Last weekend, we met up with some friends at Montshire Museum (very cool place!) and ate lunch in Hanover, NH. As we were checking out some of the shops around the restaurant, we found a chocolate shop. (More accurately, the women found the chocolate shop...) There were all of the standard chocolates and treats that you expect to see in a chocolate shop, but there were also animal/insect shaped truffles. We spotted these little ladybugs in the case and (because of NorthernBaby's reacting in terror every time a ladybug is spotted in the house) knew that we had to get some and attempt to truly traumatize our little tot!

Aren't they cute? Tasty, too - raspberry truffle insides!(On a related note, I need to post a message: Jakoby, please let your daddy know that it took almost a whole day to recover from the taste of that chocolate bar.)(Yes, folks, there was for sale a Bacon Chocolate Bar. Dark chocolate, applewood smoked bacon, and sea salt. Not as delicious as you would think.) (Need a milk chocolate version!)

Sunday, we managed to sneak in our annual visit to a sugar house on the Vermont Maple Open House weekend. As we parked the NorthernBabyAdventureVehicle™, there was a conspicuous lack of smoke and steam emitting from the sugarhouse. No boiling sap. Turns out that our weather had been okay for sap runs, but the very cold night had frozen the sap inside the buckets. So, we did the normal "city folk" wandering tour of the sugar bush, and NorthernBaby inspected many buckets.

Hey, is there anything in there?

While the sugar house crew couldn't boil sap, they did have quite a bit of wood cutting and other chores to complete. NorthernBaby heard the chainsaw roaring and got a little anxious. See photo below for his reaction to the saw....

Shortly after encountering the chainsaw, NorthernBaby spotted the tractor. Normally, he loves tractors. Not this time. It was a little tractor - about 25hp diesel - but it made Levi a little uneasy. ("Uneasy" is how he puts it, but in reality, he screeched like a little girl!) No photo of his reaction to the tractor because by the time I got the camera to my eye, he was a streaking blur on his way to the car....

I'm Two

Two years.

Two incredibly quick years, as it seems like NorthernBaby was just born: wasn't it only a day or two ago that we were marveling at his tiny hands and feet? I'm sure that only a week has passed since we sat on the sofa in a stunned silence as we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into and how in the world could we ever raise this baby boy into adulthood.

Two agonizingly long years, as many things seem to slow time: was it only a few months of sleepless nights full of a baby's cries? It seemed like decades. How many times do we have to tell him not to throw his fork on the floor/draw on the sofa/put that in your mouth (what in the heck is that, anyway? And where'd you get it?) before he understands? I'm positive that only a week has passed since we sat on the sofa in a stunned silence as we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into and whether or not the circus would take him....

Two years are what they are, and last week, Northern Baby celebrated his second birthday.

He came gift-wrapped for the occasion. We gave him a party at a local pizza/arcade joint, and he got to wear the birthday-boy crown.
Isn't he cute in that picture above? We had to light the candles on his cake twice - all week we had been practicing the candle thing by letting him blow out the candles at dinner (what? - don't all of y'all have candlelit dinners every day of the week?!). When the cake was set before NorthernBaby and the two candles were lit, he knew just what to do: Pwooof! The candles were out. We had neglected to tell him that he couldn't snuff the flame before "Happy Birthday" was sung! Cue Take Number Two (and shield the candles until the song is over...).

There were many games to be played. SkeeBall was a NorthernBaby favorite - he likes to stand on the machine to gain an advantage (it's all about getting the tickets, baby!). He shot hoops with Grandpa, beat Daddy at air hockey (because Grandma helped him lay across the goal), and drove a fast car with one of his friends.

Many, many presents were, um...., presented. The NorthernBaby house is chock-full of new toys. Good thing, too, as Mommy and Daddy needed something different for the Little Dictator to tell us to do. Playing "truck" with the same truck for four months gets a little old....

Too many gifts to post pictures of them all, but he did get a tricycle. I mention it because the day after he got it, he wanted to take it out on the patio and ride around. If you look out the window in the picture below, you might notice the blurry whiteness obscuring the tree - that's snow. Right about the time he got ready to head outside, it started snowing about an inch per hour - too much to go play in. Poor guy!

Through the miracle of technology, we even got to include our SouthernGrandparents: Skype let us video call and open presents as a family. (It was fun for NorthernBaby, and I just think this is a really cool picture!)

Why Vermont is a Great Place to Live

NorthernDaddy works in Essex Junction, which is about six miles from Burlington. (As a refresher for non-Vermonters, Burlington is the largest city in Vermont.) Essex Junction is not exactly a tiny town, either. There are quite a few large businesses with a presence in Essex Junction - the most notable being IBM, with five thousand employees. In fact, my workspace is an old IBM office building that has been converted into a warehouse. We are less than a quarter mile from IBM's manufacturing plant, right next door to a large Homeland Security office, and smack in the middle of two other warehouses. Get the idea?--we're not located in some forgotten Vermont backwoods. We're in the "city".

As industrial as the above location might sound, we're actually in a quite nice place. From my office window, I can see the two largest mountains in the state. (My 'office' is actually only a 8x10 nook roofed with plastic sheeting. But I've got two huge windows and a forty-thousand- square-foot filing cabinet behind me, so it's not bad!) We're a hundred feet from the Winooski River. It's quiet (unless a truck is pulling into the lot) and there are pretty apple trees planted around the building.

One of the benefits to living and working in Vermont is that the local wildlife visits on a pretty regular basis. We've had deer wander through the parking lot (a friend in downtown Burlington had chickens touring his place. Chickens! At work. In the city...) and our flock of turkeys comes through when it's not hunting season. (I'm guessing that they're smart enough to know what a shotgun looks like....) The photo below is from a day or two ago. There were twelve hens and one HUGE tom. There's a picture of him below. Sorry about the poor quality of the photos - I was using the work camera and shooting through the [dirty] windows.
The best part was when I brought the pictures home to show Levi. He looked at the birds and correctly identified them as turkeys. Then, he pointed at the picture, pointed at his mouth, and said, "I eat!" No kidding! We didn't prompt him or anything - he just popped that one out all on his own! That's our Northern Baby!