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!