Mmmm.....bacon

We got home today from a fun weekend with the rest of the Franz family at the Great Wolf Lodge in Wisconsin Dells where Harrison had his first experience with swimming. Or as his cousin Ben calls it, thwimming.



Harrison had a pretty good time...we guess. He didn't dislike swimming, but he didn't seem enthralled by the whole experience. He pretty much sat in the lap of whomever he was with at the moment and looked around with a blank look on his face. Even if he didn't look overly excited he looked like an old pro with his cute little swim diaper and swimsuit.




While we were in the Dells we went out for our yearly birthday dinner, courtesy of Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Pete. This year we went to the Moosejaw Pizza and Dells Brewing Co. The food was "meh," but the beer was delicious.

Laura and Carol looking good in their cheesy moose antler hats

Inspired by a recent article in Time, Craig decided to make chocolate covered bacon for a snack. What follows is a pictorial essay on the process.

Fry bacon until crisp

Dip bacon in chocolate

Dry and cool bacon

Serve to other people's kids

Everyone seemed to enjoy it, although Uncle Alejandro said he felt like he shouldn't enjoy it.

Now to wrap up the post, here's a gaggle of random photos from our trip. Enjoy!

Flash: Harrison is now the proud owner of a soul

Still Smiley

You know, we hate to keep opening up our blog posts with more stories about how happy and cute and smiley Harrison is. We can't help it. We've decided that Harrison is quite possibly the happiest baby there ever was. We mean no disrespect to others who have thought similar things about their own children, but Harrison is a very happy camper.

Aside from when he's sleeping or hungry, Harrison is continually smiling and now he's laughing.

Aristotle believed that a baby laughing for the first time indicated that they had received their soul. While we don't believe that the first laugh is indicative of anything quite that important, we think it's a pretty neat sounding anecdote. We also think hearing your baby laugh for the first time is a pretty cool thing for a parent to experience. Talk about cute. Jeesh!

Random picture

Over the last weekend several of Laura's friends from college came to visit and see Harrison. We had a good time. Laura made manicotti. Aside from that, we hung around the house pretty much the whole weekend. Above we have Jana with her daughter Brenna and Harrison. Brenna is a real cutie and always a lot of fun when she visits. She really liked Harrison and gave him a kiss good night. Awww. Below we have Harrison with another of Laura's friends, Amy. Amy is the spawn of dairy farmers and is from Reedsburg. We don't hold that against her though.

Harrison also appears to be increasingly aware of his surroundings. The babysitter says Harrison seems interested in the TV and we notice that he's becoming much more playful and grabby. All in all, our son is growing fast, mentally and physically.

Harrison, appearing to be either scared or amazed by something

Harrison with his cool artisan rattle

Up the hill

While we were at Craig's parents over the holidays we shot this video of one of Harrison's favorite new activities - riding the bike.

We swear that Harrison smiled like mad every time Grandpa Phil did this, except for the time we tried to tape it.

Guy Smiley

We're just now home and settled in after a long holiday season. After five nights at Laura's parents and four at Craig's parents, we were all pretty happy to be back home. Harrison in particular looks pretty stoked to be back in his domain.

We thought we had a smiley baby on our hands several weeks ago, but we hadn't seen anything. Harrison has a perpetual smile on his face, especially when he sees his mom. He's a regular Bernie Liederkrantz.


Christmas was spent at Grandma and Padre Franz's house. Harrison spent lots of time with his Grandma and his Aunt's and got a nice haul of presents. He also slept so much better than his first trip to their place.


A few days later we headed up to Green Bay to visit with Craig's parents. Harrison got to meet our friend Kelly and Dan's daughter Lydia, who is just over a year old. Despite the age difference, they appeared to hit it off pretty quickly. Lydia was a real sweetie and grabbed some toys for Harrison to play with. Craig and Laura had a great time in GB. Grandma Cindy is very eager to help out, so we got some extra sleep, went out for New Year's Eve, dinner with friends and a movie.


While in GB, Harrison had his first shower. Laura was really brave and took him in the shower with her. Craig was too afraid to try it since he knows that babies are very slippery.


Upon our return home Harrison spent some quality time in his jumpy-thingy-ma-bob. He really seemed to enjoy it, but while he was in it Craig noticed that his son is becoming a ginger.

When Harrison was first born the nurse said his hair was strawberry blond. That seemed to change as soon as his first bath washed away any blood in his hair. This time his hair has no blood in it, it's just lightly red. Craig had a red-haired roommate in college and must've caught the ginger germs from him.

Note: We are not prejudiced against red haired people. Some of our best friends have red hair.