The afternoon’s love fest started with Zachary trying to watch the cartoon that Jonah was watching and Jonah blocking Zachary’s view. After a few renditions of “get out of my way!” followed by grunting and heavy breathing, I was not surprised when the high-pitched shrieking reached my ears.

When I got to the living room I found Zachary looking contrite and trying to console a wailing Jonah. Okay, he was really trying to talk him into not squealing on him. Which of course, Jonah promptly did. It seems that Jonah had been standing on the couch, and when he wouldn’t get out of Zachary’s way, Zachary pushed him. Off the couch.

From these pics it’s hard to see how big and dark the bruise was (the little bugger won’t stand sill!), but it’s several days later and he still has his “trophy”.

I’m sure this is just the first of many brother-inflicted wounds to come. I think it’s time to invest in a first aid kit. Or a stand-by EMT.

As we get older, life gets messier, and we don’t have time for all of the things we loved. Having kids makes up for that sometimes. I now have the opportunity to live vicariously through two fabulous boys—I just need to slow down and remember that. Especially when there is no yelling, crying, fighting, or throwing of non-throwable ((is that a word?)) objects. In an extremely rare moment, I actually had both boys sitting at their table painting together. It truly was a thing of beauty.

Want to see what that actually looks like?

Or should I say, no more Johnson Family videos on YouTube. While I still have favorites, and will look to YouTube for humor, political, or just random videos, I will no longer be using their services to post our family videos. This has been a long time coming, as I’ve toyed with this thought for several months now. First when I saw they had added the feature to show other ‘like’ videos within my embedded videos, then when I compared their crappy video quality to the video quality I’m getting from Apple’s MobileMe (or a different provider, should I decide not to stick with MoblieMe) Daily Motion.

UPDATE 2/5/09: While MobileMe offers great features and wonderful video quality, I am not going to subscribe. I just don’t use enough of the features and options to justify the $99. I did find a great alternative: Daily Motion. ((I’ve edited the remaining text within this post to reflect the change to Daily Motion.))

The deciding factor against YouTube, however, was when I found a mean and nasty comment on the last video I posted of Jonah and Zachary being silly and dancing. The comment stated “This is the dumbest video ever. Too stupid.” and the commenter rated it 1-star. You can say anything you want about me, but be an asshole to my kids, and we have a problem. I thought about keeping the comment, and commenting back on just what I thought of this loser, then I decided it wouldn’t be worth it. One thing I’ve learned is that there are a lot of stupid people on the internet, and they’re not going to change simply because I point out their stupidity to them.

So from now on videos will be uploaded to Daily Motion and embedded from there.

Here’s the video Mr. Jackass hated so much. Two kids having fun, what could be cuter?

Like YouTube, feel free to leave your comments below (unless you were going to say something nasty—then we’ll need to chat).

This post was generously brought to you by brown recluse spider trap. I wonder if these traps catch black widows—we had some of those in our garage over the summer.

I will apologize in advance for the “Blair Witch Project” filming of Zachary’s program. I was wearing heels and standing in the back. The result is not as smooth as I would like. 😉 Click on the play button to start (if you dare).

Jonah’s program was great for several reasons. First, I brought my tripod. Second, it was nice and short. His is the youngest class so they went first, meaning the boys were in bed on time. Of course, the entertainment value of Jonah’s program lies in the fact that there’s really not much too it except a bunch of 2-year olds crying and looking cute. Jonah was pretty funny. He was okay until he saw us. Then he would point to us and start to cry. Then he’d try and shake is shaker. Then he’d point and cry. Vicious circle. 🙂