We're going to take a little blogging break. We'll be back in action early next week.
Catch ya later y'all!
H, B, K, O
This morning on a whim Braydon put Owen on our new digital scale. He weighs 40.4 pounds. Then he put Kyle on the scale. He weighs 40.4 pounds. I know they are twins and all, but the exact same weight??? It just seems remarkable.
For an explanation of why we still allow Owen to use a pacifier, click here
Owen continues to be completely 100% unselfconscious of being 3+ years old and still using a pacifier. At this point he has only 2 left (all others have gotten lost, broken, or just disappeared over time). The 2 he has left are very old and don't even work very well anymore, but as much as we're willing to let this paci thing continue we aren't going to actively support the habit by actually buying him any new ones. He only uses the paci when he sleeps at night. But just recently we've noticed that Owen might be finally showing signs of starting to give up the paci even for that. For the past couple of weeks we've seen that he'll suck like crazy on his paci as he's drifting into sleep, but by the time we check in on him before we go to bed his paci is long dropped out of his mouth, he's sucking his thumb (so now we have two thumb suckers!), and he seems to sleep the rest of the night without the pacifier. Since he seems to be showing signs of letting go of the paci, yesterday we decided that we should start helping him officially move in that direction. So, last night, unbenounced to him, after Owen fell asleep, we found his paci in his bed and put it on his bedside table, out of his reach. All was good and the night was peaceful. ...Then... very early this morning we're all sleeping soundly and the house is silent and pitch dark. Completely out of the blue I jolt upright in bed to Owen's voice -- saying very calmly and very clearly and very loudly (not yelling or shouting, but definitely loud enough to hear throughout the house): "Excuse me?! Excuse me mommy and papi?! Excuse me?!" Braydon bolted into his room trying to get there before Owen woke up his brother. As soon as Braydon opened the door to Owen's room I hear: "Excuse me papi?! Can you please help me find my paci?!"
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Quote of the Day
for prior posts in this vein click here
Over the past week or so Braydon and I have had a series of encounters with overt racism. Of course we encounter various forms of racism regularly. Nevertheless, that doesn't make it easy. It is horrifying. Racism has always been something that has horrified me. But it takes on a new level of horror when you're raising black children. I remember talking about this once with a black friend of mine. He told me that racism had always been the dark side of life for him, but when he became a father racism was suddenly in "all caps" (racism became RACISM). Not being black myself, I surely don't even know the half of it. But I'll go out on a limb and say that as a mother, racism is no longer racism... it is RACISM. It screams out at me. It shakes me at the core. It sends me into that crazed-hyper-protective-mother-bear-mode that makes it hard to sleep at night. I hate it. "How can I protect them?" I keep asking myself. And the answer just pounds back every time, slamming me into its wall: "I can't protect them." It feels like an inescapable disease that I can't keep at bay from my babies' tiny lungs -- no matter what I do, they will breathe that air, that sickness will flow in, I cannot keep them from catching it. I think of that After School Special I saw in 4th grade-- 'The Boy in the Bubble.' Surely there is some sort of hygienic protective place where I could hide them so they don't have to be exposed to this? But no, there is not. No such place exists. So, here we are. Trying to live our lives amidst this. We do our best to cope, to let it roll off us whenever possible, to get up and keep going. The looks and stares and inappropriate questions/comments/statements are manageable. But when you take a few heavy hits right in a row, it is hard to not feel weighted down by it.
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(for back story to this post click here and read the comments)
Your Top Ten Favorite Posts from Our First Year in the Blogosphere:
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Top Ten
Sunday we did our favorite day trip ~~ New Hope, PA. We love New Hope any time of year, but fall is probably our favorite time to spend a day there. Lunch on the patio at the Logan Inn (bloody mary's & crabcakes for H & B; chocolate milk, french fries, & turkey orzo soup for K & O). Feeding the ducks at the river. Strolling the town. Ice cream cones. Watching the train. Checking out the motorcycles. Cafe au lait & almont croissants at The French Bakery. Time for tickles. A gorgeous, fun-filled day in New Hope for the four of us.
Saturday was our Second Annual Fall Farm Day with The Uhrigs! Alstede Farms, Chester NJ. Hay ride. Hay Mountain. Hay Tunnel. Pony rides. Pumkin Picking. Apple Tree Climbing. Apple Cider & Apple Cider Donuts. A beautiful day on the farm shared with some great friends!
October 11, 2007 marks the One Year Anniversary of the Johnson-McCormick Blog. Rather than try to do a retrospective of our past year in the blogosphere we decided to take the plunge and do our first blog 'slide show' ~~ not of the past year, but rather of the year-and-a-half of our lives before we started blogging. Our blog has turned out to be so much more than we ever had imagined when we began it. And our only blog-related regret is that we did not start our blog sooner. Alas, we were waaaay tooooo tired to blog then -- the boys were not easy in the beginning. Not that they are 'easy' now, but they are so very much easier with each passing month. I do wish I had a better record of the early days of our family... not just for our own sakes, but also for the sake of our readers-- so many of whom have had questions about the earlier stages (and our memories of that time are so often hazy that we can't answer those questions with much detail). So, the slide show above is a compilation of photos from our Referral Photo through the Last Photo Before We Started This Blog. We are happy to share these photos with you, and we are happy to share what we do of our life with you through this blog. Most of all, though, we are humbled that you care to look, read, check in, think, and care about us via our blog. Happy Blogiversary to all of our Johnson-McCormick Family Blog readers!!
Kyle (in blue) with his baby Donald,
About a year ago Braydon and I started purposely blocking off a whole Saturday or Sunday on our calendars, every 6 weeks or so, to do absolutely nothing but chill out at home with our little family foursome. This summer we made a decision to expand on this by blocking off a whole weekend about every six weeks. We call these "Family Weekends." For us it is a way to re-charge, re-group, re-bond, rejuvenate. For us -- all four of us -- it really seems to work. We have found that it works best if we actually go away (preferably overnight). But we can make do at home too. Requirements of our Family Weekends are as follows:
This past weekend was a Family Weekend. We decided to stay put at home. It was good. Highlights were
We never left a 10-mile radius of our house, but it was a great Family Weekend nonetheless. See photos below (as always, you can click on any photo to expand).
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The highlight of the weekend, for Braydon and I, was toward the end of our Traugers Farm visit. The boys were calming down a bit from all the excitement and were drinking lemonades. Kyle was wandering around checking out the mums and gourdes. Owen spotted The Farmer (like the head honcho, owner/manager/boss man of this very large operating farm) sitting alone at a large picnic table taking a break and quietly watching the locals and tourists alike swarming his farm. The boys and I had met this man once before -- this summer. It was a hot summer day and we had stopped at Traugers to buy corn. We were the only ones there. The Farmer was teaching a young man how to use the pea-shucking machine. He was clearly busy, but he invited Kyle and Owen to come over and watch. And as they watched he took handfuls of freshly shucked peas and gave them to K & O to eat. The boys loved the peas, of course, and the boys were enamored with The Farmer, of course. The Farmer seems subtly taken with K & O--- a quiet, reserved man of few words... but he ended up giving me my dozen ears of corn for free and telling me to "bring the boys back to see him soon." We've been back before but haven't seen The Farmer again, until Sunday. So... toward the end our Traugers Trip Owen spots him at a large picnic table. Owen proceeded to quietly and calmly make his way to the table, and sit down with The Farmer. The two of them sat there together, taking it all in, just a few quiet words exchanged between them every now and then, for a good 10-15 minutes (a very long time for Owen to sit so still). Eventually Owen was off and running again. The Farmer asked us about the boys -- where they were from, etc. We chatted for a bit. Then it was time to go. Completely unprompted, Kyle ran to The Farmer, climbed up in his lap, and gave him a huge hug and kiss. The Farmer took it in stride, hugging Kyle back. Then he gave Owen a big high five and an even bigger smile. As we were about to leave, The Farmer told Braydon and I that when the boys are old enough he'd like for them to come work on his farm with him. He was entirely serious. He was smitten with them. And the boys with him. It was one of the sweet, sweet moments of this Family Weekend.
Kyle's First Crash!
Owen lovin' the water bottle!
