Snow Day. And Also Teeth.

The weather dudes said today to expect a little bit of snow, starting late afternoon, early evening.  Cool, we thought.  We can go to the MOMS Club holiday party at 4 and still get home before there's too much snow.  And then we looked out the window at 10AM.  And it was snowing.  And it kept snowing.  And kept snowing.  And kept snowing.  I think it's stopped for now, but we're expecting a "wintry mix" tonight before it all changes to rain.  John was totally counting on a couple inches of snow, that would then be washed away by the rain, and he didn't shovel at all.  I don't think anyone was really expecting this:

John thought it was at least 6 inches of snow.  I told him I thought he was full of crap.  So he went out to measure.  6.5 inches on the table on the deck.

So the MOMS holiday party was cancelled.  We ate the mac and cheese I made for it for dinner, along with some meatballs that someone brought over for me to take to the party for them.  We've got beer.  We still have power.  We have a new TV, and the snowy football games have been entertaining to watch today.  The kids played in the basement for a long time, and Dex was tired out this afternoon so he went up for rest time during Erin's afternoon nap.  What made him so tired, you ask?

A good afternoon sledding session, down the hill to the neighbor's driveway. We figure it's safer for Dex to crash in to Mr. Mike's garage than it is for him to sled down our hill in to the road.  Snow play tires a kid out.  As John put it, "He had to walk up that hill a good two times."  (he went DOWN it many many more times, but usually John pulled him back up on the sled)

We also had to make some ginger boys this morning to take to a cookie exchange on Tuesday.  Dad's recipe says a single batch makes 2 - 3 dozen cookies.  Apparently not in the Norman household.  I made a double batch and I think I have about 2.5 dozen ready to take.  I am supposed to take 3 dozen.  Guess what we're doing again on Monday morning?

Why yes.  Yes that IS a picture of both children shoving nice warm cookie dough in to their mouths...

So it's been quite a day.  Made even more exciting by Erin, the grumpy baby.  Grumpy because she's got about 17 teeth trying to poke through her gums right now.  She had 2.5 teeth for at least 2 months.  Then over Thanksgiving, some time when she was puking, she cut one of her top left teeth.  And then this week she cut her top front tooth, on the right.  The one on the left isn't through yet, I don't think.  But it's right there.  So she's not eating a whole lot, and if someone isn't paying attention to her all the time, she's pretty much just a crying puddle of grumpiness.  It's good fun.

Who, ME?  Grumpy?  I can't even imagine.

Please to be enjoying a few million more photos.  And I'll put a link to a video at the very end.  It's an unedited video - Dex likes to see ALL the video, and I made this one for him.  So please pardon the terrible videography.  It's hard holding the camera, trying to zoom, while holding a baby in one arm.

Still-pajama'd Cookie Monster.  He goes with an "Eat 2, cook 1" philosophy.

Yeah, this one wasn't any better.  She required ALL THE DOUGH to be in her mouth at all times, lest there be screaming.

She does now, very cutely, take pretend cookies out of the doll house oven and feed them to me.

Early on in the snow, Dex put on some boots and ran around on the deck so he could see his footprints.

Catching snowflakes

Hmmmm.  I think that there dump truck is still on the deck, in that exact same location, except completely covered in snow.

Post-lunch, pre-sledding dancing.  We thought some Christmas music would be appropriate.  Dexter thought dancing with his stocking would be appropriate.

The boy's got some moves.  Or something.  He's got something.

Erin's fancy.  She gets to dance on the couch.

Kids were all dressed and ready for a holiday party.  Ah, well.  Guess we'll go play in the snow instead.

At the bottom of Mr. Mike's hill.  Dex ROCKED the sledding this year.  He was super awesome.

Snow angel

Erin was unimpressed, mostly.  She watched Dexter sled.  She went for a couple rides down the hill with Daddy and with me.  She didn't scream during the ride, but screamed before and after.  Cuz, DUDE, don't you dare put me down in that white stuff!

Two hour delay for school tomorrow, so far.  We'll see if that changes.  A delay doesn't affect Dexter's life at all.  Hooray for afternoon preschool!

And HERE'S THE VIDEO of Dexter sledding.  Enjoy!

Santa 2013

Santa came to John's work today.  And Mrs. Claus, who is really very very nice.  We were not able to stay for too long because we had to get Erin home for a nap, but in the hour we were there Dex managed to eat 7 french toast sticks, see Santa, eat a candy cane, and color in his activity book.  Erin gobbled down 2 pancakes, said "no, thank you" to seeing Santa, and spent a long time looking at the Christmas tree.  And then, to keep the holiday spirit alive and well for the day, we made some wrapping paper after lunch.  Wrapping paper.  Guaranteed to make my eye all twitchy.  Keep your paint on the paper!  Don't leave the kitchen!  Don't touch the walls with those paint-covered hands!  Get upstairs now for a bath!  It is also guaranteed to get my kitchen floor clean, at least for this one time a year.  So come visit tomorrow - the floor will be clean.

Probably the best Santa pic of the bunch

Dex "doesn't remember" what he told Santa.  As soon as he got his candy cane all other thoughts went WHOOSH! out of his head.

My guess is the "official" photo we get from Gore will look silly like this.

As close as I could get for a pic of Erin with Santa.  As she skirted the rug surrounding Santa I asked if she wanted to go see him.  "NO" she shook her head.  I wasn't going to make her scream, so I took her to the side to try again in a few minutes.  But then the line was way too long.

So she played with the tree instead

Wrapping paper creation.  Erin watched and took lessons from the pro...

Decided she'd give it a try...

And did a pretty good job.  Lord help me if this girl is crafty, cuz her mama IS NOT.

Eye-twitch-inducing foot prints

Painty baby

She went right up to the bath tub after this

Game On

Dear Aunt Maria,

I saw your walking video, and I raise you THIS VIDEO of me walking.  Sure, it's lots of clips of me walking six steps and then falling down.  So you might have me beat on distance.  But can you walk holding a shoe?  Giggling at a dog?  Holding a car?  Can you walk to a cat door and play with it?  Yeah.  That's what I thought.  Game on, Aunt Maria.  Bring it.

Love,
Erin

Erin and Aunt Maria have been having a bit of a friendly "let's see who can walk first" competition, ever since Aunt Maria was first in the hospital.  I, personally, am DELIGHTED that Maria won fair and square (don't tell Erin) because 1)  it's awesome for Maria to be mobile again and 2)  having a walking baby in the house is, quite frankly, hazardous.

The good thing about having zero plans for Thanksgiving weekend is that when the whole family is sick it's no big deal.  Baby puking all day Thursday?  Guess we'll watch TV all day.  Mama sleeping all day and not feeling well?  Guess we'll have Thanksgiving dinner another day.  John lost a day in doing house projects because he was taking care of everyone else on Thursday.  But otherwise, it was pretty decent timing to have a sick family.  We're having Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday.  Dexter is most excited about the ice cream that we bought to go on top of the apple pie.  He won't eat the pie.  But yes, please, he will eat some ice cream.

We are all, thankfully, feeling much better.  Erin is still touch-and-go as far as puking, and she's not really eating, but she is much much better.

Weekend Warriors

Last Monday I was walking with Erin on my back, enjoying the last of the summer-like days before the weather turned Massena-Arctic-Circle-like.  And I was thinking about the weekend, when John was going to be in Las Vegas.  And I was thinking "Wonder what I can do while John is gone?"  And I texted my sister to see if she wanted to come down to do something cool, like tear wallpaper off the kitchen wall or something.  Because coming to our house is nothing but a good time.

Surprisingly, she turned me down.  But Mom and Dad are suckers, so THEY came down.  And we ended up not tearing wallpaper off the kitchen, but rather re-doing the powder room.  Which meant we tore wallpaper off the walls, replaced the light fixture, painted, cut some bead board for one wall, replaced outlets and switches and toilet parts and other random things.  And John got home at 6:30 or so on Sunday.  And we knew he was going to be home then.  And you know how those Home Makeover shows always have a huge flurry of activity at the end, and they call in all the neighbors to help because they still have all this stuff to get done, and very little time to do it?  Yeah.  That was TOTALLY not us.  We looked at what we had done, looked at what we still wanted to do, and said "Meh.  It's not gonna be done.  SURPRISE!"

As an aside, one should not tell a four-year-old that something is a surprise and that he should not tell Daddy about it.  Because that is EXACTLY the very first thing he will tell Daddy when Daddy calls from Las Vegas.

Powder room before.  A friend once described it as "peeing while sitting inside a basket."

My Friday helper.  He loved using the Tiger tooth thing.  We called it a "Toother."  So he'd be toothering, and rolling water on the wall and he'd look over to me and cheer me on as I was scraping wallpaper off the wall, "Good wallpapering, Mama!"

Un-wallpapered bathroom, with Grandpa working on some spackle.  Un-wallpapering is a terrible terrible job.  An email to my sister went something like this: "Who's the $*!%&#! who invented wallpaper?  I'm gonna shoot him dead."

Bathroom as of today.  Still needs some spackling and another coat of paint.  And then the bead board will go up on the bottom of this wall.  So it'll be the TG weekend project.  But we needed something to do anyway - the wind yesterday blew away all our leaves, and that's what we were going to do this weekend.

New light fixture above the sink.  Have a new towel rack and tp holder, as well, to go up when the paint is done.

Thanks for helping, Grandma and Grandpa!  Without you John would have simply come home to an unwallpapered bathroom, with nothing else done.

Erin Walking With Lion

Please to be watching our newest video, created by our resident videographer, Dexter.  Warning - it might make you slightly sea sick...

Also, Erin walked about 5 or 6 steps, totally on her own, TWICE this morning.  Life's about to get crazy here...

Erin Walking With Lion (click for video)

Lions, Trees, Stairs, and Leaves

It's been a nice week here.  Something seems to have clicked with Dexter, and he's been chipper and polite and generally pleasant to hang out with all week.  Except after watching videos on his IPad.  Which we have since disallowed, because grumpy = no fun.  Erin has been testing the limits of her standing skills and will, if she finds herself in the middle of the floor with nothing to hold on to, take three or four steps before falling back to the ground.  She's currently got a cold and cannot breathe through her nose, which means she's not been sleeping very well.  But she's still fun to hang out with.

We had really nice weather one day this week so I raked up our paltry supply of leaves in to a tiny pile for Dex to jump in to.  Our maple trees JUST turned this week, and the pear trees haven't really turned yet, and I dunno what happened to the oak tree leaves.  Today we had lots more leaves and John raked and blew and sucked up a bunch of them.  We played in them a little bit, but it was way warmer a few days ago.

Wednesday for swimming the sun was BRIGHT.  Not a damn cloud in the sky.  And the sun shines in the window differently now that the time has changed.  Yet another reason for me to shake my fist and growl at the time change thing.  All that combined meant that Dexter did not swim.  Erin swam.  She had a lovely time for an hour, swimming in the deep end and walking in the shallow end and playing with the fountains.  But Dex?  Nah.  So we decided maybe it was time for a little intervention.  The whole family went to the pool at 9AM today, armed with M&M's.  And I don't know if it was all the million other kids, or that there was just a skim of clouds that made the sun spots not quite so bright.  Whatever the reason, Dexter was fantastic.  No M&M's needed.  He swam all over the pool.  Underwater.  Directly under the sun spots.  It was fun, and I was proud of him.  I think we're planning on going again in the morning if the sun is shining bright.

We went this afternoon to tag a tree and to play at the farm a bit.  It's been a fun day.  I am tired.

Here's a video of Erin climbing the stairs.  All you have to do is ask "Do you want to go upstairs?" and she drops everything and books it for the steps.

Here's a video of Erin walking behind her lion walker.  She finally figured it out yesterday.  You still have to stand her up behind it, or she will just crawl and push it in front of her.

And here a few billion pictures

I love this one...

He loves hiding all the way under the leaves, then growling like a dinosaur and leaping out to scare you.

Way too tall this year...

How about this one?  Daddy says.  Nah, too small, says Dex.

I promise she liked it back there.

Dex tags our tree

King of the straw bales

Perhaps we're doing too much gymnastics...

You can see John's heart attack plain as day, as Dex dances on the top of the bales.

Pretty sunsets this week

Yes and No

We had a nice few days with Aunt Jeanne last week, and the weather was perfect for playing outside.  So that's what we did:

Here's a link to a bunch of pictures of the kids playing in the driveway on Friday afternoon with Aunt Jeanne:

Biking With Spiders

On Friday Aunt Jeanne helped us take Erin in for one year old pictures - she and Dex watched (and Dex rode the tractor) while Erin mostly kept her shit together for pictures.  Til the end, when we wanted to try pictures with her brother.  And.... no.  That wasn't gonna happen.  I went the cheap, cheap, cheapity cheap route and paid $13 for a photo package with one pose.  Here's what we came home with:

On Saturday after Aunt Jeanne left us (and Daddy was gone to Massena for the weekend) the kids and I went to soccer and the playground.  Then to a different playground for the afternoon, where Dex slid down the slide 87 million times and Erin slowly but surely stalked a dog, sneaking up to pet it quickly before it could run away.  And calling it "hiiii."

And finally, we videotaped Erin at dinner on Sunday evening (or maybe it was Saturday, I can't remember).  This is a pretty common meal time occurrence, and watching the video makes Dexter giggle uncontrollably.

Here's the link to watch the video.

We're happy that Daddy is home again, we all hate the goddamn time change, and we're excited that Aunt Maria is getting sprung from the hospital on Wednesday to go live in Massena til she'l better enough to live on her own again.  The view's gonna be way better from her room in Massena than it is from her hospital bed.

Also, that spider is currently living on the top of my liquor cabinet...