We now return to our regularly scheduled programming:

I’ve been away for a while. Things have been happening that would be complaints if I didn’t feel lucky to be dealing with all of it together as a family.

I had great blogging plans. I wanted to talk about Josh around the anniversary of his death on December 13. I wanted to capture all of our holiday celebrations. I had great shots of Danny on his first Christmas at home. I had many thoughts on the New Year and even a foray into the world of reality TV.

But life got in the way.

Danny flunked his hearing test about five weeks ago due to fluid filled ears. A subsequent visit to the doctor revealed an ear infection. No sooner was the last dose of amoxicillin administered then we learned that Gordon’s persistent leg pain was due to a herniated disk. He had surgery three weeks ago. Recovery meant not lifting anything heavier then a milk carton. This includes: kids, trash, the vacuum, snow among other things.

It was during this time that Gracie had a major relapse in potty training. She couldn’t be bothered. One night I noticed she was soaked while she was doing some coloring. I asked her where the puddle was. Without looking up or pausing in her work she said: “It’s around the corner, you’ll see it.”

Just as the dust began to settle, I noticed a small white bump behind one of Danny’s front baby teeth. The next day it was bigger and I thought it was a tooth coming in wrong. Our regular dentist probed it and it was soft, not a tooth. But while he hadn’t seen anything like it, he wasn’t worried. Both our pediatrician and I decided we should take Danny to a pediatric dentist. We saw fabulous Dr. Dan with the giant plastic toy teeth today. He diagnosed a congenital abnormality of the hard gum tissue. He agreed this was nothing to worry about. It will probably go away when his adult teeth come in. In the meantime we’ve found a great new dentist for the kids. We also learned that every tooth that could be coming in was coming in simultaneously.

Poor kid.

But Gordon’s now been upgraded to 20 pounds; Gracie is back in the proverbial saddle and I’ve stopped prying Danny’s mouth open every 20 minutes so I feel we’re back on track.Rather then trying to catch up on the back log, I’m going to start from where we are right now. Here are a few pictures from the first couple weeks of ’09.

The first day of 2009 - Happy New Year!

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Our New Year's Visitor: An albino squirrel

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Building a "Camp Fire"

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A morning ritual: Danny climbes into Gracie's bed and wakes her up. This is the happy result about 25% of the time. On the other 75%, Gracie burrows deeper under the covers and yells: "Take Danny away!"

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What else are you going to do when the temperature is 15 below zero?

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Some indoor fun. First carousel ride - not too sure!

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One of my knitting projects. It's big because I'm making a matching one with a blue background for Danny for next year.

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Gracie, Danny and "Big Bow-wow" enjoying Gracie's prize for FINALLY being completely potty trained!!

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The boy loves his baths! If you look closely, you can see the white bump behind the lower tooth on the right side of the photo.