4:20

That's what time Dexter lost his peanut butter cups and his train this morning.  Bummer.  Two more hours and he'd have been in peanut butter cup heaven.  He also tells me he would like to eat his train.  Not the actual toy train.  But rather a gummy train.  Which we don't own.  He'll have to use his vivid imagination for that one.

Erin continues to cough and be snotty, but her fever seems to be under control today.  And she's full of smiles because her Nonna is fawning over her all weekend...

A riveting game of CandyLand

Does this look like the face of a peanut butter cup eater?  Crossing our fingers...

Peanut Butter Cups

Mama's boy is a candy junkie.  A newly discovered Recee's Peanut Butter Cup junkie.

All the talking and explaining and reassuring in the world was not helping his sleeping situation.  Progressively ignoring him has helped a lot over the past few weeks, but we still had an hour or so of yelling for Daddy at bed time, and an hour or so of yelling in the morning when he wakes up at the ungodly hour of 5:30.

Today Dexter said something about big peanut butter cups.  And a little light bulb popped up over my head.  What if...  What if we put a package of peanut butter cups in his room, right next to his clock?  And the train that we've been promising him for 2 weeks if he could just shut his mouth when his clock is blue.  And if he's quiet for blue light, he can have both when his clock turns yellow.  And if he makes any noise, we will reach in the door and grab the peanut butter cups and the train, and he will not get them.

I absolutely thought that the peanut butter cups would be in his room for about 3.2 seconds after John closed the door at bed time, and then his usual calling for Daddy would resume and the peanut butter cups would be MINE.  All mine!  :-)

But the boy surprises me sometimes.  It's been a quiet night, save for the hacking coughs from all members of the family.  The baby is still coughing, which is both the cutest and the most concerning sound.  Her fever is steadily going up, and I called the doctor about it tonight.  So far we've been given the all-clear to keep fighting the germs at home.  But if anything gets worse, I see another trip to A.I. in our future...  We're crossing our fingers that it doesn't come to that.

Doesn't really look like the face of a sick baby.  She's been fairly chipper, which is part of the reason why we're allowed to stay home, even though her fever has spiked over the "dude, call the doctor" mark.

Isn't Married Life Glamorous?

That's what John said on Monday.  December 31st.  New Years's Eve.  As I was walking around the house trying to get a cranky, tired baby back to sleep.  And John was trying to get a sick three-year-old to eat a piece of toast with honey.  When our grand plans of dinner and a movie that evening flew right out the window with Dexter's 101 degree fever.  At least he wasn't puking this year.  But, really.  What is it with Dexter and his dislike of New Year's Eve?  Or at least his uncanny ability to sabotage any NYE plans we might have?

We, otherwise, had a nice holiday.  Relaxing.  We didn't do much of anything.  We didn't have any guests.  Well, Grandma and Grandpa came the weekend before Christmas.  But no Christmas guests.  And thanks to Dexter's illness, no guests after Christmas, either.  So we hung out.  Played with trains a lot.  Played in the snow one day.  The boys went to the Choo Choo Barn to see a whole lotta model trains (Dexter showed me the "book train" on his train video.  Why is it called the book train, you ask?  Because it says "Reading" on it.  And if it says Reading, there must be books on the train.  I love that boy).  We ate a lot of Christmas cookies and Hershey's kisses.  And then after that we played with trains some more.  And man, oh man, am I ever sick of playing with trains...

Currently in the house of sick, Erin has a runny nose and one helluva cough.  No fever, and she seems otherwise fairly chipper.  But sounds like crap.  Poor baby.  She, fortunately, is tremendously entertained by ceiling fans, and does not require endless hours of train play to keep her amused.  The other day I was trying to feed her, and she just kept staring at her fan and grinning.  Then she'd look at me, all serious-like.  Then stare back at her fan and grin some more.  She is fantastically cute.

Things are getting back to post-holiday normal here for a couple days.  Swimming and school started today. Dex only yelled for Daddy for like 30 minutes tonight before he passed out.  We need school and swimming every day...

I have seven bazillion pictures, and I am not going to post all of them here.  Let me see if I can find a few cute ones.

Just a nice spring day, blowing on some dandelion puffs.  On December 13th...

Sleepy Santa Baby

Reindeer PJ's

Dexter discovered, while making Christmas cookies for Santa, that he likes molasses.  Kind of a lot.  Also, Grandpa, he was reading the recipe.  And read that we needed 1/2 cup of mole asses.  Thanks.  :-)

Pint-sized Santa

Awww.  Dexter's not even trying to strangle the baby...

Catching snowflakes on Christmas Eve

The first time I have ever, in the 11 years I have known him, seen John Norman ride a bike

Saturday Snow Angel

Dexter willingly and quite happily went sledding.  I was shocked.  We used the hill in to Mr. Mike's yard because it's 1) steep and 2) doesn't shoot you out in to the road

Dexter did his fair share of eating snow.  He at least ate the white snow.  Mostly.  I think.

Family puzzle time

Under that blanket is a fever-ish Dexter, watching videos on his IPad

I know, Baby Girl.  That's how I feel, too, just listening to your cough.  I imagine you feel worse than I do.

Dexter, by the Numbers

Dexter is kind of in to measuring things these days.  More specifically, he's in to measuring how big something is, or how much he likes something, either by holding out his hands to show you how much he likes it, or by assigning it a number.

So, for instance, he likes trains 90.

He, surprisingly, likes ducks 900.

He has decided that Mama loves him more than infinity.

Grandma has said she loves him more than 50 dollars.  He finds that fairly hysterical.

And in a frank, serious discussion (likely held while Dex was sitting on the potty, as that is where all serious discussions happen these days) Dexter told John that he used to like sleeping 30.  But now he likes it ZERO.

And that's our boy.  So completely filled with separation anxiety these days that bed time has turned in to an hour of him yelling out for Daddy, before he finally goes to sleep.  If we're fantastically lucky, he only wakes up yelling for Daddy once during the night, before waking at 6AM or so and yelling for Daddy until his clock turns yellow at 6:30.  Most nights we are not so lucky.  I say "we" like I am really involved in this.  I am not.  I am responsible for the baby, and fixing her if she wakes up in the middle of the night (thankfully, she doesn't do that often).  John has been in charge of fixing the stubborn, persistent, almost-four-year-old.  Bless John's heart and very very sleepy body.  Because this is, honestly, way worse than it ever was having a newborn baby.

Hopefully this is a pain in the ass phase that shall, eventually, pass.

The boys are in Strasburg today, visiting the Choo Choo Barn with its huge model train exhibit.  Erin and I are hanging out at home, vacuuming and doing laundry and finally taking the Halloween window clings off the windows.  Know what works awesome for storing window clings?  A static cling photo album.  One of the old school ones.  Good luck finding one in any store, ever, but if you get lucky and stumble across one on the bottom row of the photo album section in your new Super Wal-Mart, snatch it up.  It works great.

Dex also digs his new Inchimals.  He's been measuring cars, trains, etc.

We had snow Christmas morning, but it melted by afternoon.  Played outside for a while and said hi to our friend Tee the Horse

From a couple weeks before Christmas.  Wish Erin was looking at the camera.  But, alas, she is far too fascinated by the tree to be looking at me.

Case in point.  I'm not sure how I am going to entertain her when we take down the tree...

Merry Christmas!

I totally needed this to be my Christmas card picture this year.  Alas, I took it like a week after I ordered my cards, so it was not meant to be.

Merry Christmas!  Hope you are having a fantastic day!

Love,
Alissa, John, Dexter, and Erin

Santas We Have Known

I just haven't had the energy this year to trek to the mall with 2 kids, stand in line, and do the traditional Mall Santa scream-fest.  Dexter likes Santa and all, but mostly from a distance.  He's not psyched about actually going close to the big man.  Plus, we've seen Santa already this year.  Times four...

There, of course, was Santa at Daddy's work.  A very cool Santa who has snow globes.

We also saw Santa at the MOMS Club Christmas party.  This Santa was met at the door by a huge gaggle of excited children.  And he arrived on a fire truck.  He was a very nice Santa.

It, quite honestly, brought a tear to my eye to see Dex talking to Santa so earnestly.  I have no idea what he was talking about.  In all likelihood he was simply asking Santa for a candy cane.

Santa said he hadn't held such a little baby in a very long time...

I thought we were going to have to do some fast story telling on the morning after the MOMS Club party, when Dexter stated that the Santa at the MOMS dinner had a longer beard than the Santa at Daddy's work. And OH!  SHIT!  Quick!  Think up a good story!  But John did some good redirection (LOOK!  I saw a light!) and all was forgotten.  So we think.  Not much is ever really forgotten in this boy's mind.  Unless it's something like me telling him to hang up his coat.

Santa came for a visit on the fire truck one evening.  I almost forgot he was coming, and then saw the note on the fridge and wrote "Santa" on my hand.  During dinner I got John's attention and showed him my hand, not wanting to talk about Santa coming to visit in case he came so late that Dex was already in bed.  It didn't work.  Dex simply looked up and asked, "Mama, why did you write Santa on your hand?"  Damn three year old child who can read...

He was not psyched about talking or even coming close to this Santa.  Apparently fire trucks freak him out.  After this Santa visit he asked why Santa always comes on fire trucks.  And his Hess fire truck has been delivering presents to everyone all week long.  Although Santa has also been delivering presents via Hess airplane.  Faster than reindeer, I suppose.

Finally, Santa came to visit at a cookie exchange we went to with our Bel Air mom friends.  Dex wanted nothing to do with him, except to go up and ask Santa, "Do you like candy canes?"  Santa was a little confused, til he figured out that really Dexter was just asking Santa for a candy cane.  That's all Santa is good for in Dexter's book.  Candy canes.  He likes candy canes.

I think we're kind of in the holiday spirit here.  We've got some presents under the tree, although we still have more to wrap.  But with kids as cute as these, who needs more presents, really?

Santa! I know him!

We had a nice weekend with Aunt Christy, who came down to meet Erin for the first time.  Dexter and John picked her up at the train station, which had Dex all jazzed.  He wanted to know if Percy was going to be at the Parksburg train station.  Because, you know, Thomas is at the Strasburg station.  So why wouldn't Percy be at Parksburg?  I think he was ok with not seeing Percy, because he got to see TWO trains when picking up Christy, and the lights turned different colors.  It was, apparently, way cool.  I don't know.  I didn't go.  Erin and I were at Girlie Movie Night.

Saturday morning Santa was at John's work again, so we went to have breakfast with the big guy and his very nice wife.

My mom saw this picture and said it didn't look like Dex was any more thrilled about seeing Santa than he was last year.  Which, although it appears that way, actually was not true.  He was really very chatty and friendly with Santa, and was quite happy the entire morning.

Both Santa and Mrs Claus commented on how different and how much better Dexter was this year, compared to last year.  Which is impressive, really, because Santa sees a whole lot of kids, and only sees them once a year.  So the fact that he remembered what Dex was like last year and compared it to this year...  Well, apparently he made an impression last year.  Perhaps not such a good one.

When I told Dexter we were going to Breakfast with Santa at Daddy's work, he asked if Santa was going to have his snow globes there.  My tired old brain had completely forgotten about the snow globes.  Dexter's had not.  When we entered the room he immediately made a beeline for Santa's snow globes.

Oh, yeah.  The baby.  Erin went, too.  She was mostly oblivious.  She's easy these days.

End of the morning, post-french-toast-stick checking out of the snow globes.  Again.  Some more.

I do believe that might be a smile.  In the general vicinity of Santa.

It was nice having Aunt Christy hang out with us for the weekend.

She fed Erin her second official bottle.  Erin was unimpressed, still.  I have different nipples on order.  For the bottle.  Not for me.  We'll see if that helps her out.

She was also SOUND ASLEEP at 7:30 while Christy was trying to give her a bottle.  Apparently this being a baby thing is very very tiring.