Your monthly installment of Longwood Gardens pictures

We had absolutely nothing going on today, and I don't do so well with nothing going on. So we needed an excursion. I chose Longwood. Which, in retrospect, was probably not a good idea. Because it was BLAZING HOT. And inside the greenhouse? Not exactly cooler. Dex was ok - he was splashing in water. I was... HOT.

But we had a good time for a couple hours, doing all kinds of stuff. We fed fish:

Yeah, ok. This isn't a picture of Dex feeding fish. I couldn't really do that, as I spent the whole time with an arm around him so he wouldn't dive in to the pond... But, it IS a really cool, huge frog that we saw at the pond.

We watched people feed some really ugly fish:

Really, REALLY ugly fish.

Dex was not so psyched about watching the ugly fish because he wanted to watch more of THIS:

Water, Mom. I see some water.

The object of Dexter's desire:

Italian Fountain Garden. Dex could have stayed here for HOURS watching the water appear, then disappear, then reappear, then disappear. Fascinating stuff.

We also hugged some trees and some dragons. That's right. Dragons.

I'm amazed at the difference in size between tiny Dexter and the HUGE Tulip Poplar.

See? Dragons. Dragons rule.

Then, of course, it was off to the Children's Garden to play in some water for a while. There were a bajillion kids there today. Apparently it was "let's take a field trip" day at Longwood Gardens.

Highly entertained by the traveling water fountain

Finally, here's a little video for you. Listen carefully to hear Dex talking...

Longwood Gardens July 21 2010 from Alissa Norman on Vimeo.

Watching fountains on a hot day at Longwood

PS - Right! Video! Haven't posted video in forever because I haven't had sound on my laptop. But now! Now! I have sound. Yay! Because John is awesome and fixed my computer while I was away at the beach. All it needed was a nice new hard drive. Thanks, honey!

Hot

It took me going away for the weekend for Dexter to say his first word. Sure, John thinks his first word is "Da-Da." I still personally think that's a crock of shit. But if he wants to believe it, fine. Da-da is just a noise me makes. It's sounds, all strung together in a line of babble.

(Dex just learned to climb on things a couple weeks ago. Greeeaaaaattt...)

But Friday July 16 John said he was waiting for the hot dogs to cool off before giving some to Dexter, and kept telling Dex it was "hot." And Dex picked right up on that, and now runs around saying"HOT" to everything. In the car seat? Random "hots" just come out of his mouth. On the changing table? HOT. In the kitchen? HOT. Looking down the air conditioner to see if it's turned on? HOT. Sitting on the driveway playing with tennis balls? HOT. Hella cute.

Every time I think he can't get any cuter, he does it again.

Lots of letter sounds have gotten better, too, in the past couple weeks. Dex will look at the "D" hanging on his door, point and say "DA." In the bath tub he has a foam letter B and J, and will say "BA" and tries to say JAH (but it comes out as DA). He likes to make the noise for the letter X. And he has awesome letter S sounds.

I think I can, I think I can...

Dex is still learning new signs every day. He recently picked up a sign for "clock" and just Friday started doing the "drink" sign like it's supposed to be done, instead of just randomly waving his arm around. Cool. He also thoroughly enjoys sitting in his high chair doing the hand motions for the Itsy Bitsy Spider song. It takes me a while to pick up on that one. What do you want? A ball? A banana? Oh! Got it! Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Dex signing "socks."

And "shoes."

John just told me the best story of his adventures with Dexter this morning. Dex loves John's long-sleeve Syracuse shirt. He pulls it out the drawer almost daily. I've been showing him the big letter S on the back this week when he pulls it out. So today John said Dex pulled the shirt out of his drawer, turned it over and over looking for the S, found it, and said "SSSSSSSS." Priceless.

And where was I this weekend, you ask? At the Beach! With ADULTS! So awesome. A girl friend celebrated her 40th birthday (which, really, blows my mind to think that I have friends that old) with a girls weekend in Dewey Beach. I haven't been there in four years or so. It's amazing how the place stays the same - same bands play at the same bars on the same nights. John asked me what we were going to do for the weekend. Where would we go? I told him I had no idea - I'd never been to the beach with girls before. Only with him and his guy friends, who have a Dewey routine set in stone. Go to the Starboard on a Friday night? Unheard of! Skip Jam Session and go to Northbeach for dinner? Blasphemy! Go to the Starboard for Sunday morning breakfast and NOT get a blood mary? What's WRONG with you people!! It was, however, a fabulous weekend away. And it sounds like Dexter and John had a great, HOT weekend.

The Perfect Summer Weekend

I'm a little behind here, so bear with me.

We spent July 4th weekend with Mom and Dad in Lansing, enjoying their awesome heated pool and taking advantage of the perfect weather - hot during the day but not too humid, cool at night. Dex wore pants and a sweatshirt on his morning walks, and swam in the pool all day.

We pretty much spent all weekend doing THIS:

And when we weren't doing that, we were doing THIS:

And when we weren't doing that, we were doing THIS:

And when we weren't doing that, we were doing THIS. Or sleeping:

It was a pretty awesome weekend, especially after spending so much of the past couple months running around doing various things for various houses, packing and unpacking. It was nice to spend a weekend focusing on nothing but having fun.

Here's a few more photos. If you're crazy (or a Grandma) HERE is the link to the whole lot of photos from the weekend.

Note complete lack of tray. I thought this would be way more of a pain in the ass than it turned out to be. I think Dex has flipped his plate over maybe once.

Jumping in. Always with that surprised look on his face. One would think he'd want to close his mouth...

Checking out the cool (and amazingly still alive) frog in the pool skimmer

Water guns. Of course.

Blowing bubbles with Grandpa

How many noodles does a boy need?

Dex tries to figure out how he can pick up the HUGE ball

Getting Wet - By Whatever Means Possible

It's been HOT here. HOT. Except for today, which was delightful. Except for this coming weekend, when we're planning to go to NY to go swimming, and we're going to freeze our butts off. But otherwise, when we're stuck here in PA, next to zero water... HOT. So, you've got to get wet when you have the opportunity. Fortunately, we have many opportunities to get wet. And fortunately, Dex LOVES getting wet.

Excellent splashing

Dex is the best back floater in class. Notice how the other two kids in the class basically suck...

Going under, with boat held firmly in hand

Going under is FUN!

Rubber duckie. It's what's for dinner.

Getting ready to blow bubbles. Or eat water. Either way. Actually, blowing bubbles has made great strides since Dex discovered how to do so in a cup in the bathtub.

"Jumping" in to the water. How do you teach a kid to actually jump? Also, notice awesome farmer tans and red necks on both my boys. :-)

Mid-jump

Aaaaaand he's down (notice other sucky kid still trying to decide if he's going to let his mom pull him in to the water)

Playing with our friend Anya at a beach south of the old house. Nice beach. This is the only picture from here, as I spent the rest of the time in the water with Dex, walking after him and standing him upright again after he purposely sat down under water for the ten trillionth time. He had fun.

Playing with Daddy in the muddy, mucky, "Ewww, don't blow bubbles here" Elk River in Elkton, at a benefit BBQ for Pediatric Cancer.

Dex doesn't mind the muck. He did, however, require a quick shower when we got home. He was a sandy disgusting mess of a child.

Gorgeous day to go to Longwood today. We wandered through the main fountain garden. Dex had his finger up his nose most of the time. Yes, water. I see. Water.

Hooray, water! Surprisingly, no shirt change needed after today's jaunt in the Children's Garden.

This was a close one but I caught him before he dove in.

Playing with fountains with our friend Nate Kevin

And THAT'S an excellent way to stay cool in the summer! Bring it on, heat. We've got you beat.

The New Digs

OK, OK. FINALLY I am doing a post with some pictures of moving week, painting, packing, and the new house. I am out of excuses.

You can check out the entire collection of 230 photos HERE

The new house! It kind of peeks out from the trees. The front is well shaded, which is great because the sun... NEVER SHINES in the front of the house. The back of the house, where the sun is brutal, has ZERO trees. Zippy. Nada.


The family room before painting. My sister didn't think the green was too bad. I thought it was pretty terrible.


The family room during painting (we recruited Dad to help. He was perhaps not pleased. Painting? Not his favorite thing.)


The family room all done. We LOVE the dark brown wall around the fireplace. The other walls. Meh. They're ok. I wish they were a touch lighter. But the next shade lighter on that card looked like, as John described it "The Caucasian color in the box of Crayola crayons." Not appealing.

Note awesome pictures of Havre de Grace on the mantle - nice housewarming gift from Mom and Dad. Just today I unpacked the box where CoCo's ashes were stored, so now CoCo is on the mantle, looking over us from her proper place. I still miss the little girl every day.


The guest room. Yeah, this didn't need paint. AT ALL...


Dad works on painting the guest room. Ahhhh. That hurts my eyes much less.


The guest room completed. With a bedroom set we bought off Craigslist for $100. God bless Craigslist.


Dexter's room. It was recently painted white, so we didn't need to prime it. Which was good, because painting it took FOREVER.


Why? Because SOMEBODY (ahem, me) decided this bright blue would be an awesome color for the bottom of the wall. And it took three coats to make it look ok. Plus that certain somebody wanted some of this stuff:


(Dad loves painting chair rail)


But the end result was completely worth it. LOVE this room.


We also painted the basement floor before we moved in, so that the concrete dust would stay on the floor, as opposed to being tracked all over the world, which was happening before we moved in. Note oodles of flattened boxes, now being taken to New York so Aunt Jeanne can use them to move in August. Hooray for recycling! Dex will be sad to have his box mountains leave, though. He has fun down here.

In the basement, which I don't have pictures of:
Pool table, which we really don't want, and now has a whole bunch of crap piled on it.
Fancy-ass water filtration system which took our nitrate levels from an Above EPA Limit 11 (somethings per something) to an almost insignificant level of 1 (somethings per something).
Eighty seven trillion boxes.

So what, you may ask, was Dexter doing while all this painting was going on? Why, playing with Grandma, of course.



New fancy water table kept Dex cool during this ridiculously hot weekend

Last day of playing in the pantry before...

Dex moves to the new house to hang with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Jeanne





Meanwhile, John and Alissa pack furiously:




Good lord, where'd we get so much crap??

And then, in the blink of an eye (seriously, like three hours to empty the old house AND the storage unit) the movers came and our old townhouse looked like this:



And we pretty much did this all day. It was awesome. Movers. Best idea we've ever had.


It was a little sad seeing our house all empty.


We did so much to the house while we were there.


We'll miss it, but we're pretty psyched about our new view...