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!