chauvinistic pig that I used to cultivate? I'm more patient now, and I censor myself a little more now that I know the little guy is learning from me....Did I turn into a woman? (Nope, I just took a minute and checked: still a guy!) I still take great fatherly pride in Levi's loud farts and his peeing on the bathroom floor (Cari's fault - every time!) and his cuteness (he looks just like his Daddy!)

As I stated just a few lines ago, there's never a minute off-duty. Turns out that Levi's bath time has now arrived, and I have to go take care of that.

Sometimes it seems like a hassle, this raising a Northern Baby, but every day - every hour - there is a reward.

Lessons in Blogging

So, I am starting this blog more as a means of figuring out how to make a blog work. I have a student who is blogging as a means of earning extra credit and if I am going to be able to show him what to do, I need to figure it out myself, so he can get the most out of this experience.

With that said, I am probably going to play more than anything, and since Andy is the writer in the family, I may have him post our adventures in having a baby in North. That and anything he writes is absolutely hilarious. A few years ago I gave him the Woodcock Johnson so I could become certified in giving and not only did he ace the English portion, he played around with it. Needless to say, while my teachers thought it was very funny they remarked that if this was a student they might refer him for psychological testing in addition to the cognitive testing.

If any of you would like to give me any advice for neat tools in blogging I would love them and I am sure my student would as well.

I hope you enjoy our adventures of raising a baby in the north and my adventures in blogging.