Visiting the cousins

Why don't they make kids with handles?

Lynzee having a very serious discussion with Dexter

Four kids smiling, one looking at the camera

All smiling, four facing the right direction, one looking at the camera

Only one real smiling, but everyone's looking in the general direction of the camera. Close enough.

My dream come true...

I've always wished for a kid that would just plop down & go to sleep when he was tired. Dexter's not exactly like that, but he did it once just to make me smile.

Tell us how you really feel

Dexter started solid foods almost six weeks ago. Well, I should say I started making baby food & shoving it in his mouth, because there was no actual eating happening for the first month, and this was the face we had to look at:


He's gotten much more enthusiastic about eating in the past couple weeks.

Cooper on the World Wide Web

Another Cooper sighting on the One Step Ahead website (here).


Cooper & Dexter have been working lots lately in preparation for Christmas catalogs. Also, Dexter may be appearing in a Sears catalog or Sears or K-Mart circular in the near future so keep your eyes open (& let me know if you see him!).

Happy Mother's Day

Weekend getaway

If you've been reading my blog since I started it (in other words, if you're my mom or my cousin Karen), you may have noticed I've never posted about going on vacation. That's 'cause we haven't had one in YEARS. I'm a firm believer in at least annual vacations, probably because my parents were big on vacations. We didn't have many big expensive vacations when I was growing up, but we did always have vacations. My parents believed vacations were an investment in memories & I completely agree. But our last trip (it was really just a weekend away) was in May of 2007 when I was pregnant with Cooper, & our last real vacation was almost 4 years ago. Needless to say, I was in desperate need of some kind of vacation. Since we didn't have the time or money for much, I hopped on the internet & found a deal on a weekend at a hotel 30 miles from home. Not Jamaica, but it had a pool.

Me & the boys having breakfast in bed.

Cooper was almost as excited about the pool as I was.

Dexter has discovered that he can bang his hand & make noise & he loves it. John & I have joked that he'll probably be a drummer today. Judging by this picture I'm thinking it'll be steel drums in a Jimmy Buffett-esque (Jimmy Buffett-y?) band.

John, Cooper, & Ba-lock (get it? Barack + block? John's pun, not mine. You know it's a good joke when I say, "get it?") at Legoland.

"It's not scary, Daddy. Right?"

Cooper reading to Dexter. (It's a Stephen King book.)