It may have gone un-noticed, but Brendan updated our entire site to the newest, shiniest version of Joomla. Personally, my favorite part was when he stayed up late working on a small database thing and not quite figuring it out and when we woke up in the morning, I took care of it in about 15 minutes. It was however, but one small piece of the update. I don't want to minimize it, he worked hard and it looks great and should be easier to use (though it will take a bit of getting used to on my part). 

Yay Brendan!

In other news, Johnny has been spelling his name verbally for a while now but lately he's taken to rummaging through his magnetic letters and pulling out the ones he wants. He had been getting the letters right, but not in the right order, until this week. When he did the above the other day, he came running up to Brendan and I in the other room and exclaimed "I spelled my name all by myself!" We were all very proud. 

We have been pretty darn busy over the past month. 

We took the kids to see The Muppets just after Thanksgiving. Bridget really loved it (and so did Brendan and I), and now we're watching The Muppet Show! thanks to Netflix. Johnny would have made it through the whole movie quite nicely had the previews not gone on so long. He loved Ms. Piggy and her karate chops. 

We went to a fancy holiday party at the National American History Museum. It was pretty awesome. Saw the Jefferson Bible and Brendan totally geeked out. The next morning we were (some of us more than others) reminded that we are not in our 20s anymore.

We did a little bit of decorating, but not too much until...

The basement got finished! Brendan and I put in a lot of time putting up walls (him) and painting and painting (mostly me, but also him) and getting trim up (him). And still more painting. Carpet was ordered and installed just in time...

.. for the MuskoX-mas celebration at our house. And though I mis-read the directions on how long the ham would take to heat up, it was still very successful. 

Now we just have some final preparations for Christmas. I think our artificial tree looks pretty darn good. 

I must have a dozen photos of Johnny in these glasses - his "goo-goo goggles". He wears them like such an old lady that it cracks me up every single time.

He's getting to have quite a vocabulary. Bren swears that the other night that when he was putting Johnny to bed and couldn't figure out what song he wanted him to sing, Johnny just put his hands on his face, put his head down and said what sounded an awful like "nevermind" with a big sigh. 

The kid never fails to make me laugh.

Yesterday, Johnny turned two.

I can hardly believe it. Seems like he was just a baby yesterday...

(I did not make this cupcake, but it was delicious.)

We're throwing him an Orange-themed party next weekend. Plan is to be as orange as possible. When I ordered his cake yesterday, the woman at the bakery kept asking if I wanted anything else on it? Balloons? A photo? Anything? I settled for some confetti but really, orange is all that is required.

Johnny has always liked to be funny. As a little baby, he'd make silly faces and give raspberries to make us giggle. 

He's graduated to waiting for quiet moments to pass gas (and say "Toot!" and giggle) and to telling jokes. Bridget loves to tell knock-knock jokes of the Interrupting Cow variety - sometimes switching the animal - and so Johnny will also attempt these and say "Knock Knock Cow MOOO!" Most recently, he's added "No. You are!" to his repertoire. If I call him a silly boy, he'll point back at you and say, "No. You are, Mama!"

I have a feeling we might be in for many more antics as he gets older. 

This weekend, we put together Bridget's old toddler bed to see what Johnny thought of it. As you can see, he likes it a lot. Two naps, and two nights later, it's been pretty successful. Night number one he woke up and didn't want to go back to bed so it was back to the crib (which is just on the other side of the room for now).  And so far, he's waited for one of us to come in and get him - but I don't expect that to last for too long. He's just all around ready to grow up (sniffle). 

Thanks to Brendan, January and February pictures of the kids are up. 

Some of my favorites:

There are a lot of photos that haven't been uploaded lately. January. February. 

So here are some taken with my phone the past few months:

pre-Super Bowl

at the playground

Johnny's "mad-face"

an outfit of choice by Bridget.

(I've been busy(ish) over at paperstitch.net, but mostly we've been doing boring, normal family-type stuff.) 

Johnny has always been a little bit harder to contain than his sister was at his age. If we closed the gate, she may not have been happy about it, but she always just accepted that was the situation. But not Johnny. He pulls on the mesh at just the right spot where the velcro is slightly weakened and blammo, he's free. Yesterday we also had to remove the side table that you can only barely see in this photo (if you're not distracted from the mess of toys) because Johnny thought it would be awesome to stand on (and turn the light on and off). I always knew he was going to be a bit of a climber. I don't think it's going to get any easier from here on out.