That’s not fair, so here’s a shot of Henrik from this past weekend.

He turned one back on March 31.

Sure, it might look a little like a leg of lamb or one of those giant turkey legs you see at Disney World but he called it a guitar and my wife labelled it as such.

As proud as I am, though, and as truly excited I am to soon see those horrific family drawings in the near future (you know, where everyone has a huge head, crazy hair, and no legs), in an odd sort of way, I kinda wish he’d drawn an instrument, you know, that all the cool people in high school play(ed).

Like a tuba or something.

Maybe next time…

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In other news, my total credit card debt balance is down to $7045.14.

Not too shabby — that’s $1350 lower than it was at the start of the month.

Winning!

Oh, and yes, I played the tuba.

And I was tres cool.

I’m just sayin’… the tuba is really cool.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Seriously, that’s what it was called.

It was one of those municipal events where they sell fried dough, cotton candy, and over priced inflatible somethings to benefit the Parks and Recreation department or something.

This one had a full blown carnival with a dozen or so rides and even some miniature horses for the kids to ride.

But the one thing that caught Duncan’s eye was the fire department’s ladder truck — ladder fully extended and spouting water from the top.

He wasn’t dressed for running through the water but we took his shirt off and set him free anyway.

As we did so, I surveyed the scene and pinpointed one kid.

He was a little too old to be frolicking in the mist and, well, he obviously had no regard for anyone around him. You know the type…basically, he was a threat.

It was one of those things where I “knew” it was going to happen — I even said as much outloud — but I wasn’t about prevent my kid from having a good time because of one moron in the crowd.

I’m not the over protective type.

But it’s not like you can take a preventative stance these days either and go up to someone else’s kid and say, “Hey, quit being an idiot and watch where you’re going…” without having their even bigger idiot parent getting all up in your face about it…

So, instead, my kid got bowled over.

Go ahead, it’s okay to watch it a few times. Frame-by-frame, even…

That’s the beginning of my reaction at the tail end of the video.

Had I kept the camera rolling, you’d have heard my expletive laden description of how I really felt about what I’d just witnessed.

No worries — I didn’t say it loud or anything but the camera microphone most definitely would have picked it up.

Of the nine or ten adjectives and one noun that I uttered, well, “little” was the *only* word that could be considered safe for this website…

To the kid’s credit, he wasn’t without remorse.

Immediately after it happened, he stopped in his tracks and just stood there looking at Duncan (who was laying in a puddle on the pavement with his hands over his face and feet in the air) as my wife ran into the fray to make sure he was okay.

As my wife picked him up, I could plainly see that the kid felt bad. He had that sort of posture that kids get when they want to say “Sorry” but don’t know how or when exactly to do it. I mean, it’s not like he did it on purpose…

I also watched him look over his shoulder to see if his parents were calling him over — which they weren’t because, well, I’m sure you guessed it, they weren’t the type that supervise their kids.

Might explain why their kids are morons.

Anyway, once the kid realized that he’d “dodged” a bullet, well, back he went to running around with total disregard.

Seriously, he’s way too old to be afraid to open his eyes when running through a glorified sprinkler. Is it just me?

I dunno, a helmet and shoulder pads shouldn’t be required for running through the hose…

Not being the overprotective type, once Duncan’d composed himself, we sent him right back out there.

As you can see, Duncan’s okay.

And in a weird sort of way, I’m pretty proud that he could take a hit like that.

I’d still be laying on the ground.

The answer is yes, it hurts.

I just can’t believe that it took less than 5 minutes to tear a hole in myself…so I guess it’s good that my primary job is behind a computer screen.

I know, I know — it’s a tiny blister.

I’ve had far worse but this one is in just the WRONG place. I’m telling you, it’s worse than it looks.

Anyway, I thought I’d expand a bit on Friday’s post about Smurfling 2.

Duncan’s new little brother is named Henrik.

Say what?

Well, it wasn’t that long ago that I mentioned that we were partial to “weird (by North American standards) Dutch or Scandanavian names” and Henrik certainly fits that criteria.

Since “announcing” the birth, we’ve heard all kinds of comments regarding the name…

Most are convinced that he’s named after a hockey player since I’m Canadian and that automatically makes us fans of the sport — Sedin, Zetterberg, or Lundqvist.

Maybe, but not really. None of those guys are Canadian or play for our favorite team.

Or maybe since I’m a nerd, it’s paying homage to Niels Bohr? His middle name was Henrik.

Amazingly, I knew that his middle name was Henrik but I’m not enough of a nerd to name my children after turn of the century physicists.

We’ve even been told that Henrik is the name of one of the major characters in the “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo“.

Thankfully he’s a good guy, apparently. Not surprisingly, though, I’d never even heard of the book (or movie) until after the fact. Even still, I’ll likely never read it.

Or… since we’ve got a super German last name, we wanted to go all Nazi and name him after SS leader Heinrich Himmler.

Um, no. That would be insane — though it certainly led us to steer clear of that spelling and pretty much every single other German first name.

In reality, though, I think it was more of a Henry Ford type of thing that my wife and I agreed on — but all of those baby name books out there right now list Henry as one of the “uber-popular” names for the next few years.

With that in mind, and the memory of having 12 Jennifers in my class during the third grade (one even permanently switched to her middle name of Neel for 4th grade), I wanted to avoid a similar situation.

Unable to think of something better than Henry (which we still agreed on), we went Scandinavian on it — some folks still look at us like we made it up.

Then again, those are the same folks that thought the name Duncan was spelled wrong too.

Damn you Dunkin Donuts…

Seriously, it’s like I’d just up and quit this whole PIAC thing…

Not true — I am far behind on keeping everyone informed on my financial status and, yeah, some of that is by design. I’m embarrassed.

No worries, I’ll spill the beans before too long. It’s been a rough couple of months on the financial side of things.

But I also though I should let you all know that back on March 31st, we added another smurfling and officially joined the two-under-two club. Pretty exciting stuff.

So as I was out shoveling the snow this morning with my shoveling partner, I started to salivate at the thought of doing my taxes…

I mean, usually, a month from now, I’m finishing up my taxes and waiting for that nice big check (I mean, deposit) from the government. This year is no different — February should be pretty nice on the income side of things.

On the other hand, with another shoveler on the way in less than 90 days, well, we need a new car. One that’ll fit four of us. Comfortably.

Yep, that’ll cancel out the tax refund.

And then some…

His first post was a bit cryptic but, to his credit, he *was* only 5 days old.

Then, a month later, when I was practically in full Mommy-blog mode, he did a guest video post.

At the time it was pretty exciting.

Now, though, it’s pretty, well, it’s just another “baby babbling” video on YouTube. You know what I’m sayin’…

For his third post, though, now nearly 18 months later, having grown tired of being seen here on PIAC but not heard, he wanted to do something different and show off his speaking voice and newly discovered command of the English language.

Here’s his 17-second podcast:

Okay. I’ll admit he doesn’t speak much English… but he speaks a mean Tiger, dontcha think?

And, sorry if this ruins the whole Brainy Smurf image for you. I sound nothing like him — I’m actually frequently told that my speaking voice (when recorded) resembles Kermit the Frog.

I don’t hear it, personally.

Maybe it’s a bad Steve Whitmire version of Kermit but certainly nothing like the original Jim Henson Kermit…

Anyway, the real reason for this post is because I’ve recently found out that a lot of people in my “close” family have been following Duncan’s, well, life through this website.

There are even a few unrelated readers that only seem to enjoy the Duncan photos that I randomly include in my postings — they’ve emailed me saying just that.

So I figured that I’d take it a step further and let you all hear him too (while making great use of the digital audio recorder that Santa brought me).

No worries — I don’t expect to make a habit of this but…Duncan’s time in the spotlight is waning as Smurfling #2 rapidly approaches so enjoy it while it lasts!

Raaarrrr!!!

See, we had a costume in mind, one that we’d had in the closet since before Duncan was even born and we thought this would be the the year that it’d fit him.

Well, we were wrong — but only realized it days before Halloween.

So a last minute trip to a childrens consignment store resulted in this $6 penguin suit.

At first we were a little worried he wouldn’t wear it since he’s never been too keen on wearing things on his head (dating back to that great hat/headdress last Thanksgiving) but once we got it on him (I can confirm that there was some screaming involved) he went into a pseudo show-off mode.

Never’d seen him do that before.

We did some trick-or-treating which I’m pretty sure he found confusing but he most certainly enjoyed being allowed to walk around at night while the assorted princesses and power rangers cooed over his costume (or the goofy walk he does when he’s showing off) and pick up sticks.

Yep, he acquired more sticks than chocolate.

Better than Charlie Brown’s rocks, I suppose…

In other “family” news, we’re slated to add Duncan 2 sometime in early April.

Here’s one of those creepy looking 4D ultrasounds of the little guy.

(Seriously — that’s creepy, right?)

Since he’s become pretty aware of things around him, like birds, bumble bees, and the neighborhood cats, we thought it’d be a good idea to take him to the zoo for his birthday.

Specifically, the Bronx Zoo.

So, while researching how much this excursion would set us back (since we’re a wee bit tight on cash right now), we noticed that the Bronx Zoo has a “pay-what-you-like” promotion on Wednesdays!

How about that? Perfect timing for a birthday!

Now, I’m not going to say that we’re going to walk in without paying a dime (I’m sure they guilt you into some sort of donation, you know, to save the rainforest or something) but it will certainly save us a few bucks.

Even better — the weather is supposed to be nice and sunny!