Happy Holidays 2008

Jonas enjoyed several Christmas celebrations in various parts of Wisconsin and still has one yet to go!

First professional haircut!

Jonas has had a few trims from mom and dad at this point, but his cowlicks and feathery hair were getting a bit straggly looking. We took Jonas to get his first haircut on Tuesday. He was not a great sport about it, as you can see from the progression of photos. In the end, he ended up just fine with a new, short haircut and a balloon.

Snow day!

Jonas got some extra dad time with two snow days this year already. First things first: let's read! Jonas brought the pillow onto dad's lap to lay and listen to some favorite books.



Travis has turned Jonas on to the wonders of ice cream, big surprise. The two of them share bites of "ice keeee" while watching all the latest sporting events.

Congrats MaMa

When mom arrived home from her last graduate class Jonas and mom were all smiles.

Jonas knew the perfect way to celebrate his mom graduating from college for the third time. He granted just one special kiss to his mom. He made it clear that he was only going to give her just one kiss, which you can see below.

A little shrug of gratitude to share the happiness of the moment.

Jonas made sure that the dogs got a chance to share in the celebration. He loves to read "Go Dog Go", a subplot of which is a dog dating game that revolves around the question, "Do you like my hat?". As he put the hat on Greta over and over again he could not stop from giggling when he heard Greta say "Jonas, do you like my hat?" Nice work mom!

First snow of the season!

Jonas enjoyed the first snow of the season this past week. He is very patient about getting geared up when he knows he's going out to mess around in the snow. He likes to cruise up and down the sidewalk like a puffball looking for Cory, or as he calls him, "KKKKKK". On Monday, he kept pointing to Cory's house and crossing the street, but Cory wasn't home. Oh, well, perhaps another day, big guy.
Check out the fifth picture in the slide show. This is Jonas's cheesy smile. If you ask him to smile, he will give you this cheeseball smile, which looks more like he is smelling a skunk than enjoying himself. He also has a fake laugh, which he pulls out when Travis and I laugh, but he doesn't know why. I guess he just wants to fit in with the grownups.

Happy belated birthday, Ashley!

Jonas wished Aunt Ashley a happy belated birthday with a "Jonas tree" last weekend. Jonas was instructed to only blow on the pictures instead of swatting and grabbing at them. He showed off his chicken suit as well, since Ashley's birthday falls near Halloween.

Jonas has been taking pointers on how to get our dogs riled up and has tried to do so himself. During the evening pre-feeding frenzy he grabs the favored toy goose and offers it to the dogs as incentive to watch them attack it and go nuts. It's very sweet, but they rarely take the bait, realizing that their true dinner is being scooped out in the kitchen by people taller than 2 1/2 feet.

This is just a cute pic of Jonas as he "rested" on the carpet last week after running around the house squealing.

Grandma Slam

Another one from the archives. This was just released from the Jonas Wrestling Federation Film bank from October of 2008. Jonas was doing well early on in the match vs. Grandma, but as soon as he gave up the top rope to move down low the match was over. Jonas fell for the oldest trick in the book and paid the price by being snuggle slammed over and over again. Will the youngsters ever learn?

A visit to a few of Dad's old stomping grounds

Jonas went to visit Uncle Helge and Aunt Sue a couple weeks ago. Jonas got a chance to spend sometime in Great Grandparent's house that Uncle Helge and Aunt Sue have made their own. It was fun to cruise around a place that I really only have a vision of from the eyes of a child. We went down to the old playground of the school that Dad went to from kindergarten to fourth grade. It was fun just hanging out swinging and sliding around.

Mountain Visitors

Jonas had some visitors from the highlands a couple of weeks back. It seems like such a long time ago; he wasn't even walking! Even though he wasn't walking he had a chance to talk a little computers with Andrew. He was able to identify the apple on the screen.

After a little while the computer thing got old. Jonas really isn't into big'ol computers like a laptop. But what always entertains is a cuddly dog like Hamish. He had a few near full speed crawl head-to-head interactions with Hamish the dog, but this time tried to attack from above. Andrew tried to use "the force" to prevent Jonas from falling off the couch. It turns out that Andrew has a low metaclorion count so "the force" did not work.


After a scolding by his dad and an unsuccessful vertical mount of the dog Jonas was a bit upset. In the meanwhile Andrew found everything quite amusing.

All that Jonas can say is, "Watch out 'cause I'm gonna get you, doggies!"

Flower Boy

High Stepping

Jonas took abunch of laps with Grandma and Grandpa this weekend. He had some good role-modeling from his Homer Simpson wearing Grandpa on the need to pick up his feet really high. Jonas was walking so well that he required a fancy shoe upgrade. He already has dirtied up his new white stride-rites at the Keva play center earlier today. Jonas got in lots of giggles and food in his travels around town and in the house. He loved to go after Homer's eyeballs on Grandpa's feet.

(Super) Chicken Suit

Jonas wore a chicken-suit costume that was intended for a dog to wear for this year's Halloween celebration. He did go out for a few late night walks to see all the spooky things around town, but didn't knock on any doors for candy treats. His favorite zoo animal the penguin got a few laughs from the chicken. Cory the elephant stopped by just as Jonas was transitioning from being a chicken to hippo. Every night after his bath he briefly is wrapped up in a hippo towel to dry off before putting on his pjs. Chickens turn out to be quite avid readers, especially when grandma sounds the voice of the gorilla.

Picaso

Jonas decided he'd rather be a ready-made designer than design haute couture, so he used his creative efforts to make a Picaso-esque pumpkin character for the front stoop.

Pumpkin patch!

Jonas spent a windy and gorgeous Sunday at the Eeplegarten pumpkin patch. He helped pick out four pumpkins, including his standard Jonas-little-misshapen-one (see last year's pumpkin patch post http://growingupjj.blogspot.com/2007/10/milestones.html).

Next, Jonas enjoyed his Norwegian heritage while looking over an embroidered panel with typical Norwegian farm activities, including "fenalar" (yelling into a turkey baster?) and "geitost" (grazing goats on the roof?). He also made friends with the Norwegian headmaster troll, who was wielding a whacking stick and who sports and interestingly-shaped nose, as Jonas points out in the picture.

Finally, Jonas got to ride in a horse drawn wagon, which he truly enjoyed to the point that he wet through his pants. The horses gave Jonas quite a ride, to which he replied "sssththth" (silly).

Leaf pile!

Jonas and Cory spent beautiful Sunday afternoon playing in the leaf piles on our street.

As the beautiful weather continued Jonas went on many outdoor adventures including a trip to Hilldale's Sundance Theatre rooftop to look over the west side fall colors.

Studying for a visit

Jonas got a chance to peak at some potential formatting issues for his presentation before his grandparents arrived this last weekend. He looked up a couple of items in the APA manual to make sure he was referencing his third party sources correctly. After he cleared up the formatting issues he was able to concentrate on snuggling and throwing stuff around with Grandpa. The grandparents are still making funny faces at Jonas, even after more than a year to get used to him.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Jonas tried on his new winter coat this week. He may be looking for snowflakes, but I doubt the rest of us Wisconsinites are!

Madison Children's Museum

Anytime is a good time to read

Jonas has become really attached to reading books. He can't put a good book down, even when he is getting things squared away below the belt. So far the books have been good enough to make sure that none of the pages make it to the restricted access zone.

Words, words, words...

In the video, Jonas has just woken up from his afternoon nap and has decided to read a book. Jonas is getting quite a vocabulary, at least of the animal noise variety. "Fish" and "bunny" are both actions the animals do, "kitty" is the noise he makes when HE sees a kitty (a scream--which he doesn't do in the video), and "doggie" is just the word "doggie", I suppose because our dogs don't make noises. One of his other favorite words and objects is "truck", which sounds like "kkkkkkk"; sort of like he's about to hack something up. Every time he turns the page in his truck book or sees a car go by he says, "kkkkkk".