2009 - The Northern Baby Year in Review

As the year 2009 comes to a close, and everyone from newspapers to radio to bloggers is recapping the year (and the decade), the Northern Baby clan decided to look back through their 2009 photographs. We found that '09 was chock-full of events and fun places. Here's some of what we found:

Northern Baby started the year with winter. Sorry; that should be Winter with a capital 'W' - living in the North Country lets us enjoy the complete snow/darkness/freeze-your-toes-off experience of Winter. NorthernMommy marked the season by participating in the Penguin Plunge. (You know, where they cut through two feet of ice so that a large group of insane people can jump into Lake Champlain....) NorthernDaddy and Northern Baby declined to join in on that particular nut-fest, but during the rest of the season we went with NorthernMommy as she went sledding and snowshoeing. At the end of the season, as it warmed slightly (you know, those days that it's +28 degrees, and you realize that you don't need a jacket anymore!), we savored maple syrup season. This year we visited two sugar houses - Audubon in Huntington and the Francis family sugarhouse. The latter is owned by a co-worker of NorthernMommy, and was a real treat to visit. It's on the smaller side of sugarhouses; one that works a moderately-sized sugarbush to produce just enough syrup for family and friends. Visiting any sugar house is a rewarding experience, but the smaller ones usually have less people at them at any one time, so you can have a deeper conversation with the owners than at the large houses. (Just be prepared to help shuttle lots of firewood if they're using a wood-fired arch!)

Northern Baby's first birthday came around this year - he turned one, if you missed it at the beginning of the sentence! NorthernDaddy made a big, yellow, rubber-duckie birthday cake for the occasion - and Northern Baby didn't eat one bite of it! Another first for our little toddler came along in the spring: his first haircut. It was a Pretty Big Deal for NorthernMommy and NorthernDaddy - Mommy was slightly worried about scissors near the baby, but more anxious to have a son who didn't look like Cousin Itt. Daddy was very impressed and preoccupied with the really cool pedal cars that had been converted to salon chairs (why can't we have those in adult hair salons?!). Baby? Well, baby sat patiently through the whole thing like it was no big deal.

Okay folks, I just took another look at the long list of notes that detail all of 2009's happenings, and at this pace, it'll be well into 2010 before I finish typing. (and I hear ominous rumbling/slamming drawer sounds from Levi's room...) So we're going to speed it up a little bit.

Number of museums visited with Northern Baby/Toddler this year: 12. Does that seem a little excessive to you? Here's the official list: Echo Center, Fleming Museum, Montshire Museum (extremely cool!), Baltimore Aquarium, New England Aquarium, Shelburne Farms, Montgomery Zoo, Shelburne Museum (Full Throttle exhibit!!), Marsh-Billings, Discovery Museum and Rokeby Museum. Echo, Shelburne Farm, and Shelburne Museum were each visited multiple times, so Little Man has spent some serious time around historical/ informational displays this year....and with all of the farm museums we've visited, we've also seen entirely too many cows, sheep, and tractors. (Correction - you can never see too many tractors! - but we have been in the presence of far too many "moos" and "baas"!)

In the warmer months, we spent a lot of time in the garden here at home this year. There was also camping, bicycling, kayaking, and exploring - we saw moose, snakes, bunny rabbits, frogs, and more. We went swimming - there was swimming in ponds, swimming in lakes, and swimming lessons in a pool. We attended three Lake Monster baseball games. We went to Big Truck Day and Kids Day. There were Concerts in the Park, Farmers' Markets, tractor parades, and the Champlain Valley Fair. Northern Baby made two trips to Virginia to see grandparents, and one really long trip to Alabama to meet his great-grandpa and great-grandmother. The Northern clan attended many festivals, including the Dragon Boat Festival, the International Festival at UVM, a Strawberry Festival, and the Street Rod Nationals. (Whew! - lemme take a deep breath!...) We celebrated the wedding of Aunt Rosie and Uncle Mark - up at their lake house and complete with one very suave toddler's dancing. He was working on getting a cute little three-year-old girl's phone number until he finally understood what we were trying to tell him: "Dude, that's you're cousin!" We spent a LOT of time hanging out with friends from Playgroup. Managed a trip to Storyland amusement park. Northern Baby finally got his big break and started helping Daddy in the kitchen with food prep. Am I at the end of the list yet? Nope. At Halloween, Levi picked out a puppy-dog costume and went on his first-ever Trick-or-Treat adventure. Levi likes candy. Mommy and Daddy don't like Levi after he eats candy. Christmas time brought the Quest for Cutting our Own Tree. I'm sure that I'm missing a whole lot of events and activities....

On the developmental front, Northern Baby transitioned from baby to toddler (and made us realize that the title of our blog was not completely thought through!). During 2009, he has expanded his vocabulary (every day now, he amazes me with new words or complete and mostly accurate answers to questions), continued to be his same ol' even-tempered, good humored self, and started taking great delight in helping Mommy and Daddy with tasks around the house (but he's not quite ready to hold the flashlight for Daddy - I've got the bruises to prove it!). Levi has amazed us this year by learning to put himself into "Time Out". If we tell him it's Time Out, he walks straight over to the designated corner, sits down, waits a moment, and then busts out wailing like we've just shot his puppy. If only that would last until he's 18! He's climbing on everything possible, and loves to rough-house. Throwing things is another hobby of his - balls, toys, sometimes food, anything. (That's how he learned about Time Out!)

Allrighty - I'm darn tired of typing right now, so I'm going to upload some of my favorite pictures of NorthernBaby this year and post this thing for y'all to read. We anticipate that 2010 will be full of further NorthernBaby adventures, and look forward to sharing them with you.

Cut Your Own....

A few weeks ago, the Northern Clan returned from visiting family for a wonderful Thanksgiving and immediately set their sights on ushering in the Christmas season. What's the first thing that one needs to do in order to create a Christmas vibe in the home? Of course - put up a Christmas tree!

An (gasp!) artificial tree was prohibited (in fact, Northern Daddy almost lost his life a few years ago for even suggesting the purchase of a "fake" tree). Not much better was the idea of finding a nice pre-cut tree from a parking lot vendor. According to Northern Mommy, a magnificent specimen of a Christmas tree that was locally sourced, organically-grown, and carefully cut down by our own family would be the only type of tree allowed through our door. (I had slightly lower standards: green would be a good color....)

We set off towards White's Tree Farm - a Christmas Tree Farm a few miles down the road - in search of our tree. ( Actually, I think the whole thing was rigged: we travel past this tree farm several times a week, and NorthernMommy is always scoping out the trees as we pass by. I'm pretty sure that she already had our tree picked out back in July, and was just waiting until it was time to pick it up!)

We arrived about an hour before closing - which was also about an hour after the sun went down. We almost backed down at the challenge of selecting a tree in the dark, but decided to make it an adventure and grabbed our flashlight and a saw and headed into the night.

As you can see from the photo below, after stumbling over stumps and eyeballing a few dozen trees (ever realize that all of the trees look alike? - just pick the first one you find!), we located our winner. Levi thought we were going to take home the little tree he's standing beside; we had to explain that we needed to leave the little ones to grow up bigger, and that we were taking home the giant standing behind him. We (meaning NorthernDaddy) put the saw to our tree, and before long, it was in place on our sled for the drag back to the car. Levi insisted on providing an honor guard for our procession - he marched solemnly along one arm's length to the rear of the sled. On the way, we hit a bump, throwing the tree off the sled to the side of the path. Levi showed an extreme amount of concern (jumping in place and shouting, "Oh No!" over and over again) until the tree was returned to its place on the sled.

After the tree was safely transported home (and we fought with the tree stand for a few hours - unsuccessfully - we ended up with a new stand the next day), the decorating could begin! Now that NorthernToddler is almost two, he has been promoted to Assistant Christmas Tree Light Installer.

After the lights were on the tree and approved by the Decorating Committee, the tough work of placing ornaments was at hand. Good thing that we have a hard-working elf to help with the job! (Yes, he climbed that ladder by himself, and no, he didn't successfully put even one ornament on a tree branch by himself!)

Lights on, ornaments hung; our tree is complete! Time to start the caroling, the parties, the shopping (ugh!), the cookies, and enjoying warm holiday spirits from those around us! Merry Christmas!