Thanks Easter Bunny! BAWK BAWK!

I'm late with my Easter update, because I am still editing photos, because I have about seven trillion of them. Sorry.

Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Jeanne came to visit. We saw cows. We put up siding and awnings. We went to Longwood to look at tulips. We ate. A lot. And the Easter Bunny came! YAY, Easter Bunny! Dex was entertained with looking for eggs, but after about five minutes the novelty wore off. The Easter Bunny hid about a dozen too many eggs, I think.

I was really impressed with Dexter all weekend. He willingly gave hugs to all family, even Grandpa with his funny beard. Grandma put him down for naps. He went off to play with Mr. Potato Head with Aunt Jeanne after dinner. Grandma carried him around the farm day activities. All while John or I were there. Right there. In the house. The little man is becoming less clingy. More social. He rocks.

So, thanks, Easter Bunny and Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Jeanne, for a fun weekend. Let's do it again some time. BAWK! BAWK!

Help, Buddy! I've fallen! And I can't get up!

Cute kid

The Cowans in the back yard

Jumping with Daddy

Dex LOOOVED the ducks at the ag day in Oxford.

Cool, Mama! The Easter Bunny brought me a star!

Lots of eggs. Very heavy.

Look at my cool present from Aunt Jeanne!

Off to Longwood. Lots of pretty flowers.

Dex and I feed the geese amongst a gaggle of small children. Bread brings quite the crowd of geese, fish, and kids.

With Mama in front of the coolest thing on earth

We let Aunt Jeanne and Daddy hang with us, too

With Grandma. How all of us are looking at a camera, kind of smiling, is a mystery. It shall likely never happen again.

We are cute. I am cuter.

Grandma and Dex are having a good conversation about something.

Wonder if we can make this one our Christmas card this year?

We're still cute. I'm still cuter.

Gazillions of flowers, and almost nobody else there.

Trying to get a shot with Dex and flowers. He wasn't having it.

I did get a picture of a cute husband, though.

Banging on a drum in front of the cool stained glass.

Daddy got to watch Dex chase water.

It takes fierce concentration to get your finger right in to that stream of water.

Harry Potter in the making. Thanks for the star, Grandma! He's been carrying it around all week.

Keepers

Dex and I went to Longwood this morning. Wait, you say - didn't you just go on Sunday with your family? Didn't you just go last week? Well, yes. Yes we did both of those. But I really wanted a picture of Dex with the tulips, and I didn't really get a good one on Sunday. And today was a nice cloudy day. And I figured we could kind of go off the beaten track and see some things we never look at. And I thought Dex might like to see the whole fountain show. And we had no other plans for the morning. So off we went. We make good use of our annual membership.

AND - I think I got a few keepers:

An "off the beaten track" fountain I never knew existed. We went on a fountain quest today.

I could only get Dex in to the tulip garden with a promise that we'd go find more water after. And he still was not pleased. I had to do some running around to get him to crack a smile. The flowers, fortunately, don't need as much prep work for a good photo.

If you take 100 pictures, though, one or two come out ok.

Dexter's version of tip-toeing through the tulips

Maybe not so much tip-toeing as running, giggling, with arms flailing

We saw, as promised, the water go WAY up.

Today's story, told repeatedly at lunch, is about "Sit next to Mama, water go WAY up."

This is about as close to a standing still, kind of posed picture with some tulips as I could get. I'll take it.

Stories

If you were at our house today you would hear one (or both) of two stories:

Water fountain go WAY up. Water fountain go WAY down. All done. Go home.

(This being a story about the main water fountains at Longwood, which we saw in the middle of a fountain show as we were leaving on Sunday. The water did, indeed, go WAY up. And then WAY down because they turned the fountains off at the end of the show. So, yes, the water was all done. And we didn't actually go home. We went to Applebee's for lunch.)

Swimming. Miss Eliza. Mama go upstairs. Dexter swim Miss Eliza.

(This is a story about Dexter's swimming lesson today. His first day of swimming with NO MAMA. It went ok, really. I mean, he yelled "Mama, Mama" for about 15 minutes, and I think he cried the whole time. But Miss Eliza was his and his alone, so he didn't just have to sit on the edge of the pool waiting for an instructor. And he did everything Miss Eliza asked him to do. So, all in all I was really very pleased. I asked him if he wanted to swim with Miss Eliza again next week. He said NO. I asked him who he wanted to swim with next week. He said Miss Eliza. So, I can't figure the kid out.)

If you were here today you'd hear both of those stories. About seven thousand times. And you'd have to stop yourself from saying "Yes, yes, I KNOW, Dexter. You told me. Plus - I WAS THERE, remember?"

Dad and John replacing some siding on Saturday. Because the mis-matched siding has been driving John nuts for a year. You can still see a few rows of the lighter stuff, to the left of Dad.

Installing the new awning for the seven billion degree heat on the deck. I am an excellent holder. Dex is an excellent observer.

Everyone observes as John works. Typical, John says.

New awning. Excellent...

I forgot

I forgot to mention earlier this week that John has effectively deleted the word "Deh-hee" from Dexter's vocabulary. Deh-hee is what Dexter has called himself since January. But now he's made the switch to full-on Dexter. It's a little bittersweet, really. Like "wah-hee" I am going to miss hearing the Deh-hee around the house.

How did John manage such miracles, you ask? I have no idea. Grand things happen when John is sitting in the chair reading to the child. I do believe it has much to do with reading "Dexter Bexley and the Big Blue Beastie" about 27 thousand times over the weekend. And Dexter trying to say all those words. And John asking him "who is that?" Dexter: "Deh-hee Bexley." John: "Who?" Dexter: "Deh-hee, DEXTER Bexley and the Big Blue Beastie." He corrected himself for a couple days, but I don't think I've heard the word Deh-hee since Monday. By George, I think he's got it!

Dexter's three day fever finally broke yesterday, and now all his gunk and congestion seems to have settled in his chest. Leading to much coughing. We've added some extra special inhaler medicine to the mix to see if we can help the little man out. But, again, if you didn't hear him cough you'd never think a thing was wrong with him. He was playing like a mad-man at the playground today.

Hmmm. I haven't taken a picture since about Friday. So let's see what we have in the archives for the grandmas... Here's a few from Easter weekends of yester-year:

It had kind of slipped past me, but looking at 2010 Easter weekend pictures reminded me that that's when we lost our little ball of fuzz. Miss you, little girl. Miss you lots.

78 Trillion Pictures from Longwood, Just to Make You Jealous

Because I can just wake up in the morning, look out the window, and decide it looks like a good day for Longwood Gardens...

Cherry trees from the back side of Tulip Row

This is the way we feed the fish, feed the fish, feed the fish...

The fish were stalking us, and were here, looking just like this, before we even got the bread out of the bag. They can smell a sucker from a mile away...

Pretty tree by the fish pond. I asked Dex if he wanted to go stand under that tree. "Nooooooooooo."

A sea of daffodils. I tried to get Dex to come up here with me, but "Noooooooo."

He was far too captivated with looking across the field at THIS. Yay! The fountains are back on!

And thus we spent oodles of time doing this...

"Duts" and a cherry tree. The geese can smell a sucker from a mile away, too.

The fish here are seriously as big as the geese. Usually the goose won the bread war, but not always.

Feeding fish is fun. Because it involves the eating of the bread.

Somehow, we've been coming here twice a month for a year and never knew this fountain existed.

Dexter enjoyed it

It was difficult to pry him away

I really could only do so with the promise of seeing more water.

Cherry tree on the main Tulip Row

Off goes the child, to find more "wah-hee." That day might have been the last day he called water "wah-hee." Now he calls it "waddah." I kind of miss "wah-hee."

Dae-dow

Pretty. But not peak yet. Hoping for decent weather so the fam can go again this weekend.

Wah-hee found. Child happy.

Dude, Mama, why you takin my picture so much?

Work it, baby. Work it.

Daffodils

Dex and I had a serious discussion about how he was to stay on the sidewalk, and he was NOT to walk in the flowers. He was so good, and also delighted when I told him he could leave the sidewalk and go on the grass. He celebrated with much running.

I tried to get him to stand by the daffodils for a picture. That request was met with a "nooooo." So I had to resort to throwing sticks over that way and having Dexter go get them for me. Nothing like a game of fetch with a toddler.

The pretty tulip garden. We couldn't go in - it was roped off for the day. But we looked and ooooohed and aaaaahhhhed and decided that next week would be even better, so we'd come back then.

Who needs DC cherry trees when you have Longwood?

The scene of the following shots

Cute cracker eater (aka, how I bribed the child in to staying where I wanted him to...)

This one might have to go on a wall somewhere

Or maybe this one

The demon-child pose

Dexter's new fave thing to do is to jump

He's got like a 1/16 inch vertical leap

But it makes him pretty happy

Found a good "up-down."

Hey, look! There's my belly!

Hi belly button!

There were bugs and nets in the fountain fondly known to Dexter as "mess."

Notice the lack of people around the child - they all scattered after his first "mess" was made.

Of COURSE we played with the running water. Did you even need to ask?

Waiting for bubbles...

Wheee! Bubbles!

Adding to the bubbles...

Had fun playing the xylophone for a while.

"Bwoken." The grey slat was stone or something that didn't vibrate with music. So any time Dex hit that piece he declared it "bwoken." And then tried to take it apart, apparently so he could fix it.

Ummmm. So, yeah. Apparently I need to re-evaluate the clothing I keep in the diaper bag, and perhaps find a larger size...

And that's the end! We had a nice morning. Hopefully we can take Grandma and Aunt Jeanne on Saturday morning. Although the forecast is looking damp for the next couple weeks...