When you fall off the blog waggon, there’s a bit of posting to make up. Here’s some action shots of Griffin in his new sports facility, plus one of our tree as evidence to a certain maternal reader that we really did decorate. ;)

Griffin was firing off accurate shots at the hoop before we even had the rim in place. I dunno where he picks up on this stuff. We quickly had to raise it to its highest setting to offer some challenge.

Last weekend Griffin’s 5 year old cousin shouted “TOUCHDOWN!” while the crew were all jumping around on a bed. Griffin responded, “RAIDERS!”. Has a dad ever been so proud? I think not.

Blog note: I’m trying to go with the flow a bit… Blogger’s curtailed my normal photo posting routine, so now pictures posted are clickable for a larger version.

I lived in Boston for four years and then the Bay Area of California for ten years. In some ways it’s really weird for me to be back in Wisconsin.

I grew up in a town with 450 people, nobody has ever heard of it. Except last week I was talking with a coworker and it turns out he grew up in the next town over that only has 200 people. We didn’t go to the same high school but he was a volunteer EMT and he used to work with my mom.

Also, that guy has red hair. Many of my coworkers have red hair. I once asked for the name of the sales guy with red hair and was asked “Which one?” There’s one other female developer at my company, and she has red hair and she’s vegetarian. What are the odds, right? It’s like welcome back to the Norwegian gene pool.

My best grade school friend moved away and we lost touch over the years. Back when we were in the fifth grade we’d planned to get together for New Year’s Eve in 1999, but that didn’t happen. We did get together this year for New Year’s Eve, though, she hosted a fondue dinner party. She’s a great cook, she and her husband have great taste in wine, she still reads a lot, she’s interesting to talk to, and it’s really cool to be able to resume a friendship with her.

One of my sisters is moving from Chicago to Madison, she and her husband went through much the same decision making process we did when we decided this would be a good place to raise a family. She’s a very private person so I won’t say more about that here except that I can’t wait to have my sister, brother-in-law, and niece so much closer!

I also just found out a friend may be moving to Wisconsin. My freshman roommate in college moved to California at the same time I did, and we were roommates in California, too. She and her husband are biologists, and they may be accepting positions in Milwaukee. They were visiting Milwaukee this past weekend on a scouting trip with their 17 month old son, so we met up with them on Sunday for brunch and a visit to the Milwaukee Children’s Museum.

Finally, I read this over at welcome to my pantry, Madison’s getting a restaurant week!

The Patriot Act in action: replacing U.S. Attorneys investigating public corruption with lawyers in charge of political opposition research, all while bypassing Senate confirmation. Schweet!

Julian took Griffin to Madtown Twisters this morning which is something of a Sunday morning tradition around here. So, two posts in one day, I thought I’d add a general update.

Our babysitter Sarah is going to Chile (her boyfriend’s Chilean) in March. We had planned for Griffin to start Montessori preschool around then, but now it feels rather sudden. He needs to be potty trained to start preschool, and we’re making good progress on that front but aren’t really there yet. I’m not going to talk about our potty training adventures here because I know Griffin would grow up, read this blog, and then disown me. The deadline is stressing me out a bit, I think we need to come up with a back-up plan in case he isn’t ready by March.

There’s going to be a jury trial for the creepy guy across the street in April. I had thought the court date in November would be the end of it but I guess that was just his intake trial or something. I’m not the plaintiff in the case, the State of Wisconsin is trying him for lewd and lascivious behavior. I haven’t been summoned to be a witness, but there are two “Demand for discovery”‘ motions involving the witness list on the CCAP web site. I’m amazed that the process is so transparent. I’m a lot less freaked about this than I was, but I still wish the guy would move.

In other news I finally decided more than two years after having a kid that I should start trying to get in shape. I’ve been following the Body for Life program for about two months and feel much stronger and more energetic. After I got used to setting an alarm for before Griffin wakes up in the morning the working out part has actually been fun. The food part is harder, there’s a heavy emphasis on protein that’s hard for a pseudo-vegetarian to do. Has anybody else done this program? What did you think?

Also, I’m watching old Buffy episodes while I do cardio and have any Buffy geeks noticed that in the early seasons Xander is skinny and Buffy is, well, not?

A long time ago Julian and I had a favorite coffee shop in Santa Cruz. We would go there whenever we could because of the amazing hot chocolate. This was before drinking chocolate became popular, but this hot chocolate was so rich and thick you could stand the little cookie it came with up in the middle of the cup. It was wonderful. Then one time after making a pilgrimage to the coffee shop it dawned on one of us. Warm chocolate pudding. That’s all that it was. It completely killed the experience, the hot chocolate didn’t even taste good after that. We didn’t bother going there again.

Griffin really likes The Upside Down Show. The show features two guys who hand the kids an imaginary remote control. They act out all kinds of scenes, and they have the kids push buttons like the “humongous button” and the “rewind button”. The actors are very good, and the show is hilarious. Julian and I were watching a show with Griffin recently and Julian marveled “How do they do that?” I thought about if for a bit and responded, “I think they’re mimes”. We watched for a few more minutes and then Julian said, “Damn. It’s like the hot chocolate.”

Some things are like frogs and humor. If you dissect them they don’t work as well.

Almost every day Griffin says something I want to remember. Today he was patting me on the face and I said “Yes, that’s my nose”. Then I gave him a hug and said “And you’re my Griffin!” He thought about it for a minute, then he pointed at me and said “My mom!”, pointed at Julian and said “My dad!”, and finally patted himself on the chest and said “My me!”

Julian’s grandfather is a photography buff and got this for Griffin for Christmas:

It arrived last night and Griffin immediately figured it out and started taking pictures. His first 20 or so pictures are of me. It’s hard to say “cheese” that many times in a row but he insisted, I think it’s payback for all the pictures we take of him. I’m not going to post any of his first pictures here, because it turns out if you’re only three feet tall you’re mostly looking up people’s noses. Instead, here’s a sort of meta picture he took of Julian taking a picture of him: