Never go against the family

Imagine "The Godfather" was made by my children. Perhaps this is what it may have turned out like.

February and March updates

Okay, okay. It's probably easy to tell that Travis is working lots of hours and I'm home with the kids since the blog posts have, ah, sort of gone by the wayside this year. Some days two kids feels like five, but most of the time that's just fine. It just doesn't leave a lot of time for blog posting, which is not my forte anyhow. We are excited for the first signs of spring: robins on the grass, migrating cranes, and daffodils poking through the mud. Jonas has been busy taking an art class, learning first hand about state government and the voice of democracy, and being an all around goof. He has a knack for remembering a lot of what he hears (even though he says, "What did you say?" about thirty times per hour.) He's been singing songs he hears on the radio while we drive in the car and I've heard him chanting some of the protest chants he heard while up at the Capitol.

Niles is growing up so fast and it's hard to believe he'll be one in about a month! He is eating pretty much anything that he can grab, his favorite being buttered toast. He is crawling super fast and loves being chased, caught, and "gobbled up". Niles loves to dance on his butt, bounce up and down while holding on for support, and cruise around hanging on to just about anything he can get his hands on, including my hair. Ouch! He recently has been very vocal as well and says "ni-ni" (night-night), "naaa" (nap), mama, dada, "daa" (dog), "baaaaa!" (sheep), "aaa-du" (all done), and has a bunch of hand gestures/sign language he uses as well. I think he's also started to say Jonas, but he's only done it a few times so I can't be sure. When I am sure, I'll try to get it on video and post it.
We have a bunch of video on the tangensprouts youtube channel. You can click the link on the header of this page to see all of that mess.
Enjoy the slideshow!

Things

While we have taken a mid-season break from blogging a bit has occurred. Celebrated a wonderful holiday season with family. Niles is communicating pretty well. Niles started walrusing. Niles started crawling. Niles got a bunch more teeth. Jonas has been exhibiting classic 3 year old behaviors. Both kids are currently very sick. Niles has the worst of it an Jonas has fought through more quickly. Many chases have occurred: some can be seen in the above video on one particular Green Bay packers Sunday. (Hence the green and gold gear, hats, zubazzs, etc.) The boys play together very well almost all the time.... We have had the usual ridiculous snowstorms which has made for good sledding. Jonas has really been into riding his big wheel in the snow. We have modified a sled to attach the big wheel to it, but I don't have any pictures. This has increased the speed at which the big wheel can transit the snow.

Many visits to the usual indoor events: train shows, children's museum, indoor gymnasiums, art classes, library, Olbrich gardens, grandma's house, and other little people's houses. Many visitors from near and far which has been great for the kids to see all of their relatives. Your travels are much appreciated, the boys love visitors. Super Bowl tomorrow. Go Pack Go.

Niles communicates & Fireman Santa

While Niles has been communicating with the tones of his grunts and cries since April 29th he has moved to the next level. He has been waving, giving verbal cues to his desires, and use some simple sign language. We have been working on milk, done, more, etc and he has these in his lexicon right now. There is a short cut of Jonas and a marathon song that lasted for about 15 minutes on the way to see Santa #1. When we arrived at Santa #1 the boys got out of the van just in time to see the fire-engines zoom away on a call. Jonas and Niles saw their neighbor fireman Jay zoom off in the #4. Santa was wonderful and Jonas got to ring his bells, but the initial pictures didn't go so well for the kids. See the picture below for the details. There is a great article about the Santa, check it out. I know that Santa is a public employee and in this day and age in our state is vilified by our soon to be new Governor for being so "affluent" and actually having a retirement program. I'm sure Gov Walker will be sure to take away a lot of the desire for good people to do public sector work. (By the way the top 1% of income earners grab more than 23% of the total income and also pay a tax-rate that is equal to those in poverty. The highest one percent used to be taxed at 70-94% after WWI until the 1970s, but now they average around 18%....so they can have more money I guess like our new Senator Johnson with his 9.5 million dollars in earnings but lucky for him didn't pay any income taxes (that's zero income taxes) for those 11 years, he probably would not have been able to feed his family if he had to pay taxes like everyone else that is not a millionaire. Bottom line, we better continue to reduce the wages and compensation of the middle class so that the millionaires don't have to pay any taxes and can hire more workers like Johnson did by hiring prisoners from a WI prison because they were inexpensive workers...ahh greed in the name of capitalism and politics) I digress.....happy holidays everyone.

First Snowfall

From beards to Thanksgiving, to Niles first face plant in the snow to no-napping Jonas pass-outs, to first x-mas tree and beyond this slideshow has it all. Enjoy the holiday season.

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.