Cute lil Nuggets

Shot some more video of the nuggets yesterday.

My favorite part is this:

Me: Do you want to sing Liam a song?

Anna: No. But I want to sing Liam a song.

Anna and I watched this video shortly after I shot it and she said, "I say it for him because he can't talk. He can't say, 'My name is Liam,' so I say it for him."

Veggie Nugget #23

"I went vegetarian when I was about - I think I was about 8 years old. One day I cut this piece of meat open and blood came out and I asked my mother, ‘Where did this come from?’ And she said ‘animals,’ and that was it. And now these days, you can get everything vegan — vegan marshmallows…so now I’m eating all these things that you couldn’t even get before.”

-Geezer Butler, guitarist for Black Sabbath.

Yeah that's right, Black effing Sabbath.

Here's a photographic journey through our yard in the springtime. Just imagine me standing at a projector in the back of the room, speaking in a droll voice.

(Before we begin, just wanted to let you know that you can click on any of these photos to view them much larger if you are so inclined.)

In Anna's pre-pre-school class on Monday night she made a bird feeder ring with pipe cleaner and Cheerios. The ring sat out there for at least a week without any action.


Then all of a sudden they were gone. I refilled it a few times and never got to see what was eating them. Until one day, when Anna was at a friend's place I saw this little bugger chomping down. I took a photo to show her later.


Here are the pre-bloom tulips. They bloomed beautifully, but I didn't have a chance to get photos before that friggin' squirrel up there (or one of his/her cohorts) ripped them all off. Petals were laying at the base of the tree one morning. Oh well.


Our back yard tree was full of these little koosh-ball buds a couple weeks ago.


Now the leaves are popping out.


And here's the front yard tree. I love how the leaves in early spring have the same color as the leaves in the fall.


Here is the Al Franken lawn sign that sits below our front yard tree. Caked in mud and not yet where it should be, just like Al.


Fern in our back yard rain garden.


And here are the daffodils. We planted these daffodils, we figured, five years ago. This is the first year they have bloomed.


This one's ready to pop. It looks sinister.


And here's my arty photo, taken at the golden hour and everything.


We had a couple productive raspberry bushes last year. By the looks of the sprawl, we might have five or six this year. I think I'll let these take over half the lawn before I start managing them.


Day lilies haven't bloomed yet, but they're nice and green and lush.


The best part about our back yard, of course, is Anna running around in it.



And finally, a note to self: Try to clean this up this year.



By the way, I did something like this one other time last year during the summer. You can check that out here.

Photos I Didn't Take

I've been remiss in my blog duties as of late. I have a lot of pretty good photos I've been meaning to put up. You're heard it before and you'll hear it again: I'm busy.

Anyway, our good friends Kerz and Britta visited us this last weekend and, as always, Britta took some great photos.

Go here to see them.

Laughing Liam (Left Leg Lazy Lion Licked a Lolly-Pop)

Here's a video I took a few days ago of Liam cooing and laughing at me.

There's a surprise at the end. It's sort of gross.



So there you go. Eww.

Oh, I just looked at a suggested video and this kid has the same chair that Liam does. Cosmic...



Holy crap, I just did a search for "Liam Laughing" and all of a sudden I feel like a loving parent in a sea of loving parents ... which oddly makes me feel like a tool. I mean, look at this kid:



Adorable!

And this one:



I mean, come on!

Well, I guess I'm just happy to be able to contribute to the sea of cute babies and laughter.

Liam belly laughed last night for the first time. I didn't get to hear it, but Mrs. Piggy tells me it was adorable. So...

Expect more laughing babies, dear reader. Expect more laughing babies.

My brother-in-law and nephew visited from Colorado about a month ago.

So I talked with the kid about shooting a movie and we planned the scenes together, shot it in about an hour and then I edited it later on (took about 15 hours to edit ... free time that I don't necessarily have, but what the heck, it's family).

It's open for a sequel, and I'm thinking the next time they visit we can add Anna in as the super villain/evil genius.



I do hope Anna is in to stuff like this when she gets a bit older. I plan on this being the first of many home movies.

Anna watched this a few times and was unsure what to think of it. The last time we watched it, during the electricity part, she said, "I dreamed that in my bed!"

It was the first time she ever told us about a dream. I hope she's not traumatized.

Don't Worry...

Just a quick little video for all of our friends and family in the flooding Red River Valley (and we have a LOT of them). Here's Anna singing a bit of Three Little Birds.



I hope you all stay high and dry and I wish we could be there to help.

Busy, Busy, Busy

So not only do we have a baby in the house, but I'm also re-grouting part of our bath tub and we just went through our third spring thaw yesterday, which means it was the third time I was outside with a shop vac sucking up the very large puddle that pools right by our house in the back yard and dragging it and dumping it out on the street in the front (our basement floods if I don't do this), repeating that 20 times or so (16 gallon shop vac ... I don't do math, but that's a lot of water).

I know. Poor, poor me. (Also, I think that right there is the longest sentence I've typed so far on this blog.)

At any rate, I think once things settle down and we get into a groove with the two kids I'll be able to post more. For the time being though, here are some photos to get you (and me) through.

Old MacDonald Had a Farm San-ctu-ar-y-O!

I have no qualms with modifying the classics to better suit my world view. Roast Beef becomes Tofu. Baa Baa Black Sheep says "No sir, no sir." And yes, Old MacDonald owns a farm sanctuary. That's why the animals are always so happy.

So here's Anna singing part of our modified Old MacDonald.

Then she sings a bunch of other songs. Sometimes when she sings the ABCs she stops at G and says, "Where was I?" I'm sure it's something I did once a few months ago and she thought it was funny.

Anna Meets Liam: The Video

So I promised a video and dang if I just haven't had the time to post it here. To give you an idea of how little time I have for such things, I posted the video to You Tube on February 8th, and I'm just now finally throwing it up here. Isn't five days like a year in internet time?

Anyway, this one is quite a bit different from any of the videos I've posted in the past. I pride myself on minimal editing and as such I hope you'll forgive me for adding some sap to this video. It's an emotional thing, having a child, and I think adding a soundtrack here and there lends the video the emotional heft that it needs.

Also, it's seven minutes long. Look at it as more of a meditation.

You may notice that Anna's voice is raspy on the second day of the video. This is because she cried quite a bit the night before we came home. She missed her mom and dad.

My favorite line from the video: "He's suckin' mommy's finger. He likes to suck."