Twice is not enough

Visiting the Children's Museum was originally Mamaw's idea, so when we wanted to go the first time, when Meemaw had the day off, we called Mamaw to ask if she would mind. Mamaw pointed out that there is way too much to do at the Museum for just one trip, especially with the boys so young. She was so right. With Meemaw, we spent 3 hours at the museum and saw 1-1/2 exhibits. We went again the following week, this time with Mamaw and Dadaw, and spent 4 hours at the museum, where we saw 2-1/2 exhibits. If we lived near Indy, the fellers and I would be going there every week. It is that awesome.

The highlight reel:

The boys doing puzzles with Dadaw in the library


Hauling rocks at a construction site

"Out of your mouth, Jacob, OUT!"


On the carousel


Putting balls through a maze with Dadaw


On top of it all, we got to ride in the Toddler Chariot, AKA Dadaw's Big Purple Van. And we have talked about it every day since.

What did we do all day? A photoessay

What does one do for 10 days in Indianapolis, or, according to Isaac, "Indian Necklace"? Well, aside from two trips to the Children's Museum and a Poppop birthday party, one can:

Watch movies with Dadaw



Play playdoh with Grandma Ross


Witness the Colts win the AFC championship


Take a bath with a buddy


Take a nap


Climb the corporate ladder



Build a snowman


Play in Aunt Robin's magical rice box


On top of all this and with a little help from our above-pictured friends, Isaac is now potty trained. That's right, folks, dude pees and poops on the potty. He tells me when he has to go most of the time, but still fights me occasionally, especially if he's watching TV or is intricately entwined in playtime. He had a peepee accident yesterday and one on Saturday, and when we first started with the Big Boy Underwear two weeks ago, he began by pooping in his britches (though there is no more of that now). But in the scope of the number of times he has gone on the potty, those few times are nothing, and on the whole he is showing that he clearly has the hang of it. He has not worn a diaper for almost two weeks, INCLUDING AT NIGHT. Don't ask me how I got that lucky.

I am learning that, for the most part, Isaac only has to pee four times a day, period. He used to poop every day, but now he is tapering it off to once every two or three days. I'm guessing this is because he is a still a little freaked out about pooping on the potty. When it's time to go, he tells me he has to pee, and then I help him on the potty and he immediately wants off. Repeat about 10 or 15 times until I get sick of his poopoo mindgames and more-than-gently suggest he sit his tush still while I read him Dr. Seuss's ABC book. As soon as I start reading he acquiesces and we don't get to B before he's dropping kids off at the pool.

I am just amazed at how easy he was to potty-train once he was ready, and, by "ready" I mean "grossed out about peeing while running nekked about the house." To those out there fighting the same good fight, I say wait until that point, and then don't be a wus. Stick with it. It helps, too, if there are grandparents about to look after any other children you might have lying around.

Happy birthday, dear Poppop

Another recap from our trip to India-noplace:

Poppop's birthday occurred while we were in town. You might think what a lucky feller he is in that respect, but his luck is even more unbelievable. His parents (AKA Grandma and Grandpa Ross) came to visit over the weekend before his birthday, so he got an Observed Birthday in addition to his real birthday. For his Observed Birthday, we took him to Pizza Hut, his favorite restaurant. The man is easy to please.






And to top it all off, he was serenaded, in person, by his eldest grandson.


Happy birthday, Poppop! We love you!

JakeTV, broadcasting from the Children's Museum

Today Meemaw took the day off, which she used to take the fellers and myself to the most fantastic Indianapolis Children's Museum. Though we spent three hours there, we only saw part of two exhibits. Isaac has become recently taken by the story Danny and the Dinosaur -- a 64-page easy-reader that he will sit through in its entirety multiple times -- so we were entranced by their dinosaur exhibit.


The exhibit included dino costumes the boys could put on as well as a station with fake mountains and rivers to be played upon with plastic dinosaur toys.





We spent the majority of our time in this play area reserved for kids under 5. While Jakey played in their "discovery area" for babies and the padded baby maze, Isaac spent an hour at their expansive water table.


One curious thing I learned about my elder child is that he suddenly possesses an almost un-toddler-like attention span. Isaac spent a rapt twenty minutes sitting on the floor on his tush listening to a staffer explain the workings of their water-powered clock as it performed a ritual one-o-clock flushing. Twenty minutes without moving. He also urged me to sit down and listen to the lady. I remember, just before Jacob was born, taking him to story time at the library and us having to leave because he couldn't sit still for a librarian to read him a five minute book. What a difference a year makes.

The lighting in the museum was not so helpful for picture-taking, but it was just fine for movie-making. So enjoy a few short Jakey featurettes.

Meemaw taught Jacob how to drink from a water fountain (and no, he's not putting his mouth on the spout):


Navigating the baby maze:


A first decent video of our new favorite game -- Jake-in-the-Box:

Representing my corn-fed sisters

Yesterday my brother's darling wife gave me the most rockin' t-shirt ever. I wore it all around Nap-town today, though I don't think it carried the same impact it will when I wear it all around Dela-nowhere.

A day of firsts

We are again in Indiana. The boys and I flew out on Tuesday morning to be with the grandmas and grandpas while Dada flies a little further west to work for 10 days. Already we have established a sort of routine to ensure maximum relaxation for all involved. We spend each night at Meemaw and Poppop's, where everyone has a bed -- Isaac sleeps on a crib mattress on the floor in my room; Jacob sleeps in the adjacent room in the crib I slept in when I was his size. We wake up slowly in the morning and usually have some sort of entertainment, such as one grandparent reporting to work late to hang out with us, or going to pick up Meemaw for lunch. The fellers take a huge, uninterrupted afternoon nap and then we drive to Mamaw and Dadaw's to hang out with them for dinner, baths, and a movie. At bedtime, we drive back to Meemaw and Poppop's, where Uncle Chrissy and Aunt Jean await us to play with the fellers for an hour before we all turn in. Well, almost all of us.

The entire O'Neal clan has been a little sickly for a few days with a mild bug we brought here with us. Just lame stuff, like a little coughing from Isaac, Jacob snorting when he laughs, and me feeling just a tiny bit yucky. Jacob had been acting a little weird, pulling on his ears and not eating, so I was tempted to take him to my parent's family doctor yesterday. I decided against it, thinking it could just as easily be teething as an ear infection, and that I shouldn't take him to the doctor unless he had a fever.

Last night, after waking up for, no joke, the tenth time in three hours, I tested his temperature, and it was 101.5. This morning when he woke up it was 101.7. At the doctor's later on, it was 101.2. A first for Jake -- his first fever, and subsequent first sick visit to the doctor, here at 11 months. Way to go, Hale and Hardy Monkey! But for now you can just call him Jakey the Hotness, as the soles of his feet are literally hot to the touch. The doctor's appointment was mildly disappointing -- his eardrums, nose, and throat are the pictures of health. He's sick, obviously, but with some stupid virus that can only be treated with Tylenol and hopes that it passes quickly. In the meantime, he's developed a little bit of diarrhea, but it's not keeping him down. He broke his all-time step record tonight, taking 5 independent steps while trying to chase Meemaw's kitty. If he didn't look like somebody who needed sleep, you couldn't tell anything was wrong.

Perhaps because of his situation, Jakey pulled another first today. His vocabulary so far consists of Dada, Kitty, Jean, Hi (HAH! concurrent with a wave), and Isaac (AH-sik!). As we pulled into the parking lot of the doctor's office this morning, he started mewing pitifully from the backseat, for the first time ever: "Mama. Mama. Mama."

Not to be outdone, Isaac is also pulling off perhaps the most important developmental step there is. Two days in a row now, he has worn big boy underwear all day with no accidents. He insisted on wearing his underwear to the doctor's office, rejecting the offer of a diaper. He wore his underwear during his nap and woke up dry. He peed in Meemaw's potty; he peed in Mamaw's potty. He also tried to pee twice (at my insistence) at the doctor's office.

The most stunning development occurred this evening as we were winding down for bed with Aunt Jean and Uncle Chrissy. I saw Isaac doing his wild peepee dance and insisted he follow me to the potty against his protestations (because, though he will pee, he doesn't yet think it is worth leaving the party for). He peed on the potty, we did our potty cheer, and he returned to play. Not five minutes later, he started heading off to the bathroom away from us. "Mommy, I need to pee! I have to go pee on the potty, guys, I'll be right back!" I went with him, took off his britches, and plopped him up on the potty. Sure enough, he did pee again. He stopped peeing and I stood up to help him down when what should stare back at me from inside the potty but a big ol' dookie.

That's right, my precious boy went poop on the potty today, and of his own initiative, no less. After a little practice, he has also figured out how to relax enough at the potty so that, when he knows he needs to, he can start peeing right away, instead of waiting and waiting and then giving up only to go right back to the potty minutes later. So, like, a week after we started in earnest, and I stuck with it because I knew it was the right time for all of us, I think we can unofficially consider Isaac to be potty-trained. What on earth will we do with all the money we'll save not buying his diapers?

I know. Cow milky for everyone!

He ain't heavy

We did this for a half hour today.

Leo and Annie are so deprived

This morning we took in two brand-new Einsteins, the first new episodes in several months. In the beginning of the second episode, big brother Leo sat down with his little sister Annie to read her the story of Hansel and Gretel. I guess I hadn't thought about how infrequently you see characters on TV reading books, but this caught Isaac's attention. As Leo read the story, Isaac put himself in the shoes of Leo and Annie.

Isaac: Mommy, I think they want to watch TV.
Mommy: I think they want to read a book now.

(a slight pause, then...)

Isaac: Because Mommy said no TV.
Mommy: Maybe they're reading because they like reading books.
Isaac: No, it's because their Mommy said no TV. And their Daddy said no TV.

Making our bed and not lying in it

In the spirit of full disclosure that has suddenly come upon this blog, I will admit that, for Jacob's entire life, I have nursed him to sleep. Morning naps, afternoon naps, the Big Sleep, night-wakings, every single time when he didn't accidentally fall sleep otherwise (i.e. while in the car, while being held, or, as he did the other day, while sitting bolt upright eating lunch). Coordinating naps between two munchkins is hard; keeping the nonverbal one quiet while the other one is also trying to fall asleep is hard. Wielding a boobie, a mommy can easily force the sleep issue in her favor. It's hard for sleepy-Jake to fuss about sleep when his fusshole is full.

Of course I set myself up for an eventual system breakdown. While we were in Indiana over the holidays, Jacob took the opportunity of our mixed-up sleep schedule to decide that he no longer wished to fall asleep at the boob. I'd go through the exact same motions with him as had worked every time before and he would emerge on the other end of a nursing session not the least bit asleep, but rather kicking against my body and screaming "DA DA DEEEE!" Picture, if you will, a rodeo, where I get to be the cow. I suppose that analogy works in more than one way.

Never before having needed another route to put Jacob down, suddenly we were at a loss. When he is in his special Jakey the Cowboy mode, there is little we could do that worked. We tried rocking him, walking him around, singing to him, or, if we really wanted to tick him off, laying him in his crib. As an interim measure, what I have found that works the best for him is what worked best for his brother at this age -- curling up to watch any kind of TV with his body laying against mine, preferably with his head against the left side of my chest. When we first encountered his sleep resistance, he would only go to sleep to the most monotonous of TV accompanied by gentle rocking motions. How people without TiVo do it, I just don't know. My Jakey-to-sleep time is when I catch up on all the stuff TiVo has found for me to watch, like Sex and the City reruns or House Hunters or Good Eats. Bless you, TiVo.

A girlfriend of mine, however, recently suggested I get him addicted to a lovey, a project I have now undertaken that seems to be paying off. One stuffed animal that has always caught Jacob's interest is a medium-sized bunny Meemaw gave him for Easter last year, which has the necessary lovey qualities of lacking beaded features and being entirely machine washable. All this week, I've given Jakey the bunny to hold each time I nurse him. Today for his nap, he fell asleep clutching the bunny (while nursing). Tonight for the big sleep, I nursed him to drowsiness with the bunny around, but he was able to put himself to sleep in his crib while holding his bunny.

I realize he is old enough that I could try to sleep-train him or whatever, and I have read on other blogs how that has worked for some moms. We flirted with sleep-training for Isaac before I realized that it is not for me. I just don't have the stomach for it. And, as much as I whined incessantly about Isaac's sleep troubles when he was a baby, somehow I don't mind them so much in Jacob. Part of it is that he has an older brother who went through all this fighting-the-sleep and night-waking, and this older brother easily sleeps through the night now. Having been through it once, I know how the story ends.

The largest part of it, I admit, is purely stupid and selfish. It is quite likely that Jacob is my last baby, and I mean to enjoy him. Have you seen his hair? It is so soft, and, since I bathe him before bed, always smells so good when he wakes at night. When he falls unconscious watching TV with me in the stupid hours of night, when there's no one awake in the house but me, when I don't have to worry that I'm neglecting Isaac to be with Jacob... I just want to hold him and feel his squishy-lumped weight on me. I smoosh my face into his soft, wispy hair, and I take a moment to register that he is my baby, that he has inherited my fine, blonde hair. I try to save that feeling somewhere so I can pull it out when he's driving away some evening to go on his first date, to remember that once, long ago, he was entirely mine in the night.

Christmas photo recap

Dada is in the process of converting our house to an all-Mac palace. Over the years his Mac fetish has grown and grown until it has literally overrun his office and thus we have a new-to-The New House one-year-old G5 desktop (which, coincidentally, I bought while a grad student). I am typing this from a two-year-old iBook that has become mine; I bought it with my fellowship while I was a grad student and Dada used it while I used my travelling desktop 8-lb Dell to do all my thesis work. He has since outgrown this dinky little iBook and would be on the couch playing on his pimped-out MacBook Pro if he wasn't falling asleep. Thus, "my" iBook, which I've rarely, if ever, used, but secretly nursed a lust for, is suddenly mine to write blog with.

I would say I welcome this change except that I know very little about Macs, having been a life-long PC girl. I know more about Linux than I do about these sexy-looking machines that are now taking over my living room. The only real problem with this so far is the photo end. I am brand-new to iPhoto, Apple's picture-organizing software, and so far I hate it violently. I am such a Picasa junkie, and of course it's not available to Macs. I'm going to try to figure out something bearable to help me publish photos here on the blog, but it may take awhile before I find something I really enjoy. If anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears.

In the meantime, I'm heading back to Flickr. My mom will enjoy this because you can click on the pictures below to access a larger version.

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I mentioned before that there were four Christmases. My boys were spoiled worse than rotten.

Christmas 1: Christmas Eve was at Meemaw and Poppop's, attended also by Uncle Chrissy and Aunt Jean.

Christmas at the Rosses


Isaac before the Christmas carnage


Look! A Sit-n-Spin!


Practicing for a future Playgirl pictorial


Aunt Jean opens her cool-girl knitting book

Christmas 2: Christmas Day was at Mamaw and Dadaw's, attended also by Aunt Robin, Uncle Joe, cousins Nate, Emily, and Sarah, and many delightful family Christmas visitors. Must be nice to have so much family so close...


Mommy and Jake cheesing at Mamaw and Dadaw's


Sarah and Duffy


Buzz Lightyear flying through the sky


Isaac carrying Duffy


History repeats itself

Two more Christmases to follow...

Coming out

I've been hiding a dirty secret from my family blog for awhile now. A lovely lady who is a fellow mommy-blogger recently started a new blog, The Soccer Mom Vote, on political issues relating to mommyhood. She asked me and a handful of other, far more talented and informed women to be regular contributors. I told Nicole I'd post something there on the 9th of every month. I posted in December about negative campaigning; I posted today about breeders in the workplace. You get the Big Reveal today because I spent over an hour writing my post there and then had little energy left for my own blog.

Why Nicole asked me to be a card-carrying soccer mom I'll never know, except that perhaps she was mildly amused by my stories of babies and not of politics. I make it a general rule to avoid political discussions on this blog, because 1) I really do not follow politics, largely preferring to inform myself of the carryings-on of the Lindsey Lohans of the world than of bureaucrats, and 2) I have an almost pathological fear of confrontation. I will admit that I do find myself having stronger opinions about the world around me as I raise these adorable fellers to participate in it, but those opinions rarely leave the house and they certainly don't involve anything leaving my wallet.

Another reason why I've been hiding my Soccer Mom posts from this blog is that the Soccer Mom blog is, as you might expect from the title, rapidly evolving into a liberal one, though it is designed to be a forum for everybody's opinions. Lots of my family who read this blog are well-informed, proud, and life-long conservatives (hi Grandma and Grandpa!), and I certainly didn't want to cause any ruckus by directing them to read things that are left-leaning, at least without ample warning. Of course, after spending five years in Hippie Mecca, and most of that locked in a lab full of Europeans, my views have turned a bit more to the left, but I am still an Indiana girl and my goal as a political poster is to try to stay to the center while suggesting we should adopt some sort of national standard of maternity leave.

But here I am talking politics again. Done! I'm done. Anyway, wouldn't you rather see pictures of Jacob trying to eat Mamaw's new puppy? Of course you would.

Potty training, the drill-sergeant way

I've been flirting with potty-training Isaac since October, when I arbitrarily decided that 2-1/2 was a good age to start. Really, all signs point to readiness. He makes a huge and obvious show when he's cooking up an Isaac loaf, and sometimes he even wants to see the results of his labor. He is fascinated with Daddy peeing. He wakes up dry from naps and even, sometimes, from the big sleep.

Right from the start, we procured the necessary potty accoutrements. We bought a beautiful and squishy be-trucked potty topper to prevent his precious bottom from falling in. We bought Spongebob undies; Meemaw bought Thomas undies. We bought Toy Story pull-ups. We already had the free-standing little Isaac potty, just in case the big-people potty was too intense for him. We had numerous books, including one that flushes and has a cat that expresses displeasure at poop-related stinkiness. We were all set.

Off and on since then, I've tried several different things. First, I put him in the pull-ups. He and I both soon found out that they are nothing more than overglorified diapers and that they could withstand his peeing onslaught just as well as his Huggies. Next we tried the Thomas underwear, which I thought would be a big hit. Who would want to pee on Thomas? But the big-boy underwear simply made peeing through it more of a curiosity. "Look, Mommy, what's this?" he asked me, splashing in his pee on the floor. "You clean it up!"

At the suggestion of Jane, I also tried the naked-time approach, where the young man remains naked for two or three days solid and comes out the other end with a more enlightened view of his bodily functions. When I tried this with Isaac about two months ago, the novelty of peeing and pooping on the floor was far more commanding of his attention than any of my suggestions, accompanied by bribery, that he should sit on his potty instead.

But, however slightly different, in each case Isaac confronted us with the same problem. He flatly refused, to the point of hysterics, to sit on the potty when it was time to go. All of The Books say that I should wait until he wants to use the potty, that I should not make it a battle or I will scar him for his pee-peeing life. So, as he refused, I have acquiesed and given more and more of Dada's hard-earned money to those rich old farts at Huggies.

We are in the midst of trying the naked-boy approach again. Since November, two important things have changed. First. When Isaac is naked, he no longer wants to pee on the floor. He understands that the pee is coming and does an elaborate, leg contorting peepee dance, all the while screaming at me "MOMMY! PUT A DIAPER ON ME NOW! I NEED A DIAPER!" as though the world should surely end if he met his pee face-to-face.

Second. I have devised my own potty training system. Isaac still wants no part of the potty. So what do I do? Oh, it's really quite ingenious. When he starts doing his peepee dance, I pick him up and tell him we're going to the potty. He screams about how the potty is the devil. He thrashes, squirms, goes boneless, you name it. When we get to the potty, the freaking-out escalates. I go to sit him on the potty and he arches his back such that sitting becomes impossible.

So. Here comes my trick. Are you ready? It's so anti-establishment. While he is protesting with his entire being, I wrestle his body into potty-sitting position. That's right, I force his precious tush onto the potty. Once he is sitting, I immediately push a small cup with chocolate chips in the bottom into his hands. "Oh, chocolate chips!" says Short-Attention Span Monkey, who instantly relaxes with his snack. And with the relaxing, the peepee comes a-flowing.

Scarred for peepee life? Hardly. When he sees himself peeing in the potty, he gets so excited. We have a little dance party when he's done, and, if Dada is at work, I call Dada and Isaac himself proudly announces that he's done such a good job at going to the potty.

Since Wednesday, he has peed once a day every day except Thursday, when he didn't, and today, when he did twice. My current strategy is to screw this whole all-or-nothing potty regime that exists in The Books. We are starting with just a peepee in the morning, and, when we get that down, we'll add a peepee before bed. It can't be too long before he catches on himself. I'm willing to take my time with it, though I hope, if it's going to take awhile, that he gets tired of playing with his package while he's streaking through the house. I really didn't ask for that kind of show here.

Back home again from Indiana

All the fellers and I spent two weeks in Indiana over the holidays, filled with luxurious amounts of grandparent fawning and staying up past all of our bedtimes. Lots and lots of crazy baby & toddler action always happens when we go home, but because of the inherent sleeping issues encountered when you take any small person some place new and command he go to bed at a reasonable hour, I never seem to have the energy to blog from Indiana. We got back last Sunday, and obviously it's been a little hard for me to get back to blogging. Jacob cut his 8th tooth to finish out a full set of top and bottom incisors and has been sleeping like total crap, zapping whatever energy reserves I might have to brush my teeth daily, let alone blog. On top of all this, I'm supposed to be finishing another children's book for my publisher. I thought about taking a bloggy break until after I finish the book, but I realized that writing for the blog helps me wind me up for the contractually obligated kind of writing. I'll try harder to be around like a good little mommy-blogger.

Christmas was a bit of a whirlwind. Instead of boring you with endless paragraphs, I'll try to be all corporate and make a bulleted list of the highlights.
*Completed round trip from Delaware to India-no-place
*Completed round trip from Naptown to Missouri to visit Mommy's extended family (hi Grandma!)
*Miles clocked by George the Green Car just in the getting from here to there: 2000
*Explored most McDonald's Playlands between here and Missouri
*Reached tolerance level for McDonald's food, have sworn off Coke for the New Year
*Near-daily Starbucks runs, paid for with gift cards (thanks, Meemaw! Thanks, Chris & Jean!)
*Fancy-pants new haircut for Mommy; first haircut for Jakey (thanks, Mamaw!)
*Oil change for George the Green Car (thanks, Dadaw!)
*Extreme Christmas present gluttony acheived by both boys after participating in FOUR Christmases
*Regular facials for the boys from various family doggies
*Experienced two Mommy/Daddy date nights, paid for almost entirely with gift cards (thanks, Meemaw and Poppop! thanks, Gage family!)
*Surviving, without incident, George the Green Car dying in the parking lot of Walgreen's in Carmel, Indiana, with Mommy and Isaac inside
*Successfully transporting a full two-thirds of our Christmas presents back home, along with boys (and cat!)

While we did a lot, we are sad we didn't get to do some things we really hoped we could, like taking a Mommy-Daddy movie night out to see the latest James Bond flick, or taking the babies to see our buds Matt and Susan in Greenwood like we try to do every Christmas (hi, guys!). Having two little people, as opposed to one, perceptibly slows you down travel-wise, especially with the Jake being so young and not, like Isaac, ready for his own brain slug in-car DVD experience to make trips in the car more palatable. Jacob's car trip was eased mostly by a) The Very Hungry Caterpillar board book, which he apparently enjoys "reading" by himself (and by "reading" I mean "sticking his little sausage fingers into all the little holes") and b) Big Brother. He and Big Brother played games with each other, little made-up boy games, such as peekaboo with their blankets, or making motorboat sounds at each other by flipping their lips around with their fingers. It made Dada and I smile, not for the first time, that our precious monsters had each other.

Dada and I expected that Jakey would be walking by the end of our trip. In a technical sense, he did take a step here and there, but he is still not "walking". His current record, set Thursday, is three consecutive steps without lurching towards Mommy, but I won't declare it walking until he does, like, five or six. I figure, at that point, you know it's not a fluke. He can walk for amazing distances holding onto one hand of a grown-up; this evening he did a lap of the hallway.

Jacob is also saying words now. His first was Dada, really Dada and not Yada; his second was Kitty (pronounced KEE!); we believe his third was Jean (pronounced JEE!), calling to his godmother, who is an extremely talented peekaboo practitioner. He uses Dada all the time now to get that person's attention. "Da..." he begins, and waits until he has Dad's full attention. When he does, Dad is rewarded with the final "DA!", replete with eye-twinkle and an array of fat little teeth. There is no "Mama." I have been told that, in my absence, Jacob happened to stumble upon a "ma" syllable or something, but he's never said it around me. If I don't hear it, it don't count.

Another new development is that Jacob can now point. He is a strong little dude, which perhaps explains how he finds the energy that must be required to fold those sausage fingers up into his hand and still hold one out. It defies nature, I tell you. If I ask him where Isaac is, he'll turn towards Isaac and point and start talking to him. Sometimes he points towards something and says "Disssssss", as though he was directing my attention to "this thing".

We took lots of pictures, but I haven't uploaded all of them yet to a place from which they can be blogged, so stay tuned. And happy belated new year to everyone and their families!