Google Video is closing its doors to new videos, obviously intending people to migrate to their recent purchase of YouTube. YouTube has its pros and cons, and I do have an account, but I’ve decided I’m going to move over to Vimeo. The quality is higher, and it generally services a different (less juvenile) kind of users.
It’ll be a long while before I get all the pages on the site updated with new embeds, but until then, you can see our library of videos, and watch our kids growing up, at:
http://vimeo.com/jonandnic/videos

If this video doesn’t turn you into mush, you’d better visit your doctor and make sure your heart is still beating…
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2838586&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=d8d8d8&fullscreen=1
Nic was making lunch, Ben was watching TV and Abi was fussing in her high chair (I was at work in the basement, and came up just as it was happening.) Suddenly Abi was quiet, so Nic turned around to make sure she was OK, and found that Ben had pushed a chair over, climbed up on it, moved Abi’s food and was spooning it into her mouth — much to her delight! It was incredible!
Now, if we could only train him to change her diapers…

I apologize for the temporary geek-out interruption, but have you seen this thing?! This year’s MacWorld was a yawner. Palm, on the other hand, just blew everyone’s socks off.
A long, long time ago, Palm used to be this uber-cool company putting out fantastic, simple and elegant little gadgets… right up until the Treo line fell from grace, and it seemed that they’d never get anything right again.
Enter the Palm Pre, and geeks and nerds everywhere are salivating again. This thing will give the iPhone a run for its money — and its platform is based on web technologies! Way to go Palm!

The army crawl is long gone. Abi now does a full-speed, zooming-across-the-house crawl. She can also pull herself up to standing, and then get herself back down when she’s done (usually). Here’s a little video we caught of her in the kitchen, and there’s some new pics in the sidebar…
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=8814546839438542961&hl=en&fs=true

One of our favourite features of our new house — one that might strike other people as unusual — is that there’s a hill in our backyard. Its sort of an odd slope, and certainly makes lawn maintenance a challenge, but when I saw it, I immediately thought: sledding in the winter, slip-and-side in the summer!
Yesterday, Ben and I got all our winter gear on, and stomped out into the snow, and across our backyard to do a little sledding. Our hill is perfect — just the right height so that you can get some good speed up, but not so high as to be scary. We had a blast!
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-2573023490029619282&hl=en&fs=true

This morning I had to run into town for a breakfast meeting, and I awoke early to a fresh, soggy dumping of snow on the ground. The trip in was slow and terrifying, and there were a few points where I didn’t think I’d make it..
Going into town you go down a hill, and then have to climb back up it. Our little car, with its lousy summer tires (that we really can’t afford to replace with winter tires for the one year we’ll be driving it) barely made it. The steering wheel was pointed left, while the car was drifting right, catching purchase on the pavement with just enough frequency to correct course and make a little progress up the hill.
On the way home, I decided on a different, hopefully better-traveled route, and headed out of town toward the main highway. After about 20 minutes of even worse driving conditions than earlier in the day, I’d begun to second-guess that decision. I finally pulled onto the on-ramp, noticing for the first time how treacherous it was — its one of those ones built on an embankment, with a wicked curve to it.
As I rounded the terrifyingly slippery ramp onto the highway, this is what I saw:

They appeared to me, then, like heavily-armored guardian angels, charging shoulder to shoulder, on a mission from heaven to push back the howling forces of hell who, today, had taken the form of slush and thick wet snow. I settled in behind a salt-truck and felt every muscle in my body unclench as I relaxed for a slow-moving, but wonderfully safe trip down the highway, thanking God for snow plows, and the guys that sacrifice their good night’s sleep to pilot them…

For dinner tonite, Nic made pork chops. Supper times are hit-or-miss with Benjamin lately. While he’ll eat every bite of his lunch, supper (or, for you New Yorkers, “dinner”) is often a battle — unless we have rice. He’d eat rice until his little belly popped.
At any rate, tonite was a good night for Benjamin and his supper. He ate a good portion of his vegetables, most of his potatoes, and all his pork. But although his eating was satisfactory, his behaviour was a little puzzling…
He’d carefully skewer each piece of pork with his fork, often picking up the meat with one hand and the fork with the other hand, connecting them so he could eat them properly. Then he’d put the pork in his mouth, and turn to Nic with the most serious, most thoughtful look on his face, and, with his mouth still full, say:
Msshw futh loosh neow?
He said this exactly the same with every single bite of his pork, with all the intensity of a University prof employing the Socratic method on his slowest student. We have no idea what he was trying to say — and Nic can usually figure out his more obscure interpretations of the English language. It got to the point where we had to decide if it was spooky or hilarious. We settled on hilarious and laughed at him with each bite for the rest of the meal.

Well the Christmas break was full of all the usual family visits, making sure we saw as much of our two clans as possible, in the little bit of time we had. The kids got nicely spoiled, and Nic and I made out alright ourselves.
But on top of the festivities, I took some of my time-off to work on my long term To Do list that I have on a white board behind my desk.

Before
If you’ve visited our house, you probably couldn’t miss the giant gaping hole in the wall where our TV sits. The previous owner, who is not quite as handy as he thinks he is, had built a TV cabinet into the wall, sized especially for his massive, old-school projo TV. Our TV is considerably better, but looked rather silly stuck in that hole. Unfortunately, the basement is literally built around the cabinet, so ripping it out with less than complete caution would probably bring the house down on top of me.
So I eventually decided to renovate it to fit my needs better. When I got a gift card to Home Depot for Christmas, I promptly went out and bought a jigsaw and started cutting. In the past week, or so, I’ve nearly finished my plan, building a shelf for the TV, and adding a back to the main cabinet.

During

After
I personally think it looks a million times better, although the final phase isn’t done yet. Rather than have the TV sitting on the shelf, I’ve ordered an articulating wall-mount arm, so that the TV will float in the cabinet, and can be pulled out and pointed in any direction. To that, I’ll add some blue rope lights so that (hopefully) there’ll be a subtle electric blue glow coming from behind the TV whenever its on…
But we didn’t stop with the TV cabinet (which has only just stopped reeking of wood finish.)

• Nic’s parent’s bought Benjamin bunk beds for his room, so on Saturday we had a little birthday part for him and built his new big boy bed, graduating Abigail to the convertible crib that can be changed into a small bed when she’s ready.

• With some of the Christmas money my parents sent us, we took a trip to Ikea and finally started decorating the living room. We got some really nice shelves and bookcases, and I have one small project left to build a picture frame for an African mural some friends gave us, that should pull that room together nicely — at least until the kids are a little older and its primary use is no longer for storing pastel colored toys, watching cartoons on Treehouse, and serving as a secondary dining room.

I feel like I’ve been building furniture for months, but its worth it. Once again, there’s this pride of… ownership, or… power over your own house. Having wrestled it into what you want it, with your own hands (and power tools) makes it feel that much more like home.