Max is 11 months old!

Car keys remain a mysterious and mystical attraction for Max.

Max demonstrates that his pajamas are too red to fit perfectly in with the burgundy tones in our upholstery (and decorating patterns in general). Daddy has long since adjusted his wardrobe to fit with the house's aesthetic.

"I have my own big-boy seat with no straps or restraints of any kind!"

Max loves throwing balls! I really didn't think I'd get to play an actual game of catch with Max until he was significantly older, but he has quite an arm already. His aim is not perfect (all the balls hit the ground a few inches from his feet and then bounce toward me), but he clearly has impressive skills. I'm sure he will grow up to be just like Kevin Youkilis or Dustin Pedroia.

"I love to splash! I take a 30-minute bath most nights so I can get a lot of splashing in every day."

"I am getting better at sharing my toys with my friends."

"I have SIX teeth now!"

"Check out my new rad wheels!"

"When, oh when, will they let me have a haircut?!?"

"SUPPERTIME!"

Comments

Can You Cross Your Toes?

Katie and I had a heated discussion the night before last. We were sitting on the couch watching Jon Stewart when she noticed a large, apparently cancerous growth sticking out of the bottom of my foot. She asked what the big lump in my sock was. "That's my toe," I responded, nonplussed. I had crossed my first and second toes, causing a lump to protrude from the bottom of my sock. Katie was quite alarmed. "You can cross your toes?" "Sure, can't you? Everyone can cross their toes!" "Of course I can't cross my toes. Who can cross their toes?" And I confirmed that Katie could not, in fact, cross her toes. Even manipulating her toes with my fingers, I could not get her toes to stay crossed. She just has very short toes. That led, of course, into a discussion of who was the freak. Were my long, crossable toes abnormal, or were her stubby, uncrossable phalanges the outliers? In case you're confused, here are some pictures. First, of my v...

2016 PROGNOSTICATION QUIZ

Entry deadline is 3:30 p.m. CST on Saturday, January 16, 2016 . Send fifteen answers and one tie-break to jmandresen at gmail.com. Anyone with an email address is welcome to enter! 1. Freedom (January) Freedom House is an international organization that studies democracy and freedom in the world, publishing an annual report on how many countries it calculates to be free, partly free, or not free. The 2015 report calculated that 89 of the world’s 195 nations were free in 2014. Will freedom advance, stay stagnant, or retreat in this year’s report, covering 2014? Note: the nine worst free countries (with the highest likelihood of being downgraded) are Botswana, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Lesotho, Montenegro, and Peru. The fifteen best partly free countries (with the highest likelihood of being upgraded) are Albania, Bolivia, Ecuador, Georgia, Indonesia, Mexico, Moldova, Paraguay, Philippines, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, ...

Rebus Challenge 1

When I was a young tyke, I would write notes to my mother. What made me a little odd for your typical grade-schooler is that I often wrote them in code of one sort or another. Included in this correspondence (and stored for posterity by my mother) was a series of rebus puzzles, which turn out actually to be a combination of rebus and homophone and occasional other literary tricks. I present the first in the rebus series in honor of my mother's birthday, which was yesterday. (My siblings and Katie and I took her out to IHOP for dinner, which my mother chose because she once worked at IHOP as a waitress and wanted to reminisce. We didn't run into any of the people Mom worked with 45 years ago.) Can you figure out my birthday message below? (Click for a larger image.) Favorite part #1: That I drew a picture of a cat with a huge X through it to depict our dead pet Siamese cat, Happy. Favorite part #2: That my map of Asia, while including a disclaimer that it is not to scale, has tw...

J. Michael Andresen

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