Recent Happenings

I would like to give some excuse for not posting in so long (almost a month!) but I have none. Everything is going relatively smoothly-- this has still been my easiest pregnancy. There are days when I feel less able to move around comfortably (today, for one..) but I can never seem to figure out why. Eight more weeks. I am starting to get stressed out a little bit about that. I'm realizing now that I'll never get all that house organizing done. I wanted to go through each closet, each drawer, each tiny space and get rid of everything I own. Maybe I need to watch an episode of Hoarders each day-- that does get me motivated! Instead I'm sidetracked by the everyday organizing and cleaning (that damn mudroom full of snowboots and snowsuits and school bags and lunchboxes and coats and groceries and...) and rarely get that enough under control to move on to organizing what is hidden away in the closets. I did get to organizing the kids' old clothes and ended up with about 12 huge bins that are organized by size. (Note that I have given away all of Alex's clothes under size 18 months and all of Talia's clothes under 4T so this sadly represents only a year or two. Must watch Hoarders more often!) I still have to go through their more current clothes and lots of miscellaneous shoes and winter gear that are just thrown on the floor in our storage room.

I bought a new point and shoot digital camera, which explains why I haven't been taking many photos (the LCD screen on my old one broke) and so I have some new pictures. I'm actually returning the new camera (too slow to respond...) and trying a different one but that's another story. The pix in the above collage represent the past week or so-- Talia and I went to see the Nutcracker. See how I'm hiding my pregnant self behind my kid? Nice. Hanukkah came and went with big gifts of an American Girl doll for Talia and the Playmobil airplane AND airport terminal for Alex (if we have to play with him we may as well make it fun for ourselves...) and many many many many smaller presents for each. Talia had her first ski lesson and was AMAZING! After an hour-long private lesson she was able to ski down the slope, get on the rope tow, come up, ski down, come up etc. She is even able to stop, troubleshoot, fall and get up. She loved it. I've been on and off with cooking lately but this past week I cooked a bunch of meals (butternut squash risotto, middle eastern chickpeas and spinach with yogurt sauce, orchiette with broccolini, chickpea and bread soup, cauliflower with panko). Last week I picked out a month's worth of recipes and that seems to have worked out pretty well. All the clean up is really too much for me though and keeps me from those other organizing projects (see paragraph number one!).

The kids are now off from school for TWO WEEKS. I'm really excited about not having to get them out of the house in the morning (though now they are used to getting up at 7am so I suspect I won't get to sleep in at all...) but not excited about entertaining them for so many days. I need to force myself to take them out for an activity each day. They don't really want to go (they are pajama homebodies like me) but it will give structure to the day. Tomorrow we are getting a HUGE delivery of a bunk bed for Talia's room. I guess that means that we are finally going to get Alex out of the crib. I wonder how that will go, since it seems like he couldn't care less about it. He's been crying at bedtime (and naptime too sometimes) lately so I can't imagine it will go well. He's welcome to sleep in Talia's room on the bottom bunk but who knows how that will be? Talia is such a light sleeper. If he cries she will certainly wake up and if I spend time cuddling him and trying to get him back to sleep she gets jealous. ("You love him more than me" is a popular phrase in our house; a topic for another day). I guess that's what winter break is for-- to try new sleeping arrangements out! We have no idea where to put the new baby-- not that it will matter for a few months, she'll just stay in our room-- but if Talia and Alex did want to room together it would solve some problems... We have an upcoming vacation as well so don't feel *too* sorry for me having the kids home for two weeks.

That's all for now. I get my new new new camera tomorrow or the next day so I guess I will be taking lots more pictures and perhaps will post a little more frequently... Happy holidays to all.