Nine months later, I arise from flames like the Phoenix to blog again. My sister Kelly, when talking about starting again, said "just don't apologize for not blogging", so I won't. You may ask yourself, 'what was Adam doing for the past nine months where he has neglected updating his friends about his life'? I have asked myself the same thing. Basically, we had Liam (please refer to thehammerherald.blogspot.com for Casey's in-depth detail of that aspect of my life) and I worked. A lot. And I don't have any pictures of work to document except a really cool looking purpuric (deep purple) rash that I captured on my iPhone back in December. Liam and Casey have traveled to Florida twice this Spring (which up in New England is actually just the end of Winter, I don't know if Spring is really a season). This picture to the left is a nice family photo, but is also posted to prove that the snow has officially melted and flowers have started to grow. This was taken on Mother's Day, so May 8.

This was a very long winter in one sense, but it was the fastest 4 months I may have ever experienced. It started snowing in October, but didn't really start snowing heavily/steadily until December. This photo to the right is after the first heavy snow in mid-December when all the Cassidys were up visiting. You may be noticing the stairs and wondering how they they look so perfectly shoveled, they must have been groomed by a seasoned Vermonter, right? Well, easy mistake, but I did it. There is something very gratifying about shoveling large piles of snow, but not when there is any ice in it. It's like mowing tall grass, but better. It's also a neat experience to get so hot in such cold weather that you have to start shedding layers. Maybe not everyone can appreciate this experience, but I am strangely attracted to shoveling. Now, I hope Casey doesn't read this so that more will be expected of me next winter.

This is proof that it did in fact get cold at our house. Very cold. I took this screen shot on my phone before walking into work with scrubs on. Once it gets to below zero it all just feels really cold, but the lower the temperature gets, the faster nose hairs freeze and the faster I develop ice crystals in my beard. Luckily I only had to be out in this weather for about 3-5 minutes on my walk from my car to the hospital. When it gets this cold, you also experience something else odd. Your car acts very differently. First, it is very slow to start, if you are so lucky to have it start. Then, when you start driving, it feels like you are driving on Flinstone wheels because they have frozen into the shape that they were in all night, which is not quite round. There is no snow at this cold of temperatures either. The wise old Vermonters with whom I have talked about the weather (people up here looooove to talk about weather, something I never understood as a Floridian) said that they used to get a solid 1-2 weeks where it never got above -25 F. I am glad that is no longer the case.

So, what did I do when I had time off from work, which was 1 day a week? Here is an example to the right of one of my days off. Otherwise we would go hike in the snow, sled, or just try to give Casey some time to herself away from the boy.

You can see that Liam has been storing up all his nutrients over the winter. He is quite the chunky baby compared to his friends. I had been storing up some nutrients as well, but have finally been able to get back into exercising more than the occasional P90x workout. I have started to ride my bike and run to work as much as I can, depending on the weather (and how early I have to leave). It is such perfect weather now. The skies are generally clear and the weather is in the 50s which is perfect for riding and running.



Here is a video of the wonderful noise we get to hear when Liam wants us to know something is not right. That could be anything from, 'I want to get up', 'I want to go to sleep', 'I want to eat right this second, not in 2 minutes after you have warmed a bottle', or 'I just felt something weird and need to scream'. I am not worried about his masculinity even though this is the most high pitched noise I have heard. I think it is around 16-17 kHz. Luckily we are relatively young parents, because if we were any older, the fine hair cells in our inner ear (cochlea) would be degraded and we wouldn't be able to hear such high pitched noises and he may go unnoticed. Well that seems to be a sufficient update for now. More later. I will be a resident in a month and a half and have much more time...