road trip

john and cousin b draw dinosaurs together

i didn't really set out for it to be this way, but i appear to have taken a bit of a holiday blogging hiatus. so here we are mid-january, and i never even mentioned our christmas (awesome) or new years (festive). in a nutshell, we all got awesome presents from santa and our family, john got spoiled rotten, we celebrated new years with bestest buds from in- and out- of town.

then we worked for a week and went on a little family road trip!

i use the word little very generously.

we drove from baton rouge to visit my husband's brother and his family in north carolina. we left friday after work, leaving town around 8 pm with a little stop at arby's for some last-minute dinner:

fast-food in my pjs is my new fave, mom.

then we drove ... and drove and drove and drove. or really, to be fair, my husband drove while i alternately entertained john, slept, talked to him to keep him awake ... slept some more ... in any case, we arrived in north carolina around 9am saturday morning and started playing with cousin b right off the bat. and the two kiddos played nonstop for two straight days. there was the above art session, trips to the park, playing upstairs, playing downstairs, more than a little dancing ... a good time was had by all.

all too soon it was time to go. but the good news was, we were just jumping back in the car to head to nana's house in tennessee! we were there for nana's birthday, got to visit with a ton of extended family, played with nana's impressive collection of toys:

"then they put me BACK in my car seat ...
oh, baby, it's so nice to have someone who
really GETS me."

made a gingerbread choo choo train: 

this is MUCH harder than it looks.
kudos to daddy and nana.

and went for an awesome hike in the mountains:

and again all too soon, it was friday morning and time to head home. so we drove and drove and drove, all day friday. and john was a CHAMP. (thanks in large part to miss r who sold us her old ipad on which john watched the three toy story movies about 700 times.) we got home late and went to bed.

it's been a tough transition coming back to "normal." john's schedule is all screwy, and he's been throwing tantrums like i've never seen him throw before. (more on that tomorrow.) but last night when i asked him if he was ready to read a story before bed, we saw a glimmer of getting back to the way he usually is. he ran to his room, selected a curious george book, and settled into his chair:

big man reading

when i made it back to his room mere moments later, i said, "whatcha doing, bug?"

to which bug replied: "just reading, mommy. you can read the next story."