We now return to your regularly scheduled programming. BUT FIRST, these words...

It's Wednesday. It's 2011, which is kind of mind-boggling to me. I never write checks any more, so I don't write dates much any more. So I might start remembering what year it is in, oh, about 2012.

Anyway, we're back to our normal daily routine. John went back to work yesterday (what's up with slacker Gore peeps having Monday off, while the poor little children had to get up to go to school?) and Dex and I are back to entertaining ourselves with play dates, swimming lessons, library story time, and, FINALLY, walking the dog. Which we haven't done for about a month. Which my legs reminded me of while we were walking. But DAMN, the child still knew where every single goddamned basketball hoop was, before we got there. And also every stop sign.

It's not quite back to normal yet for my parents, as my mom had knee replacement surgery on Monday and is in the hospital for the week. Dad's there with her pretty much most of the time. He said she's doing well. Some whining, which is to be expected as she is the world's biggest sissy. But the surgery site looks good, and she's been up and walking during PT, and they hope to send her butt home on Friday.

SO, as the Grandmas are really the only people who read this anyway, and Grandma needs something to do to pass the time away in the hospital, and I am SURE she'll show the nurses and anyone else who will look how ridiculously cute her grandson is... You get to look at 28 billion pictures of our whirlwind trip to New York for the holidays. Which was a nice trip. But, seriously - why does everyone live SO FAR AWAY? Our trip went something like this:

Drive - sleep - presents - eat - drive - sleep - presents - eat - sleep - sled - eat - eat - sleep - play with stop signs - drive - eat - sleep - zoo - eat - sleep - sled - eat - drive - sleep in own beds YAY!

Oh, in other news: Dex has been hacking up a lung for about forever. For a while we thought it was because of the lung infection he had in November. But it's been a while since that was an issue. So we thought maybe allergies? He's on Zyrtec now, which improved his night time sleep. And today we did half the dose PM and half the dose AM, which (TOTALLY KNOCKING ON WOOD RIGHT NOW) seems to have allowed him to nap without coughing for the first time in about seventeen billion years. Also, we started swim lessons at the Y. Not sure I like them compared to our lessons at Kids First, but they are paid for, so we'll do them for 2 months. Also, I have a pork roast in the crock pot right now that smells AMAZING and is totally making me hungry.

OK, so enough babbling. 28 billion pictures:

We've gotta go ALLLLLL the way back to Thursday the 23rd, when we went to the Brandywine River Museum to look at trains.

It's a very impressive train room, with one freight train with like 146 cars behind it.

Dex was fascinated, and we stayed for two hours, but it kind of wore his little butt out.

He bounced back in time to see the train crossing go down one more time. He now has a healthy appreciation for train crossings, and talks about them ALL THE TIME. Eating Cream of Wheat? All the sudden he's talking about how when the train crossing goes down, cars will "stop" and when the train crossing goes "up" (new word!!) cars will "goooooo."

Friday night many people in the neighborhood put out luminaria, which made for a pretty drive down our road.

SANTA CAME! At like 7:30 PM on Friday night. He's FAST!

John tries to convince Dex that his bike helmet is cool. Dex will have none of it. He enjoys his bike, hates his helmet. We're going to have to try the cool helmet Aunt Jeanne gave him. Maybe he'll like that one better.

Do you know how hard it is to find 1) a blue baby stroller and 2) a baby doll that doesn't cry, poop, drink from a bottle, or have hair that grows?

Skyping with the fam on Saturday morning. It was nice to be able to see everyone, while still enjoying a totally relaxed Christmas morning in our own house.

A vast majority of the morning was spent doing this...

And this, with a wide assortment of cars, trucks, and trains.

Sunday morning in Lansing. Santa came again!

Most time between playing with cars was spent watching snow fall. Mesmerizing. Don't ask the child if he wants music, though. HEAVEN FORBID you turn on the music...

Horse car = pure awesome. Dex is saying horse here. "ppbbbblllllttttt"

Grandpa's fave gift? 5 pounds of root beer barrels.

A Slinky, a Slinky, oh what a wonderful toy! Also of note - oblivious old dog who can't hear. Bless her heart.

Aunt Jeanne was none too thrilled at getting up at 0'dark-thirty. But a few Dexter snuggles brought her around.

Dex made some killer artwork for the grandmas and the aunts.

What's with the face?

And we, of course, made more "saaaah gookies." Because it's far too cute to watch.

In Massena. One of multiple child/bird stare-downs. Dex thought Wiley Bird was the Coolest. Thing. With. Two. Wings.

More work from the artiste

There's that face again!

OMG, Nonna. COOLEST. STOP SIGN. EVER!!

Buddy was, remarkably, pretty well behaved. I mean, he's a pain in the ass. But he's a fairly cute and easy to tolerate pain in the ass. Unless you're my sister's cat. In which case he is simply a scary black pain in the ass.

Already showed you pictures from Massena sledding excursion...

Many an hour was passed at Nonna house arranging his stop sign JUST SO, then walking around the chair, arranging again, walking around the chair, peeking back around to be sure Daddy didn't accidentally on purpose move the stop sign from its arranged spot, walking around the chair...

In Syracuse, the boys watch football, as all good boys do.

Dex and Grampa play with cars

Somehow our only decent family shots seem to have an upside-down child in them

This one's ok, too

As is this one with Aunt Jeanne

We went to the zoo, where the biggest hit was the penguins

Much giggling here

Cute penguins!

Dex pet the tiger on the nose. Also fed it some of his cheese. Which was far too cute. Hopefully he doesn't try this if he ever comes face to face with a REAL tiger.

While we were off doing fun stuff, John and Dad were doing, ummmmm - this. John spent a few hours in this position putting insulation under Jeanne's porch floor. I thought he kinda looked like the Wicked Witch of the East, smooshed under Dorothy's house. Right?

OH! We went sledding at Aunt Jeanne's house. Prepared Dex by "sledding" in the house, and then just tossed his butt on when we got to the hill.

I'm not sure he was super excited about it. But he didn't cry. So that's something, right?

And this here video just goes to show you that's there's absolutely no dignity in parenting... I am a total dork.

Hope you all had a lovely holiday!

And a Happy New Year!

We wished you a Merry Christmas, right? No? Crap. Sorry. So, how about now we wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. Cool? We're good?

We made it home from our holiday travels to places way colder and with FAR more snow than here. Drove in the garage (by far the best part of the new house) in time to put a small child to bed, grab half a beer, and watch New Kids on the Block, along with the Backstreet Boys, perform on New Years Eve, and then watch the ball drop while Dick Clark managed to mention every number between 25 and 1. He did good this year. And then we went to sleep in our king sized bed, which we have dearly missed for a week. Ahhhhh. I love my bed.

The first day of 2011 dawned sunny and warm, and we took full advantage of a tiny taste of spring to go outside and enjoy our nice brown grassy yard. Apparently there was snow? Or something? While we were gone. Some blizzard or something. But reliable Facebook sources told me that here in New London we only got maybe 4 inches of snow. And you can see in the photos below there are only small pockets left, only in the places where the sun don't shine. Which is cool, cuz we didn't really feel like shoveling the driveway right when we got home.

Wheee! Swing! I think Dex had forgotten about swings. Til yesterday, when we went for a swing in 6 inches of snow at Aunt Jeanne's house. And he remembered that he loves it.

The boys marvel at the ground. Hey look! GRASS!

CHEESE!! Oh - speaking of cheese - Dexter's newest word is cheese. Or, more accurately, chjeeee. Entertainingly enough, this is also what he calls Aunt Jeanne. :-)

Check out what Dex did for the very first time today, all by himself!

He's always gone down the slide on his belly. Yesterday I threw him down the slide in Syracuse on his butt, while Aunt Jeanne caught him at the bottom. Apparently he decided he prefers sliding that way now.

Huh. How come Daddy didn't catch you, Dex?

We spent the entire day doing nothing. And we're doing a fine job of continuing that tonight, as we watch football and eat some chocolate covered gummy bears. All in all, a most excellent start to 2011.

Is it wrong to laugh so hard I pee my pants?

While watching this video?

I mean, c'mon. You totally laughed, right?

So we went sledding this morning, up here in the Arctic Circle. Dex kind of enjoyed the snow. I think he liked the IDEA of snow more than the actual snow itself.

He enjoyed walking along the fence line in the snow.

He enjoyed playing with the neighbor's slide in the snow

He enjoyed watching everyone slide down the hill on the toboggan

But try as we might, we could not convince him that actual SLEDDING was a fun idea. We thought about just tossing his ass on the sled and letting him cry a bit before he realized it was cool. But we thought better of it.

He also was decidedly displeased when Daddy went sledding. Apparently Mama can risk her life on a curled up piece of wood all she wants. But if Daddy tries to sled? Child breaks in to all kind of hysterics, shaking his head NONONONO

All in all, though, we had a good time.

And what about Buddy, you ask? Did the little short-legged dog from Virginia enjoy the snow? Well, truthfully, I think the answer is no. No, Buddy did not like the snow.

No, Buddy didn't like the snow at all.

He LOVED it.

Decisions, Decisions

Life is always so full of difficult choices. Option A, or Option 2? Eat a cookie now, or eat a cookie later? (The answer is, always, NOW). Take a child to NY for a 24 hour trip for a funeral, or make an overworked John miss a day of work to stay home with him? (Thanks, honey, for staying home). Pay a billion dollars for an invisible fence for the rotten dog, or just let him wander in the far outer reaches of the across the street neighbor's yard? Go yell at the child who has been happily standing in the corner of his crib yammering away and blowing raspberries while he's supposed to be sleeping, or just let him be and hope he eventually goes to sleep? (The surprising answer to that one is that going in and yelling at him actually works).

But the biggest decision of the day - WHAT PHOTOS SHOULD I POST HERE? Because they are all SO DAMN AWESOME and you really need to see them all but I know some of you tend to fall asleep if I post 28 billion photos, so I like to give you the option to only look at, say, 8 billion in a post. And then leave a LINK to see the rest elsewhere. So I don't bore you to tears. So here, for your viewing pleasure, are my favorite eight billion pictures from Dexter and my trip to Longwood Gardens on Tuesday morning. We went so we could actually SEE the inside of the conservatory, which we really could not do on Saturday night when we went with 300 million other people there. But if you get there at 9:30 in the morning, there tends to be more helpful employees there than actual visitors, and you can wander at will, and let a small child push a stroller all by himself with many fewer negative consequences. I highly recommend it.

The red Christmas tree in the new conservatory. Millions of people stood in this spot on Saturday night to try to get this shot. Tuesday morning? Just me and Dex.

Ornament jealousy

Cute little fountain and poinsettia in the main conservatory, around the gold Christmas tree

Dex climbed on some chairs to check out the tree, the water, and the fans on the ceiling.

The aforementioned gold Christmas tree. This one? Looks better at night. I'm not a big fan of the pastel decorations and the random gold crap draped all over the tree.

I like the red tree much better

Every room had a little festive cheer. Poinsettia squirreled away in the jungle room, which I thought looked pretty cool.

And some festive little red branches on a tree near the rose room.

Cute child checking out the leaping water

Now he's on the ledge right below the leaping water, as it leaps over his head. I really love the mural behind him. It "pops."

Stick your finger over the fountain too hard, and water squirts you right in the face...

Ahhh, our favorite spot. Checking out the traveling water.

So, so happy. I would be DELIGHTED with this picture if the dude in the black coat hadn't stepped behind Dex right as I was taking the shot. As it is, still pretty cute.

Perhaps my favorite shot of the day. The boy is just like his father, checking things out to see how they work. Where's that water coming from? Where'd it go? When's it coming back?

Priceless smile.

I have photos from our visit to the train museum yesterday, but they might not get posted til after Christmas. Hope everyone has a lovely holiday. We made cookies for Santa this morning (ok, we ate a lot of cookie dough this morning, and just barely managed to bake enough cookies to put on a plate). It seems that the yammering child has awoken from his nap, so we're going to grab a quick snack, and then head outside to light our Christmas Eve luminaries (ie, candles in paper bags).

Merry Christmas!!