“Dad-O, I’m making Henry into a superhero,” says Finn, attaching a garbage bag “cape” to his bro. “He’s Trash Man!” 🙂
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Headlamp Champ
A boy & his flyin’ lion.
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Captain Underpants, readying for takeoff!
🙂
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MOGI v. KOBIs
It’s not news that John is known as KOBI in our house (King of Bad Ideas). For example: “Hey kids, let’s use yarn and duct tape to make ‘tripwires’ and not tell Mom-o until she hits one and lands flat on her face in the living room!” or “A fistful of cookies right before bedtime? What could possibly go wrong?”
[Hey man, they *start* this stuff; I just greenlight it. 😉 –J.]
And now the boys have gleefully adopted their own KOBI moniker (Kids of Bad Ideas): Using a glue stick to hang posters on the wall? GREAT IDEA! Jumping up and down on the nice couch? You bet! Bringing sandy, muddy toys and sticks into their rooms for playing? Bring it on! Peeing in the trashcan? Why, certainly!
I am the lone, battle-hardened MOGI (Mom of Good Ideas), up against three hearty, persistent KOBIs. The fact that everyone remains alive, relatively unscathed, and our house is still standing tells me I must be doing something right. Right?
[Yeah, and the house continues to pulsate with hilarity, so we all play our parts, eh? 🙂 –J.]
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Small Sirs, Big Sur
What a day! Here’s our little chronicle of following Bixby Creek down to the sea, digging innumerable holes, frolicking with Bruce’s dog, and just generally cooling the heck out. 🙂
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A perfect day
Saturday was just unbelievably lovely. Here’s a quick peek:
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Spin for the Win
We had an absolute blast exploring Big Sur yesterday, visiting my friend the photojournalist Bruce Haley & family beneath the Bixby Creek Bridge. We’ll share photos soon (I took a *ton*). In the meantime, here Bruce’s wife Deborah shows our fascinated boys the spinning wheel she uses to make yarn:
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Wakey Wakey!
The view from my pillow, 6:47am. (Yes, those are my legs.) 🙂
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Beholding Grandpa’s old typewriter
Margot’s dad recently sent us his trusty old writing machine, and the boys have been fascinated. “Many an essay has been written on that!” notes Auntie Laura. “Grampa has had that since he got his Bachelor’s at CU.” Check it out:
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“Li’l peeps can roll, man…”
When Grandpa Liggett would pout as a boy, his parents would warn him, “Watch out, or [farmer neighbor] Nicholson’s cows will come sit on that lip!” I know few kids poutier than Henry, so the cows have quickly become a central piece of family lore. In the shot below I was teasing grumpy Henry at a bowling lane in Colorado, combining ball-as-cow imagery with memories of Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski. Enjoy. 🙂
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Care for Some Breadsticks With That?
Finny described a new salad he’d devised for his leonine buddies yesterday morning, called “Rarnchibone.” Of course, young Henry had to follow suit with an owl-appropriate salad called “Hoonchibone.” Recipes follow:
Rarnchibone consists of “A bunch of grapes, a hamburger patty on the top, lettuce, lots & lots & lots of berries. It’s the same for hoonchibone, but instead of a hamburger patty, it’s a mouse patty.”
#TheMoreYouKnow 🙂
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Finn’s-Eye View (aka, “Wheeee!”)
Prepare yourself: You’re about to become 3.5 feet tall, and blonde, and a bit less than steady on your bike. 🙂 Check out a kid’s-eye view of Rancho San Antonio, as captured from the helmet of Finn thanks to the new GoPro camera Mom-O got us for Christmas:
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World War Z(erbert), then & now
It’s fun to compare 4-year-old Henry trading zerberts with Mom-O…
…to an old clip of 8-month-old Henry turning her into his private musical “instrument”:
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ET: The Next Generation
Mr. Spielberg, you know where to call. 🙂
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Nacks On A Plane
“Man, I’m glad our flights didn’t get too screwed up in & out of Denver,” said Margot just now. Well, give her credit for looking on the bright side of things. It’s true that our flights weren’t canceled, but look at the “fun” the boys & I had while moldering on the tarmac for a couple of hours, awaiting the de-icing truck:
Henry proceded to pass out, and then—once we were in the air—puke all over the place. (“Why didn’t you grab the barf bag??” demanded Finn, quite reasonably. Because your old man doesn’t have cat-like reflexes, son.) Amazingly, as we finally dragged our bones through the door in San Jose, Hen lit up and said—without a hint of irony—”That was the best trip ever!” ;-P
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Brief Notes From a Big Elf
It’s pretty great knowing a little elf in Kansas City—our pal Maria—who can put her calligraphy skills to use helping the boys hear from the big elf up north. Check out the boys enjoying their letters from Santa!
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Microcoaster of Love
What’s better than tots enjoying a roller coaster? Tots enjoying a roller coaster in slow-mo to the sounds of Red Hot Chili Peppers! 🙂
Check out Finnster, our friend Malachy, and especially Henry braving Happy Hollow’s Pacific Fruit Express coaster last Saturday.
Not only is today Christmas Day, today is the day we publish our thousandth Micronaxx blog post! What?!? Wow! We can’t even believe we’ve cranked out so many posts about our boys in the past 5+ years, but we already know there will be many more posts to come.
We are having a wonderful, relaxing Christmas with the extended Liggett clan – Grandma and Grandpa Liggett, Laura (Liggett) Lingle and her family, we four Nacks, and the Lingle boys grandma Margaret Lingle. We arrived last night, just in time for stocking hanging, spreading reindeer food on the driveway, and reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas with Grandpa. After Santa visited, all the big people went to bed because we knew we’d be up early.
After a Christmas Eve sleepover at the Lingles, all four cousins were up and at ’em early this morning tearing through their stockings — oohing and aahing over new toys, stuffed animals, candy, and treats. By the time John and I arrived from our hotel at 8:30, they were raring to go on the big gifts. As you’ll see from the gallery, there were lots of gleeful smiles as the packages were opened — even from the adults!
Then we were off to the park across the street for a bit of running around in the bright Colorado sunshine in new hats and mittens, courtesy of Auntie Laura’s handiwork. The boys are now back inside, playing with their new toys and waiting for Christmas dinner to begin.
Lions and Owls and Cones Oh My!
This year, since we’re heading to Colorado for Christmas, we decided to let the boys open their “big” gifts a few days early. Finny continues to be obsessed with lions – so his gift was kind of easy. I was walking through Costco the other day and they had these enormous animal beanbag chairs, one of which was a lion. Done and DONE! I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t get him the chair because it is such a colossal feline.
As for Henry, his latest fascination (in addition to owls) is traffic cones. Whenever he sees them, he’s like a moth to a flame. He cannot walk by a construction site, or a playground with cones on it without stopping and moving the cones around in an effort to “block things off for safety.” John had the fantastic idea to buy Henry his own real, construction-and-traffic-control grade cones. I logged into Amazon, and wouldn’t you know it, they had many sizes, weights, and styles of cone to choose from. We knew Henry would go absolutely mental when he opened the cones, and as you can see from the gallery, he did not disappoint. He was also pretty pleased about the owl pajamas I made him, and is thrilled when bedtime rolls around and he can lounge in his owl peej before hitting the sack.
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The Revelations of Henry
Little G-Man’s mind has been blowing a lot recently:
- Spotting some icy grass, Henry got breathless: “Dad-O, a man named Jack Frost visited our school, and he made everything icy!! For real!”
- Poor Hen was kinda busted up after he grabbed a cat tail and shoved it into a foam tube, thus stripping it to the stem: “Aaaagh, all my cat feathers are gone!”
- When I pointed out a beautiful Fisker Karma (like the one pictured above), Henry remarked, “Dad-O, flat cars are the coolest! If we drove a [Lamborghini] Aventador, how would we even sit in it? Would we have to put the steering wheel on the ceiling?” Let’s cross that bridge the next time I have four hundred grand to drop on a car, kiddo. 🙂