Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, happy to get away.

We've been here at my parents' house in New Jersey for almost two weeks now. It's been long enough for it to feel like this is just how we live. We have roughly four meals a day. There is no end to the snacking. A handful of Christmas cookies are totally a reasonable snack. Working? Working out? Paying bills? Doing chores around the house? Trying to keep Z on a schedule? Teaching her play by herself and not need constant attention? NOT SO MUCH.

We've been here so long it's actually stopped being weird that I'm sleeping in my old girlhood bedroom. Granted, my twin bed has been replaced by a - more fitting to my girth and the presence of my husband - queen sized bed. And my ballet posters and high school mess have been replaced by tasteful decorations and a blessed lack of knickknacks. But lest I forget the wreck of a teenager I was, my prom and formal dresses still hang in the closet (I can't get rid of those! Z might want to laugh at them some day!) and my mom pulled out a bunch of my journals that I had left here (Probably because they are only partially full. I had a short attention span when it came to journals and every time someone gave me a new one, I'd drop my current one and pick up the next.). The journals are sitting by my bedside so that I can drift off to sleep at night knowing the specific reasons why December 21st 1987 was so lame that it deserved the dreaded C- grade.

We've had a great time here: hanging out with my parents, my husband's family, my almost-94 year old grandfather, and my friends from high school, most of whom I had lost touch with in my twenties but somehow reconnected with once we all had kids around the same time. We went to the Natural History Museum in New York and the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia. (Both of which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone with a toddler. I also recommend that you don't go to the former anytime between Christmas and New Years or the latter on New Years Eve if you are at all agoraphobic/claustrophobic/ can't-effing-stand-crowds-a-phobic.) Z rode the NYC subway and loved it, signing and saying "more" at every stop. We began to teach her the most important lesson of NYC subway life- MAKE NO EYE CONTACT AND DEFINITELY DO NOT TRY TO PLAY FOOTSIE OR PEEK-A-BOO WITH ANYONE.

I've been living on the West Coast long enough that this place feels familiar but strange, not quite like home. I hear some harsh South Jersey/Philly/New York accents and giggle to myself, wondering how that ever used to sound normal. I lamely brace against the cold when we go for walks ("I mean, how cold can it really be??") and my normal desire for an endless jaunt turns into a quick duck back inside for some hot tea. The streets of Philadelphia and New York seem strangely narrow, dark and dingy; the buildings, impossibly old.

Then there's SLEET. WTF? MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

This is the first Christmas vacation in recent memory that Chic Geek has not spent the majority of his time holed up in a room, basking in the glow of the computer, preparing for an annual, really annoyingly-timed academic conference that takes place the first week of January, conveniently scheduled to maximize its holiday-buzzkillness. CG has actually been able to hang out! Sleep in! (when I let him.) Watch movies! Play games (I'm pretty sure we all wet our pants just a little during the last round of Pictionary in which CG drew a DEAF person reading BRAILLE.)! Read books! HAVE A VACATION! (Halle-frickin-lujah!)

After two weeks, we're ready to go home. We miss Sweet Dog and worry that she's been irreparably damaged by our absence (CG's BOSS is taking care of her. FOR TWO WEEKS. "No pressure, Sweet Dog, just be perfectly well behaved OR DADDY GETS FIRED."). We're looking forward to seeing friends back home and settling back into our beloved little house. We're ready to stop eating so much and, uh, getting back to the gym. I can't wait to leave the house for a walk and NOT be able to see my breath.

But I will miss this time spent with family that we don't get to see often enough. I don't exactly need to live under the same roof as my parents again but it gets harder and harder to be so far away. Plus, who's going to bake me coffee cake from scratch? Who's going to fold my laundry and put it on my bed? Who's going to watch my kid while I read a book? My mama is too far away. (But thankfully, we learned that all her tests turned out normal. YAY.)