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Last Friday Art skipped school and we all went to the zoo. He expressed a sudden and welcome urge to learn how to take photos. Jessica took this nice cellphone picture of me showing the little boy how to use our point and shoot. Here are a collection of Art's photos. When we got home he wanted to print them all out. Then he cut them out in a little pile and flipped through to admire them. For the record, I took the photo of the frogs and the closeup of alligator teeth but Art wanted to include them. And the blue coral on the bottom left is Lewis' photo. Everything else is Art's.

Lewis' preschool friend Anika came over the other day to play. Here she is finding him hiding under a laundry basket.

Art getting his first x-ray. Art has a crazy mouth full of teeth coming in in all sorts of directions. Any 'th' sound comes out like 'f'. One, two, free. He even mentioned the other day how it's hard to make certain sounds cause 'air comes out his teeth'. The dentist admired how many teeth he already lost and Art noted that he had lost the most in his kindergarten. His teeth, according to the dentist, are coming in fine. Which is relief, cause if you look in there and you might think he needs some hardcore braces. Noooooo! I had braces, what a torturous and unpleasant experience. with four kids I bet someone will have them. That child will have my full sympathy.

Picasa has some fun new filters, including this '1980' one.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFLGjKEdnkA?rel=0&w=640&h=360]

She's just emailed me this funny video with her fancy new iPhone. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN14tPnvDUE?rel=0&w=640&h=360]

The girls have been horrible at night lately. It's getting better, but there was a stint last week where they were up every couple hours. Normally we'd just feel bad and let them cry until they fell asleep, but they're both recovering from an ear aches and it's still hard to distinguish between real pain and a continual and UNJUSTIFIED desire to nurse. When we can confirm they're both back in top form there is no doubt in my mind that we will let them SCREAM LIKE BABY BANSHEES and not do a thing about it except a periodic pat on the back. PERIODIC PAT ON THE BACK! Anyway, yesterday they woke up a little after five and it was clear they felt they were awake for the day. I hauled them out of their cribs and sat with them on the living room couch in a sleepy haze as they snuggled. I was not feeling the love for them, these two sniffling blobs of misery keeping me awake. And then, like a miracle, my mother emerged from her dungeon bedroom in the basement and took the t...

A while back I was heading home and was shocked the sky darkened by birds. Thousands and thousands of crows. I raced home and got the kids and we went back to watch. And I took some video (which ran today with a little story ). http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

I came home and had to stay out of the kitchen. "Don't come in here, Papa!" I was told many times. My birthday was nearly two weeks ago so it was a real surprise they came out of the kitchen with a cake (pineapple upside-down cake!). Art was so incredibly proud. Apparently he did the bulk of the work on the thing (under my mom's direction).

Since snow has been more or less entirely absent this winter, I thought it worth sharing some fun photos Jessica took from a massive storm last year on December 11th. The kind of snow that makes the world silent and entirely transformed.

This email and photo my mother just sent me is newsworthy on many levels. First, that my mother is town for the week. Secondly, she has a new iPhone. Thirdly, she knows how to take a photo with her new iPhone. And last, she even knows how to e-mail  a photo with her new iPhone. All four of these things make me happy. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nan Yarnelle Date: Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 6:01 PM Subject: Naked party --Sent from my iPhone--

We have a point and shoot camera that often gets used as a video camera. That where these three videos came from. We also have a fancier HD camera that takes great quality stuff but I've yet to have time to edit. We have LOADS of footage from more than a year ago and one of these days I hope to post lots of it. Anyway, here are three fun things. First is Art and Lewis demonstrating some super cool Ninja moves, second a video compiling random stuff (including some somersaults on our new big beanbag) and finally some baby circling. BABY CIRCLING! [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2aMhhpDsgo?rel=0&w=480&h=360] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_a2Rri4Tgg?rel=0&w=480&h=360] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayYVs1wJQFU?rel=0&w=480&h=360]

Kids play with the homeade light table. Jessica teaches preschool twice a week at MacRae Park not far from our house. I'm proud and impressed that she does this on many levels. She started it not long after her mother died and nearly cancelled the preschool entirely (with support from me). But she didn't, she tried to do it through her grief and emotional ups and downs. She started the preschool and from all accounts from her, it was a disaster. For two main reasons. She had to hold the preschool in a gym, meaning she had to completely set up and dismantle everything (she wasn't allowed to hold class in the beautiful empty classroom nearby). So the space wasn't quiet or conducive to peaceful exploration. And the other reason is she had some behavior challenges that took most of her energy during class. A bummer for everyone. She was often overwhelmed and in tears about the situation. She nearly quit. But again, didn't. Instead, she reached out for support from a spe...

Enter our house in the past few days and you'd see two masked spidermans whizzing around non stop doing all sorta of cool tricks! Swinging on stuff, running super fast, just generally being super cool. The wait for them costumes to get here in the mail was excruciating at times for Arthur, be he endured. Here he is opening his costume: Getting suited up. It's too bad we can't see Art's crazy big smile. He immediately started running around the house to demonstrate house fast he could now move. "Look how high I can jump!!!" Eventually Lewis woke up from his nap and joined Arthur in the Spiderman costume celebration. Here Lewis (left) and Arthur raise their fists and admire their new look. This is a little, "holy-shit-we-actually-look-like-Spiderman!" dance.

Today Art came home with a bag o' treats from his 26 classmates.   Valentines treats!  And when he was looking at the bag he voluntarily exclaimed, "And of course I'm going to share them with Lewis... and everybody, of course..."  I think he was feeling very high on the hog with all those treats.  Later he sorted his message hearts in a bowl for everyone to have some with dessert.  Happy Valentines Day! 

Art pushes Lew today at  Centennial Lakes in Edina. Free if you bring your own skates or a brother pay for the rental. Josh pushes the boys.

Bailey (photos by Jessica) Netta

It's true. I was profiled by the local PBS station TPT. I had a good run of political photographs lately and their reporter called me up to do a mini profile. You want watch it here .

Bailey insisted on trying a helmet after seeing Lewis wear it.

In his gym class at Barton .

Jessica and I aren't religious people, but we still want some of it in our lives. Not religion necessarily, but something spiritual and centering, a place to reflect and sing and be together as a family with others who share our values. We've been to a couple church's over the past couple weeks, the Unitarian Universalis t church and Walker Methodis t, a super liberal and open church full lovely and loving people. But we're still shopping. Anyone have a church to suggest in s. mpls? The past two Sunday's we went to the UU and brought the kids. After Sunday school we all went to find Netta and Bailey in their class for young kids. Arthur was so excited to find them.

Jessica took the boys to Ax-Man surplus in St. Paul the other day. It a super cool store full of random tubes and pieces of machinery and nuts and bolts and doll arms and marbles and on and on. They came home with, among other things, tubes and huge rubber bands. Both boys strapped themselves with 'jet packs' as seen in this photo taken by Jessica.

(Child and Family Services, best time to stop by is evenings after 7...)

These are all little projects Art has done in what we call Morning Class, the daycare type class he goes to in the morning before his kindergarden class. It is a far more creative class than his kindergarden, which is sadly just a lot of coloring dittos. Educationally based coloring projects, but nothing like making a dragon puppet. Or a tangram fox! Or... Well...  I think that he said those brown things are falling into a bowl down there on the right and that I can not remember what that yellow thing is.  I'll get back to you.  Anyway... A golden medal with a bomb that explodes all the "happy" things!

Every once in a while Jessica or I will turn to each other and realize that we have twin girls. "Jesus, we have twins!?" or, "Can you believe we have twins?" It really is hard to fathom on some level, that these two little girls are part of our family and are GIRLS! I can't believe it sometimes. I would have never ever guessed it. Just today we were chatting about what would've happened if Jessica didn't accidentally get pregnant with Netta and Bailey. I wanted a third baby, Jessica was leaning towards feeling content with two kids. There easily could've been some arguments involved, some serious persuading or frustrated relenting. It's amazing though, Jessica didn't just have ONE more baby, she had two. That's some crazy shiznit. And then she said this morning, "You know Ben, I could have another." NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Our twin girls Netta, left, and Bailey.

Yesterday Arthur realized that he didn't have a costume his size. He was really upset, in part cause his homemade Halloween costume was since dismantled and, ahem, discarded. So, as Jessica reported it to me, he put on his shoes and coat and went out and sat in the van, waiting for someone to take him to the store to get a costume. A wonderful gesture of stubbornness and ambition. I got home and went out to find him in the van, still sitting there on the verge of tears. Eventually he came inside and later that night Jess went on the iPad with the boys for some costume shopping. Both boys are getting a Spiderman costume, Art's will have those built in muscles to help beef up his skinny 6-year-old look.

The Romeny photo was picked up by AP and published all over, including this big jump photo in the NYT's. And this site made it a caption contest, and then the local KARE11 news ended their 10pm news talking about it (fast forward to 13:15).

I photographed Mitt Romney as he made a stop in Minnesota today ( here's a full gallery ). I posted this funny photo on Facebook and Twitter and a number of people had fun giving it a caption. including: "I made more in the last week than this baby will earn in his whole life." and "That doesn't ride on the roof of the car, governor." and my favorite from my bro' in law Mike: ‎"Oh wait, this baby is poor? I'm not worried about it then. Here you can have it back."