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The dust has finally settled, and though the dishwasher & garage door opener still don't work, things are starting to get back to normal. Finn is still not clear on the fact that Christmas is over, however, and is repeatedly asking to open more presents. The first words out of his mouth upon waking from his nap yesterday were: "Now we open more Christmas presents?"

Of course, I reminded him that Christmas was over and that there were no more presents - as Kitty was walking in the door with more presents. So my credibility is shot. Not like he was listening to me anyway. If I come up the stairs and roar like a monster if he's not expecting me, he'll get scared and run to the other side of the house with his toys before he even looks over his shoulder. However, if I threaten him that Santa only brings toys to good little boys and girls that use the potty, he'll just shrug, wet his pants and ask where his presents are.

Although in his defense, and as he pointed out to me a couple of days ago, "the potty takes a long time."

Aside from the Money Pit issues noted earlier this week, Christmas was a huge success. Finn and I have discovered that we both have an affinity for his new train table - me for setting it up and him for immediately knocking it down with his new toy garbage truck - which I'm sure we can eventually parlay into a much more expensive electric train habit. Turns out that setting up those wooden tracks without instructions isn't easy. It took Rob and I at least an hour on Christmas Eve just to make a rudimentary oval. The weird part is it didn't take us nearly that long to drink that bottle of tequila beforehand.

We had Mema, Keith, Nicole & new-cousin-Leni in town, which was great, though Finn did show a little bit of jealousy around Leni - which manifested itself into a weird Linus-like blanket affectation for a couple of nights. Not really sure what was up with that, since it was gone as soon as it arrived. He did maintain Linus-brain, as he informed me that today's brief snowstorm's flakes "need more sugar."

Now, according to Finn, the only thing remaining for this year's Christmas is to return our tree to the field from whence it came. I'm definitely not making that drive again, so I'm thinking he'll be equally as happy when I tell him that we're returning it to a garbage truck.

We can even throw one of the little trees from the train table in the back of his toy garbage truck and reenact the scene ourselves, with the addition of mass destruction across the railway.

I'd better get to work building the track. Where's that tequila?