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Art went downstairs and I noticed it was awfully quiet. I came down and he was drawing this lovely snake on the window. "Papa, do you want to see my snake?" he asked.

Someone found the medallion and ended the Pioneer Press treasure hunt yesterday. I had so much fun producing the video clues, in part because it was so outside of what normally passes for newspaper journalism. Entirely absurd stuff that I somehow found really gratifying and fulfilling! Here's a comment from a message board about the videos that I find especially delightful: "...they've had Horny Nuns, One-Armed Whores, Gay Robots, Beheaded Pirate Puppets, Irate Columnists, Male Blow-Up Dolls, etc... - they really CAN'T sink much lower than they already have." That'll be a real challenge for next year... Last night I produced one last video of the actual clue writer hiding the medallion at Lilydale park. In the end he finally reveals who he is... http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/1870915446?isVid=1&publisherID=1616725016 Today they also published explanations for each of the clues, making clear what the weird clues were referencing. All t...

The other day Art said, "Knock knock."  I said, "Who's there?"  And he said, "YAAAAAHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOUUUUUWWWWWWWW!  Boooooooooo!"  And that was his knock knock joke.  Then Lewis said, "Knock knock" and I said, "Who's there?"  Lewis said, "Meow."  And that was his  knock knock joke. Lewis has lots of wonderful ways of saying things that are so tempting to perpetuate.  Things like calling all trucks wee-ooohs, like a siren sound.  Or how whenever you put him in a hooded jacket or sweater he wants the hood on right away and says, just like foot  but starting with an 'H', "Hoot, hoot!"  Or calling frogs wee-wee's.  Ahhh, it would be so easy to just adopt his version all the time because it's so endearing.  Most of the time I say, "Oh, you want your hood on?" but I must admit I love to say it his way!!!

I'm still shooting these clue videos, and here's today's. Is it just me and the clue writer (cw) who think these are hilarious? I'll also post the clue from a Friday below. http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/1870915446?isVid=1&publisherID=1616725016 http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/1870915446?isVid=1&publisherID=1616725016

Today Art said, out of the blue (no pun intended, but it is a good one considering the topic!) "Girls like purple and boys like black."   "Really!" I answered.  "Who told you that?"   "Nobody.  I just know." "Do you like purple?" I asked, since only a few weeks ago he was asking to have his room painted purple and pink. "No.  I only like black.  And brown and white."   "What about pink?" "I don't like pink."  (Even thought just today he wanted the pink popsicle stick and he used to always  want to be the pink hippo in Hungry, Hungry Hippos) "So if we play Hungry Hippos you're not going to want to be the pink one?" "No," he answered.  "You can be the pink one.  You like pink." Consider gender neutrality a thing of the past.  We are entering a new phase of exploration: gender roles! Speaking of rolls!  Rediculous baking project of the day - fig newtons.  I tried to make n...

Jess and I have been bad bloggers lately. Sorry! we hope to post more and better photos soon, but in the meantime here are a couple bad ones from my phone. The other day Art was sleeping in a weird position, and then the blurry one of the kids around the table is from this morning at ECFE class. Art always asks to sit next to Lewis, and as I was taking the photo the teacher said they always play together and said it's fun to watch them together and cause they're very loving towards each other. What a wonderful thing for a parent to hear, you know? Make everything warm and fuzzy. I'm in New Orleans for the big football game. Look for me on the sidelines Sunday, I'll be wearing a lime green shirt with a red vest (all photographers wear red vests).

We were invited to a potluck at the house of one of Art's best friends, Si, tonight. Spending time with adults is a great deal more fun when Art has someone to play with so intensely. They were wrestling, playing with dinosaurs, and otherwise were entirely self entertained. Laurel and Jeff, Si's parents, are super cool people and have a weekly potluck as a way to stay in touch with friends.

Jess on the cookies her and Art and Lew made the other day: All three of us helped use the mixer, helped pour in the ingredients, and helped spoon the dough onto the cookie sheet. They came out looking like something our of a Martha Stewart magazine.

Cait and Zach bought a new house, and we stopped by to see it. It's wonderful.

I never realized how important the hunt is to so many people in St. Paul. Each day (for up to 12 days if necessary) a clue is published in the paper that hints as to which public park the medallion (worth $10,000 to the finder) is hidden in. More than a hundred people line up each night outside the paper at midnight to get the new clue and then zip off in the darkness to search for it in deep snow in the middle of the night. Young kids, old farts, everyone. I sorta wish I didn't work at the paper so I could look, too! anyway, the first video below is of late last night as people waiting for the clue. And the other videos below are of the newest clues (the clue writer, disguised, reads the clues--something new this year). For years people have thought Joe Soucherey, a cranky columnist at the paper, was the clue writer/medallion hider (hardly anyone, even folks who work at the paper, knows who writes the clues). So he played along in the last video. http://c.brightcove.com/services/v...

It wasn't that cold today and we had plans to join Aunt Ashley and Uncle Josh for snow play, but Art has a sore throat so we opted for a lower-key nature day. We went to the Science Museum to look at the dinosaur bones. (And potentially infect lots of other kids, depending on how serious Art's cold is.) Ever since Art discovered the PBS show, "Dinosaur Train" dinosaurs have been on the brain around here. Especially for me! I'm just so curious about them! And there's been a lot of new discoveries since even I was a kid. Heck, they don't even call a brontosaurus a brontosaurus anymore! So I was especially excited to go to the science museum. First we had to wait in a long line to get in.  (All the people observing MLK day with science, I guess.)  Art and Lewis wandered around in the big lobby and on this huge world map.  Art is offering to carry Lewis since I had refused to do it anymore. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures in the dinosaur area ...

Today Arthur wasn't feeling so good. He was horizontal most of the day, even when his friends were over this morning. And he took a three and a half hour nap. He didn't have a fever though, but said his body hurt in different spots. He usually hangs out as Jessica cooks so she offered to make him a 'bed' in the kitchen as she cooked. What a great idea! Art loved it, too. We made him a little bed and he smiled nice and big as he laid down. And we made Lewis a little bed, too, even though he was the antithesis of sick today. In fact, rarely did he stop talking or moving his body all day.

This morning we invited over a few friends to have one last playdate in the cardboard box castle in our basement. Art and Lew haven't been playing in it much lately, and we want the space in our basement back! It was a going away part of sorts. Here are some snaps. Oscar shows Lew how to squeeze a balloon. Evva. Oscar. Maura and her sister Noel. Oscar. and here's an older overall version so you can see the thing: leaving.

"Look, Papa, I built your work," said Art after building this nice tall thing. It even had an elevator.

Tonight I had a surge of love towards Arthur and went in his room after Jess did bedtime to tell him. "Arthur, did you know that you're one of my favorite people in the whole world?" I asked him. "I love you so much." "I love you, Papa," he said, thinking. "And Lewis. I love him a lot ."

For those who don't know, every year the Pioneer Press has a treasure hunt as part of the St. Paul Winter Carnival. The hunt goes back decades and the carnival I think for more than a century. Anyway, the treasure hunt has become a real spectacle. Every year thousands of folks head out to search for medallion--whoever finds it gets $10,000. Whole families take a week of vacation to hunt, people have special night digging gear, it goes on and on. And starting today there's a daily clue for the hunters. There's is a great veil of secrecy around the hunt. No one knows who hides the medallion, no one knows who writes the clues. Even folks at the paper have no idea. It's quite fun and mysterious. This year we're doing daily videos of the clue writer reading the clues. Just cause we can. And I, with the risk of boring you, will be posting them here for fun. The first one below is not a clue, but more of a chance to get folks excited and to let them know the medallion was ...

Jessica loves doing crafty things. Many times I remember going to our Early Childhood class and she's the first to notice the fun project they have set out, like stamps or water colors. "Lewis, wanna draw a picture with me?" she'll say as she pulls up a tiny kids chair at the tiny kids table and starts a project. Her enthusiasm for creating things hasn't entirely transferred to the kids, as Art and Lewis focus more on the process than the result. Cutting, mixing paints, feeling playdough. But Jessica likes to create something and then hold it up to admire. I love that about her. I think Arthur does, too, cause just this morning he asked her to make a "shark" and then an "ant". She made happily cut both out of foam paper.

As I mentioned earlier, Google Voice transcribes message on my cell phone, and here's a funny one from jess today: Hey, I wanted to tell you need that. Just fully veggie interest health in my eyes....I think she's she's aware so that's good advice, don't feel like she's discount we speak a space cadet or even if she is at least to consider it. In the worst part is overcook all the new stuff, Lending and then provider and I'm gonna be homework sections. Okay, talk to you later. Bye.

So, many people who are local and been around me lately have heard this before, but Lewis speaks Chinese!  In Chinese the same word can mean completely different things depending on how it is intoned and Lewis has several meanings for some of his "words".  I'm sure this is totally typical of kids his age, but it is fun for me to notice that "Eh go?" means where'd it go?   "Eh GO!" means there it is!   "EH GO!" means let's go  and, the new one, which is slightly different, "Heh go?" , how does this work?    Art and Lewis have survived the long, hard winter break.  And so have we.  Sometimes I swear they were going to kill each other, that is if I didn't get to one of them first.  They were incorrigible!  It seemed 10 minutes didn't go by without one of them screaming at the other one.  We rode it out, though, and yesterday they played together beautifully most of the long, napless afternoon.  Art engaged Lewis in a ...

Here's Ben and the boys listening to a story during Circle Time at ECFE.  Well, correction.  Art calls it "Eff-cee". This is how a boy plays with a dollhouse.  Lewis played with the toy furniture for a few minutes, putting the bendable man on and off the chairs.  If you look closely you can see that he is sitting on a toy vanity.  Then he put two trucks into it. Lena came over the other day for dinner and Art showed her his Snake book.  In fact, Lena read Art's bedtime books and gave him a big hug for sleeping.  Then he said, "Your hair is really big.  Why is it big?"

Art and Jess went outside this morning to try and identify what sort of animal was leaving tracks in our yard.

Yesterday Lew and I were hanging out around the house. As he was playing in the liing room I heard him make a low "I'm-making-a-poop" sort of noise. I asked him, "Lewis, did you just make a poop?" "Uh huh," he admitted. "Do you have a poop in your diaper," I asked for clarity's sake. He looked at me, sorta grinned, and shook his head no. "Uh uh." So funny!

The other night my sister and I went to Orchestra Hall to see the Wizard of Oz with the Minnesota Orchestra playing the music.  Pretty cool.  Meanwhile, our cousin, Cait, watched the kids.  Art was particularily excited about Cait coming over.  He asked over and over and over again, "When is Cait going to get here?  Why is it taking her a long time?"  We had pizza, the boys spazzed out on the couch for a while and then Em and I left for our concert.  Here's Cait's report: Hey Jess and Ben-  Everything went super smooth, those boys are such a treat! After Dinosaur Train I said "it's time to get ready for bed for Lewis" and both boys went up the stairs to their rooms. While I helped Lewis Art stayed in his room quietly (but also helped me find things and answered a lot of questions for me. When I took Lewis' diaper off I asked him if he would like to pee in the potty and he said "uh-huh" and went and peed in the potty! Then he ran around na...

It is fun to know a little kid's dialect.  Art is almost done correcting his little misspeaks.  No more oat-uh-meal, no more bass  to wash his hair.  He still says, "Go the fast that I'm going!" but that will disappear soon, too.  But now we have Lewis's language to delight in!  Here are some of his fun verbal interpretations of his world: Heh-woh   It's not just a greeting!  It's a phone!  That's what he calls a phone. Gree   Yes, Lewis is a genius.  He can already count!  But there are only ever gree of them.  "Gree, gree, GREE!" Hoo-hoo!   Dinosaur Train, the crack-cocaine t.v. show of Art and Lewis's generation.  Dinosaurs that ride an effin' train.   Wee-wee  Said in a regular voice, it means frog.  Said in a guttural growl, it is the sound a frog makes.

Last night Art called me upstairs after he'd been asleep for a good hour or more.  He'd had a bad dream, he said, and I asked him if he wanted to talk about it.  He told me all about it!  Then I came downstairs and told Ben, who typed it out since he was sitting at the computer anyway.  This is the dream, as transcribed only minutes after it's first telling: I n his dream he had a blanket on his head and a bag of water and a frog that he wanted to be his friend. He wanted the frog to be his friend.  And he looked at the bag of water and there was something really cool in the water.  There were flowers coming out. And then he smiled.  I repeated back what he had told me and he added that the frog DID want to be his friend. When I mentioned the flowers coming out of the bag he clarified that the flowers were coral, like in the ocean. He said that in the ocean coral is really big but this was really small. I asked him why he was scared and he said that the flowers came out ...

It's something I rarely get to do since I work, but picking Art up from Willow is really fun. As soon as you walk in a gaggle of fully bundled kids swarm the door to see who's mama or papa came. Today when I walked in I heard Arthur yell, "Papa!" Jessica and I have often marveled at how Mr. Jen is able to outfit 5-6 kids in winter gear when it's often nearly impossible for us to dress just two.

The kids have often been at unhappy around each other lately. There's a subtle but intense competition between the two of them for their parents' (especially Jessica's) attention. It's not worth figuring out in all its complexity because they're often little angels together and tomorrow something will change anyway. But for now, it can be tough to be around the two of them. For example, Lew might grab a toy to play with, Arthur will go and grab it just enough to cause Lewis to scream as if you were removing a toe nail. And then Lewis might hit Arthur hard with the toy, and Arthur will cry and hit Lewis back hard, and then they both cry for a while because they got hit hard. As a workaround lately we sometimes each take a child and spend time with them (one upstairs, another down, etc). Tonight Jessica took Lewis upstairs to get ready for bed and I made a marble toy with Arthur in the living room. Jessica and a naked Lew came down to check out what we had made and I ...

A little dancing. A little hall running. A little ride.

The kids especially love coming along to the grocery when it's at the Seward Co-op where there are tiny-sized grocery carts.

As we start a new year it's worth taking a look back at 2009 with some of the best photos and moments in our small family. It's an honor raising these two boys and this blog has been a great way to share our love for them and keep in touch with the folks we love. Thanks for checking in on us! Click here for the full screen version, or play below. http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

Ben: "You're lucky you're not sleeping with your nose close to my anus cause I'm making some stinky farts." Jess, laughing: "There are lots of reasons I'm glad my nose isn't next to your anus."

This is me and Art in the behind-the-couch-book nook doing Sudoku. For some reason he likes to "help" me with Sudoku. I wonder what he likes about watching me do a number puzzle that he doesn't understand. But the past few days he likes to sit right next to me and tell me where to put a four or five or whatever. So we did Sudoku in the book nook.