Mobile Joey

This is Josephine (aka Josie, Jo-Jo, Joey, Mini-Me, Princess Crappa-Lotta).

She's a professionally-trained heart melter.

We can't figure out how something that looks so much like her father could be so compassionate, happy and toothless.

Okay, maybe the toothless part makes sense.

Anyway, Joey is nearly one year old.

Jo-Jo can sleep on command.

Ever since she was seven weeks old, she's skipped meals just to fall (or stay) asleep.

Here she is this past weekend after "borrowing" Caroline's blanket. She rolled over in the middle of the family room floor, put the Hoffman sedative (her thumb) in her mouth and proceeded to snore away her Saturday.

I am jealous. When I try this at work, no one thinks it is cute.

Here's some live action Josie footage. She is now completely mobile, quick and dangerous.

Surprisingly, her mobility has helped expand her ever-changing diet. We didn't see that one coming. Today she managed to discover the joys of low-grade edible meat (aka Iams dog food). According to a nearly wretching mommy, Joey apparently slammed several pieces of dog food in her mouth before being discovered doubling as our newest house pet.

And I thought Bear Grylls ate weird food. Who knew?

But seriously, could you be mad at this sweet little girl?

February 14th: Valentine's Day Catch-Up

Nearly two months and 40+ inches of snow later, we're finally ready to play some much-needed catch-up.


It's Valentine's Day so I'm dedicating this blog post to the beautiful woman on my right.


That's Erica. We've been dating/married since September 5, 1992. That's 6,006 days and counting.




Erica is a Sagittarius, whatever that means.

I think it has something to do with a half-man, half-horse looking dude. You know what they say about half-man, half-horse dudes? Big noses and lots of flies, right?

Anyway, whatever a Sagittarius is, it makes her a happy goof.

She laughs at my jokes. She also likes to dance and lip-sync to Jenny Lewis songs. She does a mean "Robot" dance and a wicked Hula-Hoop.



Erica likes ice cream at midnight and making sure that I never EVER do the house laundry.

Apparently, I do not know how to fold clothes. I also launder whites, darks, satins, towels and American flags in one load.

I'm worried about Lake Erie.

Erica used to be faster than me when we would sprint race each other, so I got her pregnant three times in order to slow her down.

I am now faster than she is.



This is our family. From left to right: Dad, Caroline, Erica, Josephine, Henry and 3/4ths of Madelyn Holman (my niece).

The best part of our kids is the wonderful sampling of Erica in each one.

Caroline is mini-Erica. Henry has Erica's agility and athleticism (I can still run faster than him, though). Josephine has Erica's heart-melting compassion and the Hoffman thumb comforter.


Don't worry about me, though. Each of the kids have giant heads. That's my contribution.


I love Erica. This is our 16th Valentine's Day and while they probably aren't as laughingly awkward as they used to be when we were teenagers, we're still enjoying all of the moments year after year.

To our blog audience, please commence with a collective "Awww."


P.S. I'm still faster than Erica.

Wii Wish You a Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays to all citizens of Poogieville! Bear with me on a longer than usual post of photos and video.

Here's a quick recap of the last week, or so.

Erica was so proud of the girls' matching Christmas dresses that I wanted to make sure they got top billing in the Christmas recap.

We had the Rickons over for a pre-Christmas Amateur Hour. Henry (aka "December-Man") and Mason (aka the "Mountain Dew Sipper") warmed up the crowd. Caroline played the drums.

This is a little grainy, but prime footage of the show. Henry turned "Jingle Bells" into an intense dance hit. Caroline and Mason contributed backup vocals. I did most of the laughing.

On Christmas Eve, the kids made cookies for Santa. Caroline was the taste-tester, which was good. She sneezed on a few of her cookie creations and I was worried that Santa might take offense to "green" sprinkles.

She ate them anyway.

Did I mention she's tough?

Henry, on the otherhand, was ultra-clean with his cookie creations. In fact, I'm not even sure he ate his. His aversion to all things outside of the Henry Pyramid is amazing. For those that don't know, Henry's Pyramid consists of hotdogs, popcorn, Kraft mac and cheese, watermelon, Swedish Fish, cheese quesadillas, and baked beans.

Everything else is just a table setting.

Henry will be funny in his fat years.

What about Jo-Jo? Well, she's perfecting a bizarre-looking tripod soldier crawl. We captured her here before she opened the Hoffman Christmas gifts. Apparently, something they're getting caught her fancy.

Here's Joey and her cousin, Calle.


It was fascinating watching the two of them trade toys at Uncle Bob's Annual Christmas Eve bash. Baby communication among babies is hours of entertainment.




After the party, we arrived just in time to spread magic reindeer dust on the front yard.



Here's Henry doing his handy work with the dust.

After dusting the lawn, we sat for Daddy's renditions of T'was the Night Before Christmas and the Polar Express. Caroline took over for me half way through the former. I liked her version better.

Caroline was a little creeped out by Santa, though. I gauged her fear of the creepiness on the following unscientific Creepy Santa scale:

Funny creepy.

Hilarious creepy.

CREEPY!

Caroline was stuck at funny creepy. Hopefully, next year we'll be off the creepy scale and she'll be able to make her Aunt Kimmy proud and add to the Santa lap photo collection. Four is a good age for that, right?

Well, I'm going to go back to leading the Browns on their first NFL championship journey since 1964. That's what you do when the reality is too much to bear.

Mommy and the kids left daddy alone with a new Wii, a fridge stocked with beer and appetizers and nowhere to go until Monday.

And so I say, Happy Christmas to all and to all a good Wii.

Good night now.

The Prelude to Christmas

We start the Tour de Holiday Poogie with the above-picture of Josie meeting the Rip Taylor version of Santa Claus. Welcome to the flamboyant side of Christmas, Joey. Hopefully you won't confuse the center square with the North Pole.

Where's Uncle Bob when you need him?

The Crew helped Mommy and Daddy put the Christmas tree up and arrange the stockings. We're still trying to figure out what crude words you can spell out of R, H, C, E, and J.

I think we're cool unless there's a Croatian curse word that I'm missing. Right?

This one is simply entitled "4-12".

Poor kid.

Caroline was determined to place her ornaments at either 18 inch heights or the Daddy-assisted, top of the tree. Caroline's tree decorating is visually spectacular when viewed from a ceiling camera or lying prone on the floor. We fixed it, though.



And what would a Poogie post be without me ruining another sweet, color-coordinated Mommy/Daddy picture. They say my eyes are going to stay that way if I keep crossing them.

That's just funny.

Bienvenidos, Amigos!

Curiously, our site has been visited over 100 times by someone or some people from Madrid, Spain. I have completely neglected to recognize this amazing feat. In honor of our new (and as yet unknown) friends in Madrid, I think it is long overdue to formally welcome them to Poogieville and ask that they be gentle and kind as they plot to infect our computers with unknown viruses and other maladies we have yet to uncover.

I like Spain. In fact, I am going to honor my new amigos by eating at a Spanish restaurant this weekend.

I shall raise a glass of sangria (not even sure that's really Spanish) to each of you who find my family entertaining. Thanks for letting us enrich your lives with our lives.

Me temo que de usted.

Please don't kill us. (Wink)

BLOG UPDATE: The Poogie Crew is now officially bigger in Spain than North America. Yesterday, we went "Lizard King" and broke on through to the other side. Our amigos in Madrid, Spain have now visited the site more often than our own family in the States.

Madrid = 117 hits
North America = 105 hits
Australia (courtesy of our Sam Wiggle love-fest) = 2 hits

Apparently, the hat tip didn't scare off those crazy Spanish bastards.

I give us three months to live.