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Ugh, it's cold here. I can tolerate cold and snow up until Christmas, but then as far as I'm concerned it can all go away. Unfortunately the trend is to have nearly zip in the way of snow until January and then get socked for the next few months.

Just off a few days of immobility due to car repairs (yet again). H had mine for work, and so Daniel and I rattled around the house for a few days.

H is hopefully staying mobile, after a recent slip and fall on the job. Some folks are just not into shoveling and salting their drives/paths, I guess.

Computer having major hiccups/difficulties recently. We hadn't exactly budgeted for a new one at the moment, but it may be time. If I am absent for a smidge soon it won't be by choice, but will hopefully have the technical difficulties ironed out on the other side. Stay tuned!

Mired

Remember our encounter with Bambi? Turns out when a deer smacks your car the ripple effect lasts LOONNG after.

A month after the accident and my lovely red jeep is finally in the shop for repairs. Much haggling has ensued with the insurance over just what is really covered. There is the $500 deductible (naturally)... the remanufactured bumper that the insurance has insisted we use (can't make the car better than it was - just back to it's pre-accident state) even though the body shop says that the insurance people know that no such "remanufactured bumper" exists for my model car. And we're supposed to eat 25% of the difference in cost.

Once the car was in the shop and being deconstructed they found an additional $1k worth of damage. Good news - covered by insurance. Bad news - it means ordering new parts, and not getting my wheels back until middle of next week instead of Friday. Which means out more money on the rental car unless I take it back and do without for a number of days. With a 2.5 year old to wrangle.

And none of the above includes the new light on my dashboard (vapor leak) and the squeak from the front suspension. Insurance is of course insisting that this has nothing to do with hitting a deer. Funny thing, though. None of this came about until we smacked into the *(&^&%(_*! thing in middle of the road.

NASCAR - Toddler Style

Uncle Andy gifted us with a set of NASCAR cars this past Christmas. Matchbox-sized, they are plastered with all sorts of advertising, just like the real thing. As well as the usual driving them around the house and carrying them everywhere, Daniel has turned them into an amazing memory game of sorts.

In the month-plus since Christmas, Daniel has handed me a car and said "cheese." When I looked down, I saw that it was the car with KRAFT emblazoned on its' tiny hood. The car with the AOL advertising has become the " 'puter car." And he was getting supremely mad/frustrated with me the other day when he wanted his "Em Car!" and I couldn't find it. In a "Mommy light bulb moment" I suddenly realized he was talking about the M&Ms car that he had been carrying around all the previous day. He has also handed me the same car and said "chocolate." After I was done getting knocked off my feet at each of these incidents, I reasoned that while we were unwrapping presents at Christmas I think I was explaining what each of the little cars had written on them. And he remembered.

I had better be pretty careful to mean it the next time I promise him cookies or something.

Not again...

I'm doing laps in Toddler Rerun Purgatory... Daniel discovered Cars this past Christmas. He got the DVD, some books, some of the little cars to push around, etc. It's actually a very cute, well-done movie. But I have officially lost track of how many times we have now watched it.

And the cold that Never Officially Went Away is resurfacing. I was up from about 3am this morning: coughing, coughing, coughing...

Mix this liberally with a toddler who has yet to figure out how to blow his nose (and said stuffy nose is driving him in-sane!) and I'm starting to fray a little bit at the edges. I'm glad that the stuffy nose is all he seems to be sick with, but help!!

That's One Way to Stay Awake

It always amazes me to hear the various stories of kids and their "sleeping styles." Quantity, timing, location... all vary from kid to kid and even in the same kid from time to time. Just to keep us parents on our collective toes...

I was apparently one of those lovely children who didn't need much sleep. At all. Once my little brother came along my Mother had to enforce "quiet time" to try and get me to play or read quietly or something. My brother was on the opposite end of this spectrum and would sleep anytime, and almost anywhere. We have photos of him sleeping in the middle of someone's kitchen counter, and home movies of him ka-zonked in his highchair. A moving vehicle was the fastest way to put him out, and I think Mom worried a bit about putting him on the school bus.

Daniel's doing pretty well with the nighttime sleeping, but I am starting to suspect that we are phasing out the naps. He must still need them because he drops off pretty quickly, but one catnap of an hour or less and he's raring to go (usually... he blessed us with a 2.5 hour nap a few days ago).

Longer car trips can get a bit trickier: put a cozy car, with some of our windier back roads and the rhythm starts him nodding off. And that little bit of extra sleep can make bedtime a lot more interesting. H stumbled across a way to keep the little guy hopping recently. (Well it will work until the temperature drops dangerously...). Roll down the window on some curvy roads, and let the breeze blow through those blond curls! Daniel gets this elated look on his face, and we all laugh the last half of the trip home with the little voice from the backseat squealing: Do 'gen! Hair blo'!

All the King's Men

In many ways I feel as though I shouldn't be complaining. There are so many who have far more serious issues surrounding bridges and construction in this country. That being said...

Our complex has exactly one entrance/exit. I've lost track of exactly when it started, but crews have been repairing the bridge that crosses the (fairly small) river that sits right next to us. It's a mammoth job and while all the heavy equipment and noise has created no small amount of amusement for a two year old who loves anything on wheels, Mommy is really ready for this to be over. Thanks to the newspaper I now know that this millions-of-dollars project will not be completed until next summer. Not this summer - next summer.

Our entrance/exit sits at a bend in the road that cars tend to travel too fast. Trying to leave on a good day often results in taking a deep breath and simply ramming your car out into the traffic flow. I'm actually happy to see the local cop when he decides to park in the drive across the way because traffic actually slows down, and maybe some of the speed-demons might actually get a ticket for their troubles. When they cut down some of the trees to make way for this project it actually increased the visibility which was great. The visibility promptly decreased again when the trees were replaced with various cranes, bulldozers and heavy trucks - not to mention the personal cars of all the construction workers that have decided to park lining our entrance/exit.

I've been trying to hold on, thinking: Hey. Town improvement and all that. But next summer? I'd like to be agreeable and feel that progress is being made, but there are whole stretches of time where no work at all is being done.

All this promises to be even more fun when the New England snow finally descends and the snowplows are looking for somewhere to pile everything that has just been shoveled off the roadways. Yes, my idea of fun is to take your life into your hands every time you try to leave your house. Just one of many reasons that it may be time to move.

Eeep!

There are some very nice friends of my parents in their neighborhood. We visited many of them recently, just to say "hi" (And who am I kidding, to show off Daniel a little...) One of these friends, Burt, collects and sometimes even races cars. Daniel took a shine to a yellow car in the garage that Burt and Teddi referred to as "the Dino." Come to find out from talking to my father later that car is a Dino Ferrari, much like the one pictured, and is quite expensive. Just the thing I want my two-year-old's hands all over!

We are home. Three sore behinds from 1,200 plus miles in the car with a toddler. A toddler who is now wildly off his schedule for little things like sleeping and eating. But hearts are all the richer for getting to spend relaxing and fun time with far away family.

A Two-Fer

One two-year-old in the car for two days. I remember being in the airport to and from Chicago for BlogHer and seeing all the kids and thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice? It's only a two-hour trip by plane..." We tried it last time, and that was the LONGEST two hours I have spent in quite awhile. Serious contemplation was made of renting a car for the return trip home. Maybe in a year or two we can try that again.

Grandma and Grandpa and many assorted relatives and friends are tickled that we are coming. Truthfully, so are we. I don't get to see everyone as much as I would like.

Also truthfully: Send good wishes for the sanity of the two parents.

The Wheels on the bus...

(Boo on Blogger... no matter which way I type, insert picture or publish this post Blogger is deleting all my line spaces. Sorry about the hard-to-read format. Hopefully this will wear off by the next post...)

Do we have a boy in the house, or what? Our house is starting to resemble a parking lot, as Daniel is in the midst of a full-fledged obsession with anything wheeled. Car, truck, tractor - you name it. He heads out to the driveway during our walks and marches around cars like a little inspector, patting the tires and touching the emblems on the front and back.

Trash day has suddenly become an event, as Daniel must head for our deck to watch the huge truck rumble through, lifting bins overhead to dump bags into the back.

I have a class scheduled for him once a week at 9:30am. This week, at quarter to nine, the boy was still snoozing. Ordinarily I subscribe to the philosophy "let sleeping babies lie..." But we had places to go! So I walked into his room, opened the blinds, started rustling around saying, "Hey sleepyhead..." His little head popped up, sleepy eyes opened, and he looked at me and said, "Car???" So I suspect that there are even a few motorized dreams creeping in there...