Poppin Tooth & Jammin Niles

Popalicious. Tooth discovered on Oct 31st, 2010. It must have popped out sometime around 11:30am central/standard time during the Big Ten Cross Country Championships. It is located on the lower left and is the almost the same as Jonas's first tooth location, just on the other side of the mouth. So welcome to the lower left central incisor and may you enjoy many chomps for the next few years. You can take a look at the tooth in the first picture up top and if you don't have access to sticking your finger in Niles's mouth. It was obvious a reason to dance and celebrate, though that seems to happen quite regularly for no reason at all.

HALLOWEEN Niles's 1st and Jonas's 1st with Niles

It was a great celebration of spookiness. Jonas started off wanting to be a car.....and it quickly morphed into wanting to be a school bus. 24 hours later he was trick-or-treating. He seemed to be able to maneveur quite well and got into and out of lots of nooks and crannies. Niles actually dressed up as a bear and dragon. At 6 months old he is obviously not very good at choosing items so he decided to go as each of the available costumes. Standard Tangen pumpkin carvings: Moon and Stars, Tow-Truck, Pthalate, and Potato Head Jack-o-lantern.

The family trick-or-treat on State St. was a fun time for the kids, great weather and Grandma Sue. The local trick-or-treat was quite fun as well....including such treats as motorized swimming plastic beavers, dancing chipmunks, books, custom cupcakes, etc... fun time great community event. We even tested the bus lights late at night after Niles went to sleep to do some after hours/post-bedtime trick-or-treating and moon watching.

194 P

Jonas has been busy working his waste management system. We had done a lot of work way back in June....but his parents dropped the ball and had to restart the training. Its been about 3 weeks and things are going well. Jonas is outrageously bribed to produce urine.

1. He receives a penny for every time he pees in the toilet, but has any wetness in his underwear.
2. He receives a nickel or dime for every time he pees in the toilet and has a dry pair of undies.
3. The pee-money than gets immediately put into a jellybean coin-slot operated bank contraption.
4. The carousel jellybean bank is operated and 2-4 jellybeans pop out for every pee.
5. After a day of complete dryness he earns a letter that is placed on the calendar.
6. After three days of complete dryness Jonas can pick from one of 3 prizes. He went shopping at the toy store and pre-purchased his toys which are placed up high out of his reach.
7. The money collected in the bank can be used for any purpose.

These are the basics. Its going well. He had already mastered the solid materials for almost 6 months so we just had to work on the liquid portion of the waste management. The first couple of weeks brought 194 pee events. The proportion of nickels and dimes to pennies has skyrocketed as the penny reward is a very rare event.

Pumpkin Patches

Niles and Jonas teamed up to pick the perfect pumpkins from the patch. At this point we have 10 perfect pumpkins and a bunch of gourds and mini-pumpkins. We spent some time at the Vermont Valley Farm and at the Voss farm. Jonas got a chance to play with some kids including Max, pick some more pumpkins, go on a hay-ride, and take an ATV out in the country with his dad. Niles also had some funny hair styles after his pumpkin hat was removed and Jonas can be seen picking his nose in time-out while Niles was working on standing up with his mom.

Niles's first eats

Niles's first eats was a success. It helped that Jonas was an excellent rice cereal delivery-boy. You can see Jonas's mirror neurons working as every spoonful that he delivered for Niles to eat resulted in an air-bite for Jonas. Niles seemed pretty excited about all the solid food moving down his gullet.

Jonas also got a chance to meet Grandma Sue's kitten Ariel. Jonas and Ariel have hit it off well by all reports. The usual autumn preparation events have filled the house: more snuggling, trying winter hats, running through leaves, talking about the pumpkin patch, and finding places for all the glow-in-the dark Halloween decorations.

Wow

It's only been a couple of weeks since Jonas's birthday, and we have managed to pile on hundreds of pictures and videos which are amazing.....but have created a digital pile-up and so we are just pulling a few pics. Jonas had a great few birthday parties, he really loved all the people and thoughtful gifts. Niles has been on sleep-training boot camp. He has been having varied success with that, but he is been quite silly during his happy awake hours. He seems to have taken a liking to Greta.

3

Jonas...about 5 minutes old.


Birthday time. Happy Birthday Jonas. A few pictures in a slide show of some of the crazy growing up that kids tend to do way to fast. Happy Birthday.

Super Jammer

That's entertainment. Jonas continues to be the best toy that Niles could ever want. Jonas really enjoys making Niles smile and giggle. Jonas was playing and singing his version of "Get that Train Through" to Niles. This song has many variations and seems to be able to be sung along with almost any tune.