Thanksgiving Weekend

NorthernMommy and Daddy are tired of being in the car. NorthernToddler wants to get back into the car - not because he likes being strapped into his rocket seat, but because he has determined that the more seat time he puts in, the more French Fries he gets to eat. It's basic toddler math: x (hours seat time) + y (minutes of good behavior) - z (episodes of whining) = n (ounces of French Fries).

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To give an example of this formula in use, consider how NorthernDaddy calculated one lunch stop: five hours of seat time (x), plus three hours of good behavior (y), minus twenty-seven episodes of whining (z), equals 2.5 oz of French Fries (n) (a small order to go with his happy meal).

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Same lunch stop, calculated by NorthernToddler: five hours of seat time (x), plus three hours of good behavior (y), minus twenty-seven episodes of whining (z), equals 2.5 oz of French Fries with his Happy Meal plus half of Mommy's chicken sandwich plus all of the fries that fell to the bottom of the bag plus half of Daddy's fries....and can you go get more ketchup for me?

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We started the Thanksgiving festivities at Grandpa's house, where NorthernToddler finally had a chance to unleash his crazy-cool skateboard skills. Yes, NorthernMommy and Daddy are aware that he is going to fall down going to break something. (He's already fallen down a bazillion times - both from general stumbles and from skateboarding.) We're not going to prevent him from playing with a skateboard because he just goes and uses something else as a skateboard. (He spent two hours last week jumping all over a flat piece of cardboard and telling NorthernDaddy that it was a skateboard.)

Thanksgiving morning at Grandma's introduced Toddler to the wonders of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was quite a show (note the photo of NorthernToddler below - he's saying two things here; #1: "Hey, look! They have a TV!!", and #2: "Look at all of these things - what are they?!").

NorthernDaddy's atrocious pool shooting is not improved by the addition of a three-foot-tall "helper".

Nintendo Wii is not a game for "old" people to attempt to play.

Wii is intended for the younger crowd - witness the Toddler bowling a strike!

After Thanksgiving, the NorthernClan drove five hours into New York State to watch the (hold on, lemme get this right)...NikeCrossNationals Northeast Regional XC Championships. The team that NorthernMommy helps coach won second place and earned a trip to the Nike National XC Championships.

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NorthernToddler saw the time between races as an opportunity to climb tall things and play on the swingset.

Ice Cream Dance

Despite his injuries from yesterday evening, NorthernToddler managed to celebrate his dessert with a short, but energetic, ice cream dance.

Kablammo!

Warning!

Graphic Image Below!

(No, seriously - NorthernDaddy knows that NorthernToddler is okay, and the picture still bothers me...)

NorthernToddler went boom last night. Actually, it was such a horrific crash that we should say he went kablammo last night.

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As NorthernMommy and Daddy prepared dinner, NorthernToddler was playing in the kitchen. By 'playing', we mean "running around all crazy like a psycho hamster on PCP." At one point, NorthernToddler started to spin in circles, and after a few rounds, his feet slipped out from under him. Straight down to the floor he went - leading with his face. There was a loud THUD, and then silence. A long silence - count with me: one..........two........three........four...(Dear Lord, is he gonna be alright?)......five.........six...and then the wailing erupted and the blood started flowing and the baby was scooped up and the parents tried to stay calm as the tears poured into snot and mixed with blood and covered the cuts and baby screamed and twisted and turned his head refusing to let anyone look at or touch his face to try and assess the wounds. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.....wait are we talking to NorthernToddler or ourselves?....stay calm. Get the bleeding slowed down and we can go from there. Looks like a deep gash to his cheek and a nasty double cut through his lip. Dang it - still can't see anything with him screeching and bleeding.

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Since NorthernToddler wouldn't let us touch his lip with anything, and we couldn't see through the blood pouring out of his mouth, the only thing that we could come up with was to ask Little Man to take a sip of water and spit it into the bathtub. Apparently, that was an unusual enough request to get him to stop crying and give it a try. As usual, NorthernToddler did things his own way: he took a big sip of water from the cup, swallowed it, and then leaned over the tub and said, "ptooey" as he 'spit' out air.....Two cycles of that, and NorthernMommy and Daddy were laughing so hard that Toddler started to grin too, and then let us get a closer look at his face.

He's not pretty, but with the bandage covering the crater in his cheek, and the lip not dripping blood too badly, he looks like he'll survive. We were a little worried about the cuts, but it appears that they aren't too deep, and will heal over if we give them some time. We were close to heading to the ER, but we got the bleeding stopped, and there are no signs of infection (even a day later), so we think he'll be fine. Less than an hour after the crash, NorthernToddler was back at his normal self - trying to set things up for a few mighty launches off of the sofa....

This is what he face-planted on. It's a wooden toy train piece. Note that Toddler smashed it with his face hard enough to crack a wheel and remove it from the axle.

A Few Phone Calls, A Cardboard Shack, and Touching the Sky

On the phone, lining up a hot date for Saturday night....Hanging with NorthernMommy inside the cool new NorthernToddlerBachelorPad (really just a reused cardboard freezer carton).--

Just being a boy....
(NorthernToddler singing) - "I Believe I Can Fly....I Believe I Can Touch the Sky..."

Hold on there, buddy - let NorthernDaddy check our health insurance coverage...

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Flight 322 experiencing rapid loss of altitude!

Umpteenth Ear Infection/Tiger Pics

As you might guess from the title of this blog entry, NorthernToddler currently has yet another ear infection. We've actually lost count as to how many ear infection episodes that we've been through by now - we think it might be number nine. The good news is that the doc says the tubes (second set) are still in place and draining (draining a lot - yuck!) and the prescribed antibiotic seems to be helping reduce the infection (and, combined with the whatever-brand-it-is-that-we're-using-now-since-Tylenol-messed-up-their-infant-drops-and-ticked-off-millions-of-parents-making-us-buy-another-brand pain reliever/fever reducer) and letting NorthernToddler sleep a little bit tonight.

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Hopefully, NorthernToddler will be well on the road to recovery by morning, and we'll be back to our normal, not-wanting-winter-to-be-here-yet family routine. (This morning, the water in the watering font out in the chicken coop was frozen solid. Guess it's time to think about installing the font heater/thermostatically controlled outlet setup that we're going to use this winter....)

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Enough of the sickness and chickens, right?! Faithful readers want to see photos of NorthernToddler in his Halloween costume, right?

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Cutest tiger cub ever..... Bet you've never seen an accordion-playing tiger....

(Before we get any reader email, NorthernDaddy is aware that he has set the as-yet-unofficial world record for the use of hyphenated phrases. Thank you...)