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Jonah got his first haircut yesterday!  Here’s the story we will tell our children and grandchildren (scroll down for the historically accurate account): The whole thing went very smoothly.  We showed up at the salon, went right back to the chair, snip-snip-snip, and we were out of there.  Jonah was so excited, and he sat perfectly still and let the stylist snip away.  (Brown Bear came along for moral support just in case.)  And after all that excitement, Jonah was worn out and he fell asleep on the way home.

Okay, so I may have stretched the truth a little.  Here’s what really happened: I was actually proud of myself for having everything together and organized and we got out the door in record time.  I even remembered to slip the camera in the diaperbag, very careful to put it in a spot that was quick and easy to get to.  When we got to the salon, we had to wait about 20 minutes — time we killed by chasing Jonah around the waiting area.  He thought it was hilarious to take the bottles of shampoo and hair gel off the shelves and carry them around the room.  Finally we went back to the chair, and that’s where Jonah’s smile faded and his uneasiness grew into full-blown terror.  His survival instincts kicked into high gear (much like when we try to brush his teeth at night), and he defended himself in the only way he knew how: kicking, screaming, thrashing, and squirming.  Meanwhile, I am rooting around in the diaperbag for the dang camera.  I KNOW it’s in there, but I can’t find it anywhere, and before long I have to give up the search and hold Jonah down as best I can, but suddenly he has somehow gained superhuman strength so it’s nearly impossible.  Finally I had to sit down in the chair with him (with him on my lap, not ON him of course), and the stylist managed to trim a few hairs here and there.  We survived, but for a while there, Jonah was really not sure if he was going to.

 

And through all that, I got no pictures, save for one lousy shot with my camera phone.  And I was so mad at myself because I KNEW I put the camera in the diaperbag…. didn’t I?  Sigh.  So then we had to make a trip to Walmart, which was there in the same shopping center.  So we went to Walmart, did our shopping (which was greatly enhanced by a severe case of the whinies),  and got back in the car.  And then, what do I find in the diaperbag?  Yup.  The CAMERA.

 

And at that point, I almost gave up.  I pulled out of the parking lot, headed home, feeling completely deflated.  But then, with a sudden surge of determination, I turned the minivan around and went back to the salon, dragging a very sleepy boy and a whiny little girl back in and told the lady there my sob story.  And very graciously, she let me sit Jonah in the chair for a few happy pictures.  And thus, history was rewritten.  

 

(I really wanted to post the picture from my phone, but we couldn’t figure out how to email it to ourselves…. which just figures.)

Yesterday, Kaeta came to me and said, “Daddy, where’s the Dragon Book?”

I had no idea what book she was talking about. But I had just ordered a book about compilers that is commonly referred to as “the dragon book,” because the cover shows a knight sitting at a computer, fighting off a dragon labeled “the complexity of compiler design.”  (Is that cheesy?  I guess…)  Anyway, not knowing better, that’s the book I gave her:

Mommy then informed me that Kaeta was probably talking about the book Pete’s Dragon. So here’s a picture of us reading our dragon books:

Lately I’ve been going to amazon.com/mp3 to see what their Mp3 Daily Deal is. It’s usually an entire album for $1.99, which is hard to turn down!

Today I clicked their header, which says “2009: Resolve to ROCK.”  Here are the ROCKin’ music categories that came up:

Alternative and Indie Rock — okay. But Christian Music?  While I’m well-aware of Christian Rock, that’s not what you find when you click the link — I see Chris Tomlin, Amy Grant, and Stephen Curtis Chapman.

And when you click Classical, you get Yo-Yo Ma. Who is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but still…

I guess what I’m saying is, Amazon is like an out-of-touch parent.  “You gotta hear this Amy Grant tune, sonny!  It’ll rock yer knickerbockers!”  No thanks, Grandmazon!

Get it?  Grandma + Amazon?  Man, I’m rockin’!

For 2008, I gave up drinking cokes.  (Side note: In Texas, “coke” = any kind of soda.)  With a few exceptions, I stuck to that all year.

So far, I’ve had 2 sodas in 2009.  First, I drank a 20 oz. Dr. Pepper a couple of weeks ago, and pretty soon after that my heart started racing, and my hands were shaking!  It was very unnerving.  Then yesterday I drank a Coke, and I couldn’t sleep well last night because of acid reflux.

As my friend Curt said, “That’s what you get for giving up Cokes all last year!”  I can’t hold my soda!

What do you call a Centaur with the head of a horse and the body of a man? Wikipedia, you’re failing me!

I made this handy comparison chart:

It’s pretty obvious, really.

The latest (Jan/Feb 2009) issue of Inc. magazine has a profile on Markus Frind, the creator of the dating website called Plenty of Fish. I thought this was really funny:

“With friends and family, Frind expresses affection through playful pranks. One memorable valentine involved the secret consumption of a massive quantity of hot peppers. Though his mouth was on fire, Frind calmly planted a kiss on his girlfriend’s lips and feigned ignorance as she went scrambling for water.”

Glorious!

Just for fun, here’s a graphic of words used on this page (ignoring really common words), sized by how frequently they appear. It was really easy to make, using a tool called Wordle!

I’m not sure what it means that “Karianne” and “ukulele” are about the same size. Update: K noticed that the word “Jonah” did not appear in the old graphic — it turns out, I had given Wordle an outdated RSS feed. The image above is the updated one (and it includes the word “Wordle” — self-referential!).

Having recently mastered walking, Jonah is wasting no time.  He is climbing up on things like a Tibetan mountaineer.  A Sherpa with a penchant for Tonka trucks, you might say.

And here he is, resting from his climb.  This is what he looks like when he tries to say “Cheese” (a word he picked up from his sister):