Deep breath

And we're back! I had thought it was at least possible I might do some irregularly scheduled blogging over the back half of my holiday vacation, but clearly that did not happen. Today, though, I am back at the Big Gray and able to devote a modicum of attention to belatedly kicking off the new year's worth of posts. Of course, this is going up in the afternoon because I spent most of the morning trying to get some server admins to resuscitate my databases, which apparently had been offline since Tuesday.

And some things never change. Of course this was just about irritating enough to walk into after a week off to justifiably prompt a round of screaming, but I held back. I've had quite enough of screaming as it is. It was really, truly, fundamentally lovely to spend an entire eight days with my wife and our three darling little ones with very little agenda in terms of places to go and things to do, but man those kids can get loud:

- The little guy will start screaming if things aren't right, which includes of course personal affronts but also encompasses more general transgressions against proper procedure (usually as committed by his little sister) even if they have nothing to do with him and are seriously none of his business
- The little girl will default to screaming if she doesn't get her way, which on the one hand is simpler and more straightforward than her big brother's triggers, and yet of course is unreasonably selfish in the manner which only two-(almost-three-)year-olds can manage
- And recently the baby has started screaming at random for no reason whatsoever. These aren't particularly agitated or angry screams, more full-throated exercising of his vocal capabilities to hear the sound of his own voice. If there's any deeper reason behind the mindless yelling, it's that he's developing an awareness of his two siblings and their behavior modeling, to the point where if everyone else is raising a ruckus than he's not going to be left behind, by gosh.

So yeah, the relative peace and quiet of the cubicle farm (still not fully populated, as a handful of stragglers have extended their vacations through this week) is welcome, I can't deny it. Christmas and New Year's were both fun, in blessedly low-key fashion, and I'm just easing myself into life-as-passes-for-normal again. I expect I'll have a longer, more discursive post tomorrow as I really get my legs back, and then, what the heck, let's plan on the normal weekly schedule more or less returning to form come next Monday.