Happy Thoughts

First there was this:

(Dawson's Creek, for those not in the know)

Then came:

(The Skulls....Walker and Jackson, could it be a bad movie??)

And now:

(Fringe)

For every stage of my life, Joshua Jackson is always there...could I ask for anything more? :o) How do you mark the stages in your life?

Happy Birthday Sexy Mama

You get better and better every year.
Happy Birthday.

Sounds of the Season

So I guess it's time for the obligatory post-Christmas post.

Why does it seem like Christmas was 6 months ago already? There is so much lead up time and then it is over just like that! We were able to drag it out a little with Christmas in Idaho, a mini-Christmas in Fargo and then Christmas here in Minnesota.

This year we decided our Christmas would have a theme; the winning theme was Sharing. We thought it would be best to extend this theme to Mark's entire family, not just with the three of us. So we began on Christmas...with a niece and nephew. By that evening Mark and a few others had taken part. I was the lucky recipient the day after Christmas. We were all more than happy to share with others, but those on the receiving end were not too happy about the sharing. Isn't Christmas all about sharing and giving?? I guess when you're passing around some form of the flu, people would prefer that you kept it to yourself.

Mark asked me a good question after this hit me...he asked if I was more upset that I had become sick or that I had put an end to my 18 year streak without throwing up (not even while pregnant did I vomit. Yay me!). I was obviously more bothered that I had to reset the streak. So I am now happy to say it's been almost 2 weeks since the last incident!!

Other than our bonding over flu bugs, Christmas was a lovely time. Idaho was continually dumped with snow while we were there, we lost a day to travel (thanks a lot low visibility at Idaho Falls airport and thanks Alamo for ridiculously high one way car rental prices), but we enjoyed hanging out with family and friends. We weren't able to get down to Utah to visit with everyone we wanted to due to the pesky snow, winds and difficult driving conditions that plague Idaho in the winter months, hopefully we can get out to visit this summer!

We were even able to visit with some of my family when we returned home; We jumped back in the car for a 3.5 hour drive to Fargo for New Years. I have to say, Fargo might be the rocking-est town to be in on New Years Eve. Spectacular. Ok, not really. Dick Clark's Rocking New Year's Eve is lame no matter where you watch it, even if it is in a hotel room in North Dakota. But when you have a very over tired, stuffy nosed 6 month old, what else can you do?

I guess all that is left to do it to look forward to next Christmas and hope and pray that you're spared by the gift of sharing!

Here are a couple of Christmas pics. Out of all of T's gifts, the tissue paper was her favourite by far!

Style. You're a fickle beast.

The girls said I was too boring in my baseball post... How about this? It's about fashion.

Saw a kid with some crazy hair on my way in this morning. His hair was cut very short all over, except for a 7 inch rat tail. The rat tail was styled in two ways: half of it was slicked straight back (like a good rat tail should) but the second part was slicked up the back of his head and over it... all the way to his forehead (like a rat tail/Mohawk). I felt for the kid and wondered what in the world his mom was thinking. It made me think of my childhood, and three style mishaps I had.

1) In grade school, I pegged my pants (like this girl). The hallmarks of a sweet peg were its tightness and its ability to stay put for long periods of time. A good peg could withstand most of the day without being re-rolled. I remember feeling really stupid the first time I pegged my pants, but it went over so well at school, I thought it must be cool... I kept doing it.

I remember where I was and what grade (5th) I was when I stopped pegging. The bell had just rung to come in from recess. I was standing with a red kick ball and walking toward the building when a girl named Charlotte tapped me on the shoulder. She was a pretty and popular little girl, so I stopped and said, "hi." She didn't say hi. Instead she gave me this little number: "Jeff, we don't peg our pants anymore. It isn't cool." With that she walked away.

I bent down right then, unrolled my pants, and walked into the building feeling peggless and sad.

2) I was in 4th grade and I thought sweat pants and climbing on stuff was pretty awesome. I had climbed up on a volleyball standard in sweat pants and I was standing with my foot on the hook where the bottom of the net went, and holding on to the top hook to stabilize myself. I was fairly impressed with myself, and I stood up there swinging my free leg around.

Some of the girls that my friends and I had crushes on came walking by, including the girl I always went "steady" with. I yelled out to them, and kicked my free leg pretty fiercely, trying to show off. In my excitement, my leg standing on the hook slipped off of the hook and I began to fall straight down. The hook caught the leg of my sweats and as the girls looked on, I fell and my sweats tore all the way up the leg. I stood up quickly, not realizing that as I did, my pants flapped wide open, revealing the goods. In my humiliation, I didn't know what to do. I took off running for home.

3) In 8th grade I thought my sister (who was 4 years older than me) was the coolest. Because she was in high school, she always got more expensive, and nicer clothes than me. One day she was out shopping and came home with a white polo shirt with colored polka dots on it (it was the early 90's). I thought the shirt was pretty cool, told her so, and she said that it was a unisex shirt, so maybe I could wear it sometime. Looking back, I think she was just humoring her little brother by being nice, but I didn't know better & thought she was serious. One day when she had already left for school, I went into her closet, took the shirt, and decided to wear it to school. In my mind, I looked awesome. In the mirror, I blew myself away.

My first period was gym. We did the fun run that day, so I changed, ran, and afterward changed back. As I pulled the shirt from my locker, I remember feeling excited to wear it out into the halls again. I pulled the shirt over my head, shut my locker, turned to leave and heard, "Hey Jeff!" I turned and several of the really cool 9th graders were standing there. I figured they were going to compliment my shirt (since it was so awesome), and I said, "Oh, hey guys." One of the coolest (that I'd played baseball with for years) then said, "Nice shirt. Did your mom dress you?" and they all started laughing. I didn't really have any sort of comeback... knowing that my although my mom hadn't necessarily dressed me, my sister (in essence) had.

This is how it felt:


I guess at the end of the day, the kid with the rat tail is paying his dues on the way to being a normal adult... just like the rest of us. Lucky little devil.

Pick a Number, Any Number

What's the square root of 900=?

What Percent Are You?

So with all this baby stuff going on, the blog has been neglected the past couple of weeks... I can't really say I have had any desire to blog to be honest. Given our stance that this won't become a shrine to our little Tennyson, and the fact that no sleep equals brain mush - the blog ideas have shriveled up. I could tell everyone about the awesomeness of early morning/late night tv, but then my blog would be full of lies, and we all know I am not a good liar. So let me say a quick shout out to my DVR and the shows that keep me company at any given hour of the day or night. (Thank you A&E for getting me addicted to Intervention, and for giving me another season of The Two Coreys.)

Well, today my brain may have kicked back into gear, even if only temporarily due to a decent amount of consecutive hours of sleep.
I was at T's two week follow-up and I started thinking...when (and why) do Doctor's stop telling you your height and weight percentiles? How fun would that be as an adult? Probably not very much, but it would be pretty funny to go to your yearly Doctor's check up to be told that you've gained 6 pounds but you haven't grown any taller, so you fall into the 53rd percentile for height and the 95th percentile for weight... I wonder if it would motivate people to lose weight, or gain weight...either way I think it would be funny. Not that I really want to be told that I am off the charts for my weight (at least right now I could kind of blame it on post-pregnancy weight, right?) and slightly above average for my height, but it would make each check-up a little more interesting. You could make bets each year to see where you fall on the scale! We could get the Vegas odds-makers in on it too and turn it into the next big gambling idea! If they can place bets on how long the U.S. anthem will last at the World Series, or which way the coin toss will fall...we can bet on anything, right? It's the next great get rich quick scheme!
So I am sure most of you aren't stopping by here for my random rants on even more random topics anymore...but be warned, as the days go by, my random ranting will return, not to mention so will Mark's random and slightly offensive rantings! But for now I will cut to what everyone is waiting for (and by everyone, I mean probably just Grandparents and a few aunts!) you want T's stats, don't you?? At her first appointment she weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces (drumroll please...) she now weighs 7 pounds 13 ounces - putting her squarely in the 25th percentile for weight. She also grew a whole inch and now comes in at 21.25 inches in length, which puts her in the 75th percentile for height. Somehow we wound up with a very long and lean child... which boggles our minds given our thoughts that she would probably inherit my short waistedness and Mark's even shorter inseam - topping out at a whole 3 feet tall at her tallest. So we're not quite sure where she gets it from, but if she keeps it up, she should be a happy teenager!! Well, once she gets over the vampire-esque glow of her skin she should be happy!

Pictures

Melanie and I have always said that this site will not turn into a baby album or journal about baby poops. We still stand by that claim, but when your baby is this damn cute you have to post a couple of pictures. So here is the introduction of little Tennyson now that she is growing out of her newborn, bulbous headed alien looking stage. The first and second pictures are my favorites; they seem to show her emotions. She is either a really happy baby, or inherited her bowels from her father. Enjoy the pictures and thank you to everyone who has reached out to us over the last few days. We will be in contact once we get some sleep, so never.

Apparently, she is a big Austin Powers / Dr.. Evil fan already! One miiiiillllion dollars please!