We need a vacation from our vacation

Wow. Vacationing is tough work. I mean, sure, the kid slept in almost every day and napped like a champ. But we had people to visit and weddings to attend and sisters to move and birthday cake to eat and swimming to do and... Whew! It's nice to be home. It's nice to be back in a bit of a groove. It's nice to have the small child do independent play time again, and to know that he'll be absolutely fine if I kick his whiney butt out of the kitchen for a while, because he can go play and not break anything. And it's nice to see Dex slowly becoming less whiney the longer we're home. No constant playmate needed. Yes, dear boy. You can go play ALL BY YOURSELF. You don't need to hang on to Mama's leg while she brushes her teeth. Although it IS pretty darn cute to watch you do the "brush teeth" sign over and over and hear you say "ahhhhhh."

We did, however, have a fabulous time in New York visiting family and friends. I do, of course, have eighty-seven trillion pictures of said vacation. As I was unpacking and flipping through photo albums today I was realizing it's a damn good thing I take lots of pictures, because I have almost zero recollection of a whole lot of cool things I have done in my life. Hooray for cameras!

Bundled up but having fun at the Carpenter Family reunion near Saranac Lake in NY. John's mom's side of the family. Beautiful day, and great people to meet and chat with.

The whole bunch of Carpenters

Swinging in the Arctic Circle (aka, Massena), at the playground John helped build when he was in High School.

No playground needed. Just give the boy a nice new sidewalk at Nonna's house to run up and down and he's happy as a clam. What's with that saying, anyway? Why are clams happy?

Dex learned, at Nonna's house, how to stand up and sit down on the stair, with NO HANDS and no assistance needed. He was right proud of himself.

He also learned how to make a royal mess of Nonna's wind chimes...

When the temperature finally broke the 75 degree mark (seriously) we ventured down to the St Lawrence River to do some swimming.

The next day, at Grandma and Grandpa's house, doing some "Pop Goes the Weasel" for what seemed like HOURS. Glad it wasn't my shoulders tossing Dex in the air over and over. John finally had to call it quits. His arms fell off.

Grandpa built Dex this kick-butt sand box, which Dex LOVED. It was supposed to be an easy project, Mom said. And then a whole day and a lot of lumber later, this popped up.

Playing on the pool steps with Mama. Pool steps are cool, cuz Dex can barely stand on the bottom one without drowning. He thinks that's hysterical.

Dex and our friend Samuel play in the sand box. Samuel is really good at sharing. Dex is really good at taking his toys.

There are zero good pictures of the two of these boys. So here - you get Samuel looking cute and Dex looking all pissed off for no apparent reason.

Me and my boy on my 36th birthday. John was already at home in PA. We missed him. But we ate a piece of cake for him. Purity ice cream cake. Amazing.

Aunt Jeanne came down for the day, and our dear friend Gina came over with her son Samuel. We miss them. Wish they'd stop moving all over the damn country and just come back to the DC area, already. Although it IS fun to go visit them. New place every couple years. We plan our vacations around Gina's current home town.

Grandpa also fixed up this kitchen sink for Dex, with a cool REAL faucet. Which Dex turned on, off, on, off. On, look under the faucet to see why there was no water coming out. Pretend to wash hands. Off. On. Look for water. Wash hands. Off.

Went to a nice Cowan family reunion at my uncle's house. Dex enjoyed hijacking the drawing table from his cousin for the afternoon.

I ate AT LEAST 327 thousand clams that afternoon. I had to eat Jeanne's portion, too. Cuz she's a weirdo and doesn't eat clams. HER clams were happy, I suppose.

Fascinated by Uncle Kenny's fish. No, we are SO NOT getting any goddamned fish.

Also fascinated by Uncle Kenny's one large and four very tiny horses. I wanted to tie one to the roof and bring it home. Hella cute.

Speaking of hella cute... Also cute shirt I got for Dex over a year ago, when I went to CTB's wedding in San Fran.

Playing at the new fancy-ass trex playground at the town park in Lansing. A whole lot of people gave a whole lot of money to build that thing. That Leathers guy must be raking in the dough.

Went to a wedding in Sodus Point (never heard of it? Yeah, us too. It's in the middle of nowhere, on Lake Ontario). Dex was looking sharp.

The bride and groom. The groom is my second or third or fourth cousin, or something. Somehow he's related to me, and he's a super nice guy who coaches Division 3 basketball. He's tall, and stuff.

Four generations. My poor Grandma broke her shoulder. Not that day. A few weeks ago.

This one might be this year's Christmas card...

And, finally, John helped move in my sister's furniture on his way home to PA. Dex went home with Grandma. And I stayed for a couple days with Jeanne to help her transform her new cute house from this to something a little unpacked. A little harder for the cat to find places to hide...

Larry the cat

My sister has 1) a ridiculous number of shoes; 2) ridiculously tiny feet; 3) FAR too much lotions, perfumes, hair bands, soap, general bathroom crap. ALSO - I shall never ever volunteer to put contact paper on a shelf, in any house, ever again. Contact paper can bite me.

Jeanne's cute house. She just informed me tonight that she has done pretty much zero unpacking since I left. Good work, girl.

SO! That was our vacation. We were busy. We had fun. We ate FAR too much and gained eleventy billion pounds and now I have to cook again and that sucks and also I finally set up a TV in the basement so we can do Jillian again to try to lose at least half of those eleventy billion pounds. And thus far we haven't turned on the TV. But we HAVE housed some ice cream...

More pictures can be seen HERE, in case you haven't seen enough, already. Please, lord, stop making me look at your damn vacation pictures! I don't have everything posted quite yet, but I'll try to by the end of the week.

Life in six month intervals

Cuz I was a slacker and never a did a one year Dexter video - you get a cheating, little snippets of life video.

Life in 6 month intervals from Alissa Norman on Vimeo.

Snippets of Dexter's life at birth, 6 months, 12 months, and 18 months

Dex went to the doctor today for his 18 month check-up. All is well. He's 34.5 inches tall, 27.5 pounds, and has a huge head. All is normal, and the doctor wasn't worried about his lack of talking. But if we see no progress in a few months we can get him evaluated for (FREE!) speech services. AND - he's all done with shots til he's 4 years old. Yay!

Need to start packing today to go to the Arctic Circle (aka, Massena, NY) for vacation. Now, where did I put the hats and gloves??

Did you miss Longwood? Yep, so did we.

It'd been a good two weeks since we'd been to Longwood Gardens. Monday dawned cloudy and cool - a perfect summer day. So we packed up our milk and our snack cup full of cheese and schlepped off to Longwood. After a quick stop at Wal-Mart for some diapers and a new TV/DVD player for the basement. So maybe we'll get off our asses and start doing Jillian again...

What Dex thinks of my photo taking...

Checking out the honey bees and their hive. So cool. We spent much time here, tapping on plexi-glass and thoroughly pissing off some honey bees.

I'm a bee!

Splitting the trees

Cute-ish self-portrait

A plethora of pine cones

Italian Water Garden from a different vantage point. Still enthralling.

Check it out, Aunt Jeanne! FROGS spit water!

I am shocked he didn't duck the rope and jump right in

Stroller pusher

Running away down the wisteria tunnel

Further

And further

Far enough! He decided to come back

And back

And back

Aaaaaaand he's BACK!

Smelling the flowers

Another self-portrait

Ummmmm. Smelling? A flower? Or something?

Not thrilled. But still cute.

This afternoon, after his nap, Dex and I went to the corner for some ice cream for a snack. I am continually impressed by his ability to down an entire bowl of ice cream, almost completely on his own. I mean, he EATS all of it. I just have to help him with his spoon toward the end, when the ice cream gets all melty. Otherwise it makes a GINORMOUS mess.

And then, after 2.5 hot dogs for dinner, Dex started saying "hot dog." Kind of. He said "hot." And then said "hot da." So, that's kind of hot dog, right?

He'd have eaten more, but John wouldn't let me give him more.

And then he chugged a cup of water before bed. Good thing I bought some size 5 diapers for overnights...

Fabulous day. All summer days should be this cloudy and cool. Tomorrow summer returns. What kind of trouble shall we get in to? The library, maybe. Story time. Sweet!

Eighteen

Dear Dexter,

A couple days ago you turned eighteen. Eighteen months, that is. Or, as your dad says, "one-twelfth of the way to freedom..." We kid, though. We'll be sad when you turn 18 years old and move away, go to college. Right now at 18 months old, we just shake our heads in disbelief that you are this old, and then we giggle every time we see you because you are so damn cute.

A few things that we want to remember about you at this age:

You're a big boy now and want to walk up and down the stairs on your feet. Facing forward. Like we do. Except that you can't, as your little legs are still a bit too short. But give you a couple hands to hang on to and you can come down the stairs like a pro.

You've discovered light switches. The one switch you can reach (on the stairs) you turn on and off as often as humanly possible. We're going to blame Aunt Christy for this one - you didn't know what a light switch was til she was here visiting. :-)

You crack us up with your animal sounds. "Brooooo" for cow. "Ma ma" for sheep. "Ssssssss" for snake. "Pbbppttttttt" for horse. And I think you're kind of getting an "Auph" for dog. I think. We might be making that up.

You love airplanes. Every time you hear an airplane you point to the sky. If you can't see it because it's above the clouds you whine with frustration. And you find it highly entertaining to watch Mama do the "airplane" sign.

You started climbing a few weeks ago and haven't quit since. You climb up on chairs. You try to climb on the coffee table. You climb on your picnic table and sit on top to play with toys - better view up there. The other day I caught you doing this:

I also walked in to the dining room one day to find you sitting on the dining room table playing with the salt and pepper shakers. Which Mama let you know, in no uncertain terms, was big fat NO.

You love to dance now. You stand in one place and run your feet up and down, giggling the whole time. Except you get sad if Mama or Dad don't dance with you. Daddy was dancing and spinning with you one day, so now you love to dance, then spin til you're so dizzy you can't walk straight. We went to visit a friend the other day, and another friend had a nice round changing pad on the floor. Which you proceeded to dance all over. It was a perfect stage.

We have some foam letters for you that you play with in the bathtub and on the changing table. It makes an excellent distraction. It also makes you really learn those few letters, and try to say the sounds. So now you can say the sounds for the letters X, F, B, P, S, and of course D.

I am continually amazed by your book choosing abilities. You have your favorite books that you will pull off the shelf over and over again, while other books get ignored. You can pull the Itsy Bitsy Spider book off the shelf, bring it over, hand it to me, and sign "spider." How do you know?

You've finally gotten better at doing the motions for the "Wheels on the Bus" song. You do a kick-ass wipers going "swish swish swish" and are also fab at the money going "jingle jingle jingle." You still are not so good at saying how the baby says "wah wah wah" or the people say "shhh shhh shhh" but we're still working on those. Perhaps if you took your fingers out of your mouth every now and then...

You have recently discovered how to pour water from one vessel to another. So bath time is a fairly continuous job of pouring water from one cup to another, or using a teaspoon to try to fill up a bowl. It's cute.

This morning you and Daddy were playing in the living room, with your push-around car. You signed "help" and turned around and ran away, giggling. Then you looked back to see if Daddy would follow you. You signed "help" for Daddy to start a game of chase with you. Pretty cool stuff.

You love the kitchen set that Grandma and Grandpa got for you. You like to pull out the grapes and "wash" them in the sink, then "cook" them on the stove. You stir whatever concoction you've created in your mind in any bowl or pot you can get your hands on, with whatever spoon you can find. You always, very politely, offer the spoon to Mama or Daddy for a taste before tasting it yourself.

Your ability to follow directions is pretty staggering. "Dex, can you put your plate on the table, please?" Off you toddle, carrying a plate and carefully placing it on the edge of the table. "Dex, can you get your bib out of the drawer and put it on the table, please?" Flabbergasted when you actually go over to the correct drawer, open it, take out the bib, and toss it on the table.

You play with your ball popper every day. For some reason, much to your Daddy's dismay, your favorite balls are the red ball and the pink ball. Pink!

For some reason you are mesmerized by the air conditioner and the exhaust pipe for the hot water heater. You walk from one to the other, every time you go outside. Is the AC on? No. How about the pipe? No. How about now? AC on? No. How about the pipe. Still no. And then the AC turns on and after you jump in fear from the noise, you get all excited and have to run over to check out the fan. Last weekend we were playing on the swing set and the exhaust pipe turned on. Swing time was over. Must go see the pipe!

You have cranked up the volume on your whining recently. It's not the most pleasant experience. We are hoping the whine factor will decrease a bit when you start to talk.

You haven't quite gotten the hang of "thank you" yet. You sign it well. Just not quite at the right times. You give me a spoon, and sign "thank you." Hmmm. It was my turn to do that, thanks, Dex.

You love to water the flowers on the front porch. You are fascinated with the water faucet and the hose. You play in your kiddie pool even when it's empty. You love to play with your water table. Water, water, water. Your favorite place to be.

You're a joy to play with all day. You tire me out. You make me laugh. You frustrate me. You amaze me. I love watching you grow, watching you learn, watching you laugh. It's also nice when you go to bed, and your daddy and I can chat about our day, and about what cool thing you did, and about how cute you are.

Happy birthday, little man. We love you.