Final Post..head over to tangensprouts.blogspot.com

As far as I know this will be the final post on growingupjj.blogspot.com Jonas has brought home a little brother, Niles, and together their adventures and pictures will be found at tangensprouts.blogspot.com All of Jonas's old posts will be there as well. So move on over and change your favorites/bookmarks to tangensprouts.blogspot.com

Another 48 hours......

How to pass the time?.....Read some fairy tales while snuggling with Jonas and Rocky. All the standard concoctions for getting things started have not worked..yet, and Sara is blaming it on a diet that has led her to develop a titanium lined amniotic sac. If you listen carefully you can hear Sara say "I agree."

Overdue Notice

Mom is a bit overdue. We have not checked in with the library to see what the fine will be yet. We keep extending the days with Jonas as an only child....hopefully soon that will change. Jonas did provide some quick and easy noodle recipes to use when we get home from the hospital. He also showed us a few moves with his train shoes. Jonas has been drawing a lot, inside in his books and paper, on the computer, in the bathtub, and everywhere outside with chalk. He has drawn a few things that actually resemble the intended product. The train he drew in the bathtub was quite nice. It was a standard coal steam engine with a hopper car attached if you could not tell from the picture in the slide-show.


If you could not hear what he was talking about, it's something about trains having shoes... We hope to have an update soon on a brother for Jonas, I just don't know when "soon" will be!

Not relaxing yet...but trying

Sara has still been working hard to get everything ready for school when she is gone on maternity leave....she is almost ready. In the times outside of this we have been going on the normal adventures with the thought in mind that soon things will be a bit different on the outings. The 1st official farmers market was great, as usual. We have been having fun, going on long walks, eating spicy foods, etc....


A lot of gardening opportunities have sprouted up with the ridiculously nice weather so far. Jonas has been partial to picking dandelions and was a bit upset when his dad popped the head off of one, but he did get a chance to pick a few of his mom's favorite flowers and give them to her.

Carol Visit

Jonas got a visit from his Great Aunt Carol and Grandma last week. It provided another opportunity for Jonas to open a present for himself and his brother. At this point we have accepted the likelihood that Jonas will have a bit more work to do on the opening presents front. Great Aunt Carol made 2 new quilts, a custom train quilt with some hidden bits for Jonas and a cuddly doggy blanket for Jonas's brother.

Its almost time.....to relax

It has been rather difficult to find some time to relax, but this last Sunday was a great day. It is simply amazing how fast kids grow up. Jonas spent the day with his family and that was just fine with everyone. One of the best days.....

I forgot that the last couple of pics were the highlight of the morning for Cory and Jonas on Monday. The octopus stump that was almost turned into a merry-go-round kept getting stuck in the city mulcher. It took about ten minutes to get it to go through and the 2 spectators appreciated every extra second of the wood choppers. Kids and trucks.

Toddler Doc

Jonas took Sara to a visit to the Doctor's office in our living room the other day. He went through all the stuff that usually happens at the Doctor's, but used his own "tools" to give Sara her check up. When we visited the doctor for Sara's 38 week check up Dr E was more than happy to have an assistant. Everything checked out right on schedule. There was a bit of a curve ball with the mention of a faster heart rate for a female, but hopefully that was just a little activity as we have not been working on girls names at all.
Sara wanted me to put a disclaimer on the pics that if you are feeling nauseous, please turn off the computer, I on the other hand think her belly is quite beautiful and amazing.

Here are a couple of videos of the toddler doc, he seems to have pretty good report with his patient.

More Easter

Jonas got an opportunity to hunt down some Easter eggs this last weekend at his Grandma Sue's. He found all ten eggs and later opened up gifts that matched up with the number in the egg. Its quite a long video clip, it took about 4 minutes to get all ten eggs, but it was his first egg hunt.



Jonas found his easter basket after looking all over the house. He had a great deal of looking before the find, so Sara's hints are quite appropriate in this context for a 2 year old.



For his final Easter-Bunny celebration Jonas traveled to South Milwaukee and found that the bunny left him stuff there as well. I assume it is quite normal for a bunny to do this nowadays, especially considering that the bunny has upgraded to remote control R2-D2 units and the such. Grandma Laurie and Grandpa Helge amazingly were able to help Jonas locate yet another hidden easter basket outside hidden in a tree.



Rex and Sully were good young pups while all the festivities are going on. Jonas got a chance to swing his first whiffle ball bat with grandma, blow some bubbles, and show grandpa that he has indeed mastered making a chocolate malt at the distinct age of 2. You can see from the pics that Uncle Helge and Aunt Sue are busy refurbishing their house. It is looking great, it is the house that our grandparents lived in. Enjoy the spring it only happens once a year.

Easter Prep...the eggs

Its almost time for the Easter bunny to deliver his hard-boiled eggs that he got from a chicken and than decided to dye them beautiful pastel colors. What a bunny. Jonas is just really being introduced to this amazing bunny, and is eagerly looking forward to finding the basket that the bunny will be hiding. The egg coloring went well, especially with such good supervisors!

Baby Inspector

While we can't verify all that Jonas was able to inspect, since his brother is still in the womb, we can draw conclusions based on what we could see and feel on the outside. Mom can give a little bit more information, so that was helpful. It appeared that the butt position was in debate, but after consulting, both Sara and Jonas agreed on the location. The part about being a bat hanging from a tree has no basis and is all conjecture. It could be any day (or week) now, since all the baby brother is doing now is getting his lungs fit, getting coordinated, and putting on some weight. It will be up to him to get the estrogen gushing and cause Sara to start birthing contractions. It is amazing that he holds the key to when his birthday will be.

Creature Dance

This video is actually quite normal. More or less I would bet half of the time of the day we are doing something silly and moving around like crazy. Jonas did not care that I was calling him a dragon when he clearly was a lion, lucky me for lions can be ferocious when upset.

Sci 5

Well this is it, the final science museum video. You know that Jonas had fun when he refused to use his legs when we exited. The drag technique worked well with each parent taking an arm, but this only works for so long. Overall, all of us had a great time and we are already planning our next visit in 2013.

Science Museum 4...enough sequels

We are almost there....the end of the Science and Industry Museum posts....probably will be a part 5. Anyway, Jonas got a chance to learn about all the molecules that make life so ridiculously easy for everyone in the world today, while providing a framework for the doom his life will experience as the effects of using these molecules develop over the next century. After the hydrocarbons we went out to explore some more organized organic molecules....in the developing womb. It all seems so easy according to the interactive displays. I had to consult with Sara...it turns out that it is more difficult than flipping through a touchscreen to move through the stages of bringing a new life into this world. This was evidenced by Jonas's future bro wedging his head repeatedly into his mom's cervix on top of too much action at the museum which led to a day of regular contractions the day after the museum visit. That provided a bit of awareness that the upcoming weeks will be interesting to say the least.

Part III Circus Morph & Bang at Science & Industry

We visited circus world after lunch. The star attraction for Jonas were the funny mirrors, though he did enjoy all the intricate horse and carriages throughout the exhibit. The end of the clip shows Jonas getting a little bang with everyone else. The first balloon the demonstrator filled with just Hydrogen, which is combustible, and it made a loud boom. She followed that up by adding oxygen to the next balloon, I couldn't hear, but probably in a 2:1 Hydrogen to Oxygen ratio. This is the balloon that Jonas didn't quite like. It probably was due to the louder noise because of the availability of oxygen to more rapidly react with the hydrogen to form water because of the close proximity of the oxygen molecules that allowed the reaction to happen more quickly and result in a higher energy disruption in the surroundings. Heat was released as the oxygen and hydrogen atoms bonded in a 2:1 ratio to form water, and the excess of energy left over because of the efficient molecule-making is what moved the surrounding molecules rapidly upon transfer of this excess energy into heat, light, and a loud noise. Jonas recovered quickly on his way to petroleum world. That is what is up next.

IDEAS Science and Industry part 2

When we finally had to leave the IDEAs factory to let another groups of kids on Jonas was saying, "I want my copper conductor block." It seems as though he had formed a friendly relationship with the metal block that when properly placed completed the circuit to make things light up, move, make sounds, etc. The water area was quite wonderful, lots of interactive and discovery type items. We planned this run-around experience as an appetite builder/snack runnner-offer. He just ate a snack a bit ago and it was just about lunch time, as it turned out it worked out pretty well. Next up funny shapes and shadows.

A last hurrah Science and Industry Part 1

Jonas was very excited to go to the Museum of Science and Industry. He had been waiting all week to go and was ready to go to the big city of Chicago. It was an amazing day. Everyone was equally worn out with all the excitement of the day. At the museum the first stop was the Zephyr. We got a chance to go in the mailcar and see how the diesel engine works. The zephyr was one of the first diesel engine trains in the world.
Next we ventured underground to a coal mine. There were lots of loud noises and adventures, and unfortunately because the sun doesn't shine 600 meters below the surface of the earth not a lot of light to take a good picture.
We got a chance to climb around and go in the cabs of a bunch of farm machines. However the best displays and interactive setups were yet to come. Stay tuned.

Trains, Graham Crakers, and Jumping

Jonas is warming for a big trip later this week. He will celebrate being our only little guy at the Science and Industry Museum. He had a few choices and by far and away he was the most excited about visiting the museum. He has been talking about going on the Zephyr train from the early 1900s constantly.

As far as other recent happenings....a little blog watching and self analysis of 'being goofy', fueling up with his normal breakfast of a package of graham crackers. This week I bought 8 boxes of graham crackers instead of the normal 4 boxes because of the beastly appetite for the soggy grahams for breakfast. The energy stored in the molecular bonds of the graham cracker was enough to power some jumping, skipping, and running at a visit to an indoor play center. Jonas met up with his neighbor to develop some freestyle gymnastics routines.

What can you say about trains? Not enough in this house. Sara took Jonas to a train show at the Alliant Energy center this weekend. All the exhibit halls upstairs and downstairs were filled with some sort of train action. You can tell by his smile that he was having a good time. Toot, toot!

Potato Valentine

Potato or Alien Spider? It turns out that Jonas discovered the difference between "regular" potatoes and organic potatoes. There is no toxic root inhibitor on the organic variety so after a couple of weeks they turn into a spider. He rather enjoyed finding these taters and we cut off the roots and put it into a soup.
A few days later Jonas shared a little Valentine love with his mom and Greta. You can see him yelling 'Happy Valentine's Day'. It might be a bit late for you, but Happy Valentine's Day.

Indoor Playground

Jonas and his buds from across the street meet up at the indoor playground a couple of weeks ago. Ben and Cory came down with a nasty illness...but they are on the mend and almost back to normal. Since Jonas hasn't been able to hang out with those guys because of their illness he wanted to see some pictures, hence this blog-post developed.

More Sleepy Time

Jonas spent an overnight in Green Bay to visit Gma and Gpa. In between a few stories Jonas enjoyed his first ice-cream sandwich, chatting, and playing with everyone. Jonas's technique on the ice-cream sandwich was impressive....he went cross-eyed to get the best target for his next bite. It seems to be so normal to sleep over that Jonas has been regularly requesting to head over to Grandma's or Grandma and Grandpa's for the night. Jonas has been working on story telling and potty-training, both with varied success. He can tell a rather entertaining story if you catch him at the right time....we are working on trying to capture one on video, but usually we are laughing too hard to go and get the camera.

PS...all of bloggers recent video posts across the world have been having some video problems....it sometimes works if you click on the blog post title so that you are looking at only one post. Good luck.....