My father in law came over this morning to fix up our sump pump, and he told me that he was out in the backyard, and he saw that there was a rabbit caught in the trellis under our deck. “A rabbit?” I asked, thinking it odd that a rabbit could get stuck under there since they’re so small. “Um, you know, that one that lives under your deck”. “A raccoon?” I asked. “Yeah, a raccoon.”

So I went outside, a little freaked because I was out in the backyard earlier that morning with Ben and didn’t notice anything. Sure enough, we had a prisoner stuck under the deck.

Now, it wasn’t a raccoon, it was Woody the Woodchuck, who you may remember me mentioning before. We’d always wondered who lived under our lower deck - we knew there was SOMEONE under there because one day when my dad brought his dog Ewok over, he went crazy barking in one specific spot of the deck, and when we looked between the wood slats, we could see little beady eyes staring up at us. At the time we thought it was a raccoon, but now I’m pretty sure it was Woody.

So anyway, I see this guy with his head stuck in the fence, much like little kids get their heads stuck in banisters. I saw him trying to get out, using his little clawed paws to push against the fence, but to no avail. I didn’t want to get near him (the pic was taken with my zoom lens) because I’m always freaked about rabies. I decided to call animal control to come and help him out, since I knew that their people would have experience with this kind of thing.

I hopped on the internet to find the number for the local animal control center, and couldn’t find it, but saw that most police departments handle this sort of thing. So I called our PD, told her that we had a woodchuck stuck in our fence. First thing she asked is if it was alive, which I guess makes sense - being the difference of having someone clean up vs. someone to battle with the beast. She asked for my address, and said that someone would be over.

Not more than 10 minutes later, the doorbell rang and a police officer was there. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I think I was expecting someone in a full, padded body suit, like the ones you see on TV where people are training attack dogs. This cop was just wearing his regular uniform.

I led him to the backyard and he once again asked if it was still alive, and I said yeah. When we came out and he saw him, the woodchuck wasn’t moving so I thought maybe he had died, but then he started blinking so I knew there was still hope. The cop looked at Woody and said, “Man, how’d he get stuck in there like that?!?” It was this comment that started me thinking that this was going to be pretty interesting.

As Ben and I stayed on the top deck, Easy on the Eyes Officer 1 put on his long, thick, animal proof gloves. (had to mention that he was easy on the eyes because seriously, I have yet to see a cop in my hood that’s your stereotypical donut loving chubster) He stared down at Woody for a bit, and tried to put his hand on Woody’s head to push it back through the hole. Woody wasn’t having any of that, though, and started to squeal and growl, basically going apeshit ballistic and trying to bite. This caused us all to jump back a bit. It was then that I noticed the raw skin on the back of Woody’s neck, making me believe that he’d been there much longer than the early morning since all his fur had rubbed off from where he was stuck.

From my deck I could see that the cop parked in the parking lot next to us, and saw another cop car pull up. Thinking that this Saturday morning was probably a slow one for crime, I still found it a little funny that they sent in two squad cars to take care of a woodchuck.

So Officer 2 comes in the backyard, asks, “How’s he get stuck like that?” and tells Officer 1 to just push Woody’s head through the hole, and we tell 2 that Woody’s fiesty and isn’t making it easy. Officer 1 tried tucking back Woody’s ears, but that didn’t work and Woody just got angrier. “There’s so much fur!”

By now, this thing is totally turning comical, with these two young policemen trying to figure out how to get this fat woodchuck out of the hole, and Ben on the deck saying, “Help him! He’s stuck!” and “Where’s the police?” Finally, Officer 1 asks if he could just saw some of the wood out to get Woody free, so I go in the basement to get a saw. As I’m in the basement, Dave’s dad was talking to the cop out the window and telling him that he bites.

I come back to the backyard and Officer 2 is still trying to give Officer 1 ideas on how to get the woodchuck out. I hand 1 the saw and he looks at the fence. Thinking that there might be some carnage, I tell Ben to look away. I know that the thought of just killing the woodchuck and taking his lifeless carcass out crossed all our minds (except Ben, he just wanted to feed the thing). Then Officer 2 tells Officer 1 to try and pull off one of the wood slats, rather than cutting into it.

Officer 1 tries that, and with a loud *pop* and an “Ugh!” of effort, pulled off a slat of wood.

…and Officer 2 runs away.

It was hilarious! I guess he thought (as did we all) that as soon as that woodchuck got free, he’d go all crazy and kill us all, so when Officer 1 got the piece of wood out, Officer 2 just booked it outta there. However, Woody didn’t get it. As soon as that piece of wood was out (the bottom left piece of wood in the picture), he tried desperately to move forward, which he didn’t have room to do. Me and Officer 1 were both giving Woody encouragement, like, “Go! Run to freedom! Backwards! Back it up! You’re free!” but it took him a while figure it out and I know that Officer 1 was thinking to himself, “Damn, what if this thing goes after me? I don’t have a full, padded body suit!”

Finally, Woody figured that if stepped backwards he would be free, and as soon as he did that, he scampered back to his burrow under our second deck. We all jumped back at this because he was so freakin’ fast, and I immediately picked up Ben and put him back in the house, which he wasn’t too happy about. Officer 1 came up the stairs to get my name for his report, and we all (including Officer 2, who had come back from wherever he was hiding to see Woody’s scamper to freedom) had a good laugh about the whole situation, and I *think* I said thanks for the help, but really, things were going so fast by then I have no idea what happened.

So thanks, Officer 1 and Officer 2, for coming by to help a woodchuck in need, not killing him, giving me a good laugh for a Saturday morning and letting Ben have a grand adventure.

Tags: Pictures, Stories by Yano
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Hey all you Chicago area people…this weekend is Misericordia’s annual Candy Days, where workers and volunteers get out into the streets of Chicago to get donations and give out candy. In the past it’s been Fannie May suckers, but this year they’ve got yummy Jelly Bellies.

As I might have mentioned, my sister works for Misericordia and I’d actually volunteered for Candy Days in the past (you meet a LOT of interest people when you’re standing in the middle of an intersection asking for money). Here’s a little more information on them:

About Misericordia: It’s a residential home for children and adults (about 560 total) with developmental disabilities, some with physical disabilities. All proceeds go towards upkeeping their homes, making sure they have great programming and overall maintaining the best care that they can receive to live life to the fullest. For more info, go to http://www.misericordia.org/.

So if you’re driving around and you see a volunteer in the intersection, dig up some loose change, make sure you don’t run them over, and get yourself some sweets, then give yourself a pat on the back for helping out. You might get lucky and see my sister out there (I’m not going to post it here, but I’ll post it up on twitter and facebook tomorrow morning.

Tags: Cool Link, Quickies by Yano
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See that birthday cake? That thing was HUMONGOUS! Seriously, it weighed more than Ben. I had decided to downsize Ben’s cake from last year, but when the lady asked if I wanted 3 layers instead of 2, I didn’t think that it would end up as huge as it did. Many people commented that it was one of the tallest cakes they’d ever seen.

So anyway, we had Ben’s birthday party last weekend. Rather than having a huge shindig with tons of people, we decided to have a smaller party at the museum with just kids. Which still ended up being a ton of people. It was a lot of fun, even though our time in the room was pretty short…I’ll post up more pictures later…

Tags: Ben, Party On! by Yano
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Every year, the comic book community holds “Free Comic Book Day”, where you can walk into your local comic book store and get free comics. Hence the name. Anyway, I’ve loved comics since I was a teen, and am always trying to get more people to read them. Comic books aren’t all superheroes in spandex…there’s a lot of comics out there for all kinds of people. It’s great that comic book movies have done well, for the most part, since they bring in more readers, but I’d love for comics to be as popular as they were when I was younger.

Here’s some of my favorite comics that may interest you:

Y: The Last Man: Anytime someone tells me that they’re interested in comics, I usually give them my TPB of this comic (TPB = trade paper back, a compilation of several issues of a comic). What would happen to the world if all the males - human and animal, all died at the same time and women were left to rule the earth? What would you do if you realized that you were the only man left? This comic is about Yorrick, a twenty-something who searches for why all the men died, and why he is the only one left living. Along the way he has to survive in a world that has evolved into a society of women, some good, some bad, and all having an ulterior motive when they find out about Yorrick. It’s AWESOME. Excellent story by Brian K. Vaughn and art by Pia Guerra.

Fables: Imagine your childhood storybook characters living in present day New York. But they’re not the cutesy characters you remember, they’re much more real than that. Snow White and Prince Charming are divorced because he’s a womanizer. She ends up marrying The Big Bad Wolf, who really isn’t that bad, just really grumpy with a bad temper. Pinocchio is really pissed that he’s still a little boy. All the non-human characters live up at “the Farm”, because people would notice 3 little pigs walking and talking around the city. They’re all trying to live a normal life, and trying to get back to “the Homelands” where they escaped years ago after an invasion by “the Adversary”.

Shrugged: What if the angel and devils you see in movies that sit on people’s shoulders were real? What if there were beings that helped you make choices, big and small? Paper or Plastic? Left or right? Love or hate? Young teen Theo has been assigned the two sides of his conscience, Ange and Dev, who will try to sway him towards good or bad. In the end, though, their main goal is to watch out for him. Sweet art by Micah Gunnell, and story by Frank Mastromauro and the late (and incredibly awesome) Michael Turner.

So if you’re interested, head out to your local shop on May 2nd and pick up some free books - take a little time to browse the store and see if maybe something catches your interest! Check out the Free Comic Book Day website to see what free comics are going to be available. There’s some good ones there! Hugh Jackman wants you to ! (see the Wolverine trailer afterwards)

Tags: Video Gaga, Comic Book Geekdom by Yano
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We are currently in the midst of potty training boot camp. We had actually started potty training Ben last year, but we didn’t want to push him. We got him his own little potty to use, and some really awesome cartoon themed underwear (which he calls “underpants”, thanks to the Mickey Mouse Club). He wasn’t really fond of the potty, often stating that he wanted diapers. We went a couple days last year with no pants or diapers, but I just ended up getting peed on.

This time around, Dave was around to help out, and we decided to ditch the little potty and move up to the big person toilet. Ben really enjoyed flushing it, so we thought we could use that to our advantage. Once again, we went pantless (well, not us, but Ben). I also bought some Reese’s Pieces (I know it’s wrong to give them food as a reward, but we were desperate), as well as printed out a Dora the Explorer potty chart and stickers. We followed him around the whole day, asking him every now and then if he had to potty. There were many false alarms, where he would say he had to potty, but we just ended up going to the bathroom holding him on his stepstool with no pee to be seen. Finally, we had a successful potty - though it was when my dad was watching him. He was so proud as he came down into the basement as I was working and announced, “I peed in the toilet!”

Over the next couple days he was at about 50% with peeing in the toilet…though he refused to do a #2. (Too much information? Too bad!) Finally, we made a breakthrough yesterday - we had less false alarms and he would actually pee when he announced it. He’s been delighted to get his Reese’s Pieces and put a sticker on his chart. And finally, right before bedtime, he stated to Dave that he had to poop, and agreed to go on the toilet.

You know you’re a mom when you’re ecstatic and totally psyched when your kid poops on a toilet for the first time.

We had a mini celebration where we hugged and jumped around, as Ben said, “That was easy” and agreed to do it again (riiiight!). He got a new car out of his massive car-holding truck that we had put away after Christmas. We’ll give him a new car every time he’s successful, and he’s determined to get all the cars AND the truck.

Just wanted to share!

Tags: Ben by Yano
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3 years ago today, I woke up early in the morning thinking that my stomach was hurting because the pantyhose I wore for a reception the night before was too tight. I was thinking to myself, “I knew I should have gotten maternity pantyhose!”. But as the pains came again and again, I realized that my baby was making an earlier appearance - 17 days early!

After a pretty quick and simple delivery (or at least that’s what I tell myself, though I do remember that there was an issue with my epidural, but hey, I felt NOTHING), our little baby boy was born.

And now, we’ve got this talkative, crazy, manipulative, silly ball of energy that makes every day of our lives an adventure.

Happy birthday, Benjamin!

(the annual birthday video will be coming soon!)

Tags: Ben by Yano
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Trying to Bloom, originally uploaded by Yano.

We had a couple of inches of snow yesterday - IN APRIL! I’m so tired for snow, spring is taking FOREVER to come this year.

I’ve got pics of easter egg hunting madness from last weekend, I’ll post them up soon.

Tags: Uncategorized by Yano
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