16 Months Already. Dang.

Since we returned from Colorado we have run into a stretch of bad luck for poor Mino.  On one day he fell and punctured his upper lip with his tooth, then fell into the coffee table giving himself a large bruise above his eye then fell over and gave himself a goose egg on his forehead.

 The day after I picked him up at daycare and he was listless and didn't move or cry, I thought he had damaged his brain from all the falls, but it turned out he had a fever and ear infection.  I got a call at work about him falling at daycare, another goose egg on the other side of his forehead, a week later.  Tonight, he broke his two front teeth.   No pictures yet.
The kid is fearless and clumsy.  Dangerous combination or just being a boy?  Who knows.  But I think I am in for some trouble with all of this starting already.  I chalked up his smile as soon as I was notified my fetus had a penis knowing, as a dentist, that boys tend to have at least one of their front teeth broken at some point in their lives.  I figured the rest would be a broken arm here in fifth grade, skinned knees and stitches once he was at least kindergarten aged. I didn't think it started before he was even a well established one year old.  Yikes.

A prime example is this above. He is able to sneak out of his high chair belt.  Pretty much every meal ends with some dangerous standing position.

I forget the exact figure that I heard from our daily meteorologist on MPR but something like 1,000,000,000 snowstorms of appx 1.4 inches of snow have occurred in the last 3 weeks.  Enough that you don't want to shovel because it just isn't quite enough, but if you don't your very kind neighbor beats you to the punch and you feel like a chump.  Guess which side we are on.  Anyway, the most significant one was Friday night, the night that I had planned to drive home to go support one of my good friends from high school who unexpectedly lost her husband.  So that plan was nixed.  Since this horrible tragedy occurred I have spent a lot of time thinking about our little family and how easy it is to take for granted the little things, every morning I look at Mino and Martin and just feel so lucky that I have them in my life and even guilty knowing that there are people out there who have lost their loves.  Life is short, everyone knows it, but things happen that make it become a central theme in your day, and I am very thankful for today and for those guys that I get to wake up to tomorrow morning.  Becca, you are so loved.
 I felt the need to capture pictures today, of what we were doing, the little things that made up our Saturday together.  We built a snowman with our new 5 inches of snow.  Not only was this Minos first, but it was Martins!  Who'd a thunk it?  Not me.  Anyway, good times.

 I forgot to mention that Otis is a very large and warm teddy bear to Mino.  Otis has aggressive tendencies but sits like a docile baby and lets Ben do what ever he wants to him.  Amazing.

 I snuck in a quick weather lesson while we were outside.

He has suddenly taken quite an interest in shoes.  He likes to undo the velcro on his shoes.  He likes to bring me his shoes to put on and this morning he was trying to put on Martin's shoes.

And P.S.  The Pacifier (Pepe) weaning is coming soon.  Although after the tooth incident tonight I kinda wish I didn't snatch it away because it is a good mouthguard.