Straws!

Logan has finally figured out the physics of a straw! Score! No more Joker lips when drinking Daddy's fruit punch! Notice the difference it today, and in September. A much cleaner face - not necessarily a cleaner boy.

Ghetto boy

Apparently, we are raising ghetto baby. Logan has no butt, so unless he's wearing cloth diapers, his pants fall down, and he hasn't quite learned to pull up his pants. So here he is, showing off his Elmos. Stylin', huh?

Handiman Jr.

Logan is becoming Handiman Jr. The other day, he was carrying around Shane's Craftsman screwdriver and was screwing everything in sight (okay, my mind's in the gutter, because I can't stop laughing about this - Shane says "That's just messed up, hon.").



He got the little screwdriver into the small hole on the metal plate that goes over the door. Pretty impressive! Then he was turning the screwdriver. Too bad I didn't put the screw in there (it's the one out of the 4 I lost).

Got the munchies?

I guess when you eat dinner at 4 or 4:30 pm, you get the munchies around 7pm. Or at least that's the case with my boys.

Shane decided he was hungry, and thought some kettle korn would hit the spot. So, I gave him a bowl full - and Logan helped him eat it. Seriously, little man was helping himself to Daddy's popcorn. Hand in the bowl, shoveling it in his mouth. He did stop once to take a drink of milk. I had to make another bag of popcorn, because Logan was still hungry! He must really like popcorn, as he didn't share it with the puppies (and it's one of their favorite snacks).

Gram and Bapa's Visit - and the Marathon

Gram and Bapa came down this past weekend. Bapa came down to run the half marathon on Sunday. I was originally signed up to run with him, but the doctor nixed that when he figured I'd be over 6 months pregnant. Oh, well, maybe next year - or the following.

Anyway, Logan, now the walking machine (it's hilarious how he giggles when he walks, he's just so tickled that he can be self-propelled), loves to take people's fingers and have them walk with him. He's not very discriminatory - he grabbed both Gram and Bapa's fingers and pulled them along after him.

Logan also enjoyed playing with the three dogs.

On Sunday morning, we woke up before the dawn was even thinking about cracking and went into Houston for the half marathon. Logan didn't fall asleep until we were on our way home around 9:30ish. Amazing, since he'd been up since 5am.

It was a gorgeous day in Houston - dry, in the upper 50's (later in the day it was upper 70's) and so beautifully clear. One of those days that you love living in the Houston area. A great day for a run.

We got to see some cool people run the race. There was a blind military guy who ran the half along with his guide. There was also a Marine who had his legs blown off in Iraq who wheeled himself through the half. I'd read his story in the newspaper, and there he was. I would have asked for his autograph, but that would have been a little weird.

Logan got really excited at the end of the race. With everyone cheering for the runners as they crossed the line, he started screaming. His little mouth was grinning and he was yelling at the top of his lungs. Hilarious. There were a lot of people to cheer for too - think Bapa said there were 11,000 people in the half marathon (the majority were women - and from what I saw, they come in all shapes and sizes). Crazy numbers!

Next year, Gram and I are planning to do the 5k with both kiddos and the following year, I hope to do the half with Bapa. We'll see how this all works out. I figure next year I'll need to run to keep my sanity (as they say in Monty Python "Run away! Run away!"). Heehee.

Thanks for coming Gram and Bapa! We had a great time!

Shane - handy in so many ways!

My sweet husband is so handy. He's not only great at fixing cars, doing plumbing (btw, the guest bathroom sink is leaking), making shelves, but he's pretty darn good at figuring out computers. Yes, I know, I'm the engineer who had to take a programming class in college, and I'm the one who keeps talking about changing our operating system to Linux (it doesn't crash like Windows).

But SHANE is the one who actually programs.

We just got a DNS-323, which is basically a file server. It has two terrabyte harddrives in it, one for the files and the second as a backup. Well, the DNS could easily have been made into a RAID where it would mirror on the second harddrive that you have on the first. Of course, if you accidentally delete something or have a corrupted file, all of that would be saved on the backup. That's not good.

So we decided that we wanted to make it a backup. That means that someone had to get into the DNS and write a short program to make it run a backup. That someone was Shane, and he had to program in Linux, something he'd never done before. But he figured it out (thanks to the web), plus, our neighbor, Phil works for a NASA contractor. NASA uses UNIX, the big brother of Linux (yeah, can you see running Windows, "oh sorry guys, stop the countdown, all our computers just crashed"). So she brought home some BIG books for him to take a look at. He's such a geek, he took them to work. I have a picture of him with black airplane grease all over him, reading a Linux book. Cute!

Anyway, I'm so thankful that he figured it out, because otherwise, I was going to have to figure out the syntax and program! I love programming, but seriously, when do I have time between dinner, chasing Little Man, cleaning, walking the dogs, and trying to fit some sleep in there? Thank goodness for a wonderful husband!!

Traveling Man

Well, here is Logan in all his walking glory! He is very good at multitasking - he can walk, chase Daddy, laugh, and play his fridge DJ all at once! What an amazing little guy!

Movin' man

Well, Logan can officially walk!! Yay! Or maybe I should be scared, very scared.

Anyway, he started walking across the room and the back porch this week Tuesday. He also still really likes to hold on to things and move them while he walks. Yesterday, it was one of our big dining room chairs that got pushed into the kitchen (good thing we have tile and not wood floors). But the other day, it was one of our barstools.

I'm going to try to get a video of him actually walking on his own. He's really cute - his arms are bent at the elbows and his hands are close to his shoulders. And with the way that he walks from his hips and doesn't really bend his knees, he sort of looks like a duck. (Which by the by, is one of his favorite words right now. He like "duck", "bird", and "Bug". Zoe is now "Bug" as well. Whatever!)

My pretty flowers

It has been unseasonably warm (probably why both Logan and I have ueber snotty noses), the other day it was over 80F with about 94% humidity. I love Houston - we went for a walk with the dogs, the pavement looked like it had just rained and I was sweating in a t-shirt. Did I mention that it's JANUARY??

Anyway, apparently our azaleas are mixed up too. They think it's spring. Isn't it pretty though? The almanda (the bush behind it) is not mixed up, but then, I think it's a Mexican transplant, so it waits until the ground gets nice and warm to do anything.

Inside, our Christmas cacti just bloomed. Guess they were in time for the Magi's visit, not exactly Jesus' birthday. Here's the white one - I didn't take a picture of the pink one. Isn't it beautiful?

Speedracer!

Logan really likes the shopping carts at Home Depot and Lowes. They're little race cars, with two steering wheels. The other day, at Home Depot, he was driving both steering wheels at once. He's ambidextrous, what can I say?

Anyway, here he is in all his racing glory (with his pit-crew, aka Daddy):

The CRV is fixed - I think...

After the "check engine" light came on in early December, the CRV (or "serve" as we affectionately call it) is fixed! Happy days!

My sweet (and somewhat cheap) husband wanted to do all the work himself. So after getting the CRV's palm read at AutoZone and consulting with Khris Norwood who has a friend that works at Honda, it was decided that the issue was the catalytic converter. Shane finally had time this past weekend to work on it, and Khris was so nice to help.

Khris actually did all the welding on it (the one made for the CRV is bolted in, but Shane figured with 155K miles on the car the catalytic converter would need to be cut out, so he got the inline that is welded in). Anyway, on Sunday evening we went over to the Norwoods' house, and Shane and Khris worked on the CRV. I got to visit and catch up with Shelby, which was super fun. What sweet friends we have! They go out of their way to help us!

Once the catalytic converter was fixed (and the muffler), Shane changed the front rotors on the car (the brakes were squeaking a little, but the brakes were fine, and there were grooves in the rotors). Logan tried to help Daddy when Shane was taking off the tire, but kept putting the nuts in his mouth. Yuck!

Thank you, Shane, for being such a wonderful handyman!! Thanks Pops for always being on-call. And thank you so much, Khris, for doing a lot of the work on the CRV!

I also like peanut butter...

Logan is definitely related to both his parents (well, I should hope so). He LOVES peanut butter. We gave him a banana at dinner, and he wasn't too interested. Then Shane put some peanut butter on it to give him some protein. Yeah, Logan started biting off the peanut butter!

By then end, there was a face only a mother could love...because Daddy passed Logan off saying, "he's your kid - look at that face".

Mikans are YUM!

This morning, while I was making breakfast, Logan sat on the counter. The thing that kept him there, a "ball" or a mikan, the small easy-to-peel oranges. He bit off part of the peel and then went to town on the mikan itself, sucking out as much of the juice he could.

Oranges and other citrus fruit (like Texas grapefruit), give him really bad diaper rash, but he LOVES them!

Happy 2009!

In true exciting Flachman form, we had a blow out last night. Shane went to work, Logan went to sleep at 7pm, and I went to bed at 10:15pm. Yup, we're super partee animals. Of course, a few text messages and the fireworks outside woke me up just past midnight. I was woken up again by Zoe barking her little head off as Shane came through the door at 2am. Logan slept through it all - dogs barking and fireworks included, but woke up when he lost his Nukky. Priorities!

We wanted to wish everyone a very happy and healthy 2009! We're looking forward to the year God has planned for us!