NSJ

We spent New Years in CO with the ever-gracious Sladden family. “Baby Elsie” has now become part of Nio’s everyday vernacular, as in, “way-er is baby Elsie?” or, “weev GOT TO save baby Elsie.” The second phrase is strongly influenced by Go Diego, Go, in which all dialog is said as if it is followed by several exclamation points. The best way to describe it is that everything seems to be an enthusiastic-emergency-opportunity-adventure.

The trip is well described and photographed by Mand.

When the “two” in Niko really shows, I like to sing him a song. It doesn’t improve his behavior, but it makes me feel better.

My name is Nicholas
I am two years old
This is mine
I want
No, no, NOOOO!
I can’t, I won’t
I neeeeeeeeeed it
I DON’T want
This is mine
No, no, NOOOO!

Given it is halfway through February I should probably get a Christmas post out…

Unlike last year, Niko definitely gets the concepts of presents (“pwesents”), but it is more about the act of opening the pwesent (and destroying the wrapping), and less about the actual gift. In retrospect we should have wrapped empty boxes. The best gift we got Niko was a trampoline. People would look at you funny if you got your two year old a treadmill. But getting them the functional equivalent in the form of a tramp seems socially acceptable and serves the same purpose. I highly recommend it if your child happens to be, errr, “high energy” like ours.

Niko is terrified of Santa Claus, which I chalk up to good survival skills. Being afraid of a old man that wants you to sit on his lap, gives you presents, and eats your cookies, is just good sense.

More…

Part two of the wine saga involved taking the mash from part one, putting it through a press, and then into an oak barrel. This happened shortly after part one and I forgot to blog about it. The tannins from an oak barrel are important to making a wine that lasts a long time. (Grenache is not the best choice for a long lasting wine, but it was the only high-end grape available in the fall when Niko was born.) Oak barrels only leach tannins for a couple uses. Rather than having to buy new (expensive) barrels every couple years, it is more economical to add long strips of oak to the barrel. These are aptly named “barrel replicators.” Typically Sam only keeps the replicators in the barrel for part of the cycle in order to boost the tannins but we left them in for the entire time the wine was in the barrel.

Part three, completed on a recent weekend, involved bottling the wine. This was much simpler than I expected. We pumped the wine out of the barrel into a container which fed a bottle filler. Once the bottle was filled, we corked and boxed them. The next step is trying to figure out how to get six cases of wine from CA to CT.

In my attempts to catch up here are more photos from Thanksgiving in MI. We got to see T and Erica while we were back and play in the backyard before the snow.

Here is a “pug yule log” video to help you celebrate the holidays. We find the pug snoring is a great addition to the standard yule log video.

Thanksgiving in Michigan brought our California boy his first snow. The verdict? He hated it. He just kept saying, “We have to clean it up.” (I’m hoping to leverage this sentiment to get him to shovel the driveway.) You would think living for so long without winter would mean he was unprepared to handle the cold, but the cold itself doesn’t seem to bother him much. It is really the stuff. He is not a big fan of hats, gloves, jackets, boots, or any additional clothing beyond the basics. 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving brought us back to Ann Arbor via an wonderfully short 1.5 hour flight. This was in contrast the typical epic cross country journey from CA. Talk about a cake walk. I guess moving to the winter does have its advantages. Best part of the trip is Niko and Andrew got to catch up with Great Grandma.

Unsafe? Yes. Fun? Absolutely.