Going On Holiday

Team Johnson is going on holiday. The timing could not be beter. I'm a bit fatigued and will use the break to re-energize. As such, Little Man is going on hiatus. Check back in early April after we return from our trip!

For All The Mommies Out There...

We leave for an overseas trip in less than two weeks. Little Man will not be accompanying us. The first extended trip without Gilbert, Kristen is dealing with all the emotional challenges (I'll miss him too, of course!), but has a paticular sense of dread about us leaving Gilbert.

Would love to hear from the audience about their stories and how they dealt with the flood of emotions!

Bring On Daylight Savings Time

Gilbert has been waking up pre-5am lately. Yes, in the 4am hour. Totally unacceptable. We leave him in his room. Crying, yelling, or reading it doesn't matter. He does not go back to sleep. Ugh. As a result, he can be moody in the morning. And the kicker is he's not tired at night. Still goes to bed at 7am'ish.

I blame Daylight Savings Time. When we 'fell back' he was sleeping until 6am or so. After the switch, it was the current scenario. Kristen and I are counting the days until we 'spring ahead' and get an hour of life back!

Snowballs

After the wildlife experience, we played in the snow. Wet and slushy, the snow was ideal for making, well, SNOWBALLS! Gilbert seemed content to just stand and recconoiter his surroundings.

Getting Close With Urban Wildlife

A short look behind the curtain. I love zombie movies. During our Suburban Experiment I was fixated on total world chaos and used that as a litmus test to determine if we would survive. We failed miserably. So I set out to create a "When All Hell Breaks Loose" kit. It was a sealable Tupperware bin that ended up contains cold weather clothes, blankets, food stuffs, first aid, glow sticks, duct tape, flashlight, rope (you know, to tether the zombies for scientific experiments), water bottles, tool kit, NOA something radio and more. I was quite proud of my achievement. Even made a smaller version for the car.


Back in the city, I stashed the kit in the basement. Well, with all the painting taking place in the condo, I used this time as an opportunity to clean and rearrange our basement storage locker. Out came the kit. Much of the stuff is not needed now as it is in our tiny condo space. Not to mention the foodstuff is not longer, er, food. One item, peanuts was included.



So, we decided to take the peanuts to the park and introduce Gilbert to feeding the geese, ducks, seagulls, etc. What fun!


Gilbert and Kristen hung back while I went down and started to throw the peanuts. First to arrive were the city vultures - seagulls. Then the ducks, and lastly the geese. Geese know no bounds and were quickly up in my grill. Kristen was nervous they would attack Little Man so I had to pick up.


Gilbert loved throwing the peanuts. This was part of the problem. Traveling only a few feet, the geese had to come up close to get the food, thus bring the birds closer to Little Man.

Explain This To Me

Chicago (perhaps Illinois?) schools are closed today celebrating the life of one Mr. Casmir Pulaski. As such, Gilbert is home and so am I. Actually, Little Man and Kristen are going to MI to see grandparents (part of the prep for Dubai). With an empty home, I taking advantage of the quiet time to paint the master bedroom the new color Kristen selected.

I'm moving around furniture and need to understand the following...

We have a wine refrigerator and being the creative sort, velcroed small wood blocks on top and then put a round table top on that draped to convey the presence of an end table. And the resident interior designer has a nice vignette on top (definitely not my handywork!).

I took this apart so I could move the wine refrigerator. When I took off the table top, I found a thick layer of dust on top of it! How is possible? The entire thing was draped with a tablecloth (that easily touches the floor!) underneath that a 30" round table top. So the 'Dust' somehow permeated through the tablecloth and miraculously was able to circulate around and then under the tabletop before settling on the wine frig? C'mon! That just doesn't make sense to me!