My whereabouts

I haven't been writing. I have no excuse, I just haven't been putting my ass in the seat and typing about my mundane life. Here is a brief rundown on what I've been doing since we got back from Vermont:
My father arrived from France a few days after we returned from VT. He went straight to work building a new porch for us and fixing our basement to eliminate moisture and insulate it from the outdoor temperature.

When we pulled into our driveway our house was a different color than when we left. It was blue, now it's beige. The painters we hired had been working the whole week we were gone. They worked another 2.5 days to finish the job. We're very happy with outcome. I'll post before and after pictures when the porch is completely finished.

I have been spending baby Doodle's nap times sanding and painting the railings and spindles of the new porch -- I'm still not finished.

We switched from disposable diapers to cloth, and so far are very happy with the change.

We watched a lot of Olympics, including our good friend's sister, Sue Bird, win her second gold medal on the women's basketball team. What I've concluded from the games: the Chinese are exceptional at diving and playing ping pong, the Jamaicans are exceptional at running, the Americans are good at swimming, gymnastics, volleyball and basketball, and the Chinese have some obviously underage gymnasts on their team.

I took baby Doodle on the train to Long Island to visit my family and attend a bar-b-q my cousin was throwing. BD loved the trains (Amtrak and LIRR) and got to meet the engineer on the Amtrak train on the way to NY. He pointed out every time the conductor would walk past us, and loved handing over our tickets to have them hole punched and torn. He had a blast playing and dancing with our relatives none of whom he had seen in a while, except for my mother.

Mr. Doodlebug was attending his Goddaughter's birthday party in Maryland and picked us up at the train station on Sunday night. Baby Doodle was thrilled to see him.

My father will be staying with us for another week, but we're off to my in-laws' house on Friday so he'll have our house to himself. I'm looking forward to the weekend with three extra hands to help with BD (including Mr. D's).

I hope to write more frequently than I have been. . .

for the rest of our trip . . .

We stayed at a four bedroom, three full bathroom house right on Lake Champlain. The porch, which could convert from a glassed-in to a screened-in effortlessly, was fantastic. It overlooked the lake (looking south down the lake). Having lived in Burlington for two years and in Vermont my entire childhood/adolescence I never realized how massive Lake Champlain is until this trip. It really should be considered a Great Lake. We had a fabulous time swimming (we were in the lake just about every day), boating (we went out in the rowboat once, but baby Doodle LOVED it), relaxing, eating, drinking and visiting Montreal and Burlington.

I hadn't been to Montreal since I was in high school so it was cool to see it again. We stayed in the old city party, but got a good feel for things. We visited Notre Dame, had lunch, and ice cream in BD's case, on the great water front area on the St. Lawrence River. I wondered if Philadelphia officials have been to Montreal to see how Philly could improve our Delaware River area. BD hadn't napped and my hip was annoying me so we left sooner than we would have otherwise (I ran that morning for the first time in a while and re-realized the pain I often have when running on pavement or walking long distances).

Our day in Burlington was fabulous. I went to UVM so it was a little nostalgic for me, but we did some things I'd never done before, like go to the ECHO Center, which was informative and had a lot geared toward kids. Baby Doodle had a great time playing and exploring. We ate our packed lunch looking at the lake and the boats. It was sidewalk sale day on Church Street so there were musicians with open guitar cases on the street. Baby Doodle enjoyed donating to their cause. We went to my brother's house to have a little down time and do laundry. Then we went back to Church Street to have dinner with Uncle Doodle and good old Ben and Jerry's for dessert. Baby Doodle had chocolate ice cream every single day of our vacation.

The time we spent at the lake house was spent eating, drinking, playing badminton and swimming. We played a few games (Oh Hell, Dominoes, Battleship and Mastermind) at night while we inhaling brownies and ice cream. We did manage to have a case of fleas in the house that we suspect came from the mangy cat that was hanging around the house begging for food and to be let in. I think the people who rented before us had let it in the house and were cuddling it and feeding it, and allowing it to spread fleas around. I was only bit a few times, as were BD and Mr. D, but our friend had bites all over her body and had to get a prescription to bathe in to rid them completely from her. That was a bummer.

It was great to have Mr. Doodlebug around for a whole week. I was only solely responsible for baby Doodle about 10% of the time so I had a lot of time to do yoga, prepare meals, read etc. . . All in all it was a great time. More pictures are below.

Eating, drinking and being merry.

"Swing me again, Uncle Doodlebug."

In Montreal.



Sculpture in Montreal.


Montreal.

In the fountain at the top of Church Street, Burlington, VT.

unexpectedly driving all night -- and some pics

We went to bed last night at the house on Lake Champlain in Alburgh, Vermont that we had rented for the week with friends of ours. Mr. Doodlebug and I fell asleep around 11:30pm after cleaning and packing. We were obnoxiously awakened at 12:30 in the morning, just a short hour after falling asleep, to a blaring smoke detector outside our bedroom. Mr. D got a chair from downstairs and I took the battery out -- nothing -- then I unscrewed it from the ceiling, but couldn't get the wires unhooked. Mr. D yanked the wires free, both detectors in the house stopped alarming. We went to baby Doodle's room, he was sound asleep and breathing, there was no sign of smoke. Mr. D checked out the rest of the house. No appliances were on and there was no sign of a fire. It was strange being in an unfamiliar house with the possibility of something being very wrong and not being able to figure out what it was, or why the detectors went off. The ones in our own house detect smoke and carbon monoxide and we thought there was a possibility that these did both, too. We checked baby Doodle again. He was still breathing and completely unfazed by the chaos and noise.

We thought of calling the owner of the house but our cell phones didn't work there and we needed a calling card to call long distance on the land line -- who the hell has those any more? Then we thought of calling 911 and having some fire fighters come to the house to make sure everything was okay so that we could sleep in peace and be refreshed for our long drive home the next day. But the fire department is volunteer and it would have taken half the night to get them out to the house. Since both detectors were disabled we were cautious about going back to sleep in the off chance that something was wrong and we wouldn't be woken up again. We discussed packing the car and driving to a hotel to sleep, or driving all the way home. Since neither of us could sleep we opted for loading the car and starting our long journey home. We were on the road by 1:30am. Baby Doodle fell back asleep in the car. Mr. D drove to Glens Falls then pulled into a rest area to sleep a little. BD promptly woke up when the car stopped and demanded a snack. He couldn't be dissuaded so he ate a bunch of Cheerios out of the box and chatted with me so that I couldn't sleep either. I went to the bathroom, woke Mr. D up, and took over the driving. I drove past Albany onto the NY Thruway. Mr. D slept while I drove and BD talked.

About 40 miles south of Albany I pulled into a rest area and we switched drivers again. The sky wasn't as black as it had been and the sun was just beginning to rise. It reminded me that the last time I drove all night I was a freshman in college and much younger. I climbed in the back seat with BD (not an easy feat considering how much crap I had to move from the back to the front seat) to try to get him to fall asleep. He slept until we stopped again, only 60 miles later (we had to stop for gas and couldn't make it to New Jersey, which was the goal). BD enjoyed a Thomas and a Curious George DVD while I slept -- DVD-playing lap tops are awesome! Mr. D kept driving and got us all the way home safely.

So that was the last 12 hours of our trip to Vermont. The previous 6 days and 12 hours will be recapped in a future post. Don't worry, it won't contain as many grueling details.

Because I just downloaded our pictures I'll include them here so you won't have to wait in suspense.

We played a lot of baseball. Uncle Doodle (see his flip flop to the left) is playing first base at BD's request.



Mr. D and BD in the lake, which was surprisingly warm and waist deep for quite a number of yards.


You might think BD had placed his face in a bowl of pudding, really he had just finished eating a not-too-big chocolate ice cream cone. And he had already wiped his face off himself.


This is the face BD makes when you tell him to smile for the camera, or if you ask him to say cheese. We're eating dinner with Uncle Doodle in Burlington.


During our last day in VT (yesterday) we saw a spectacular double rainbow. You can only see one in this shot, but during a brief period we could see two. They extended all the way from land to land. It was amazing. Baby Doodle loved it. He turned 28-months yesterday.