Glimmer in the Fog

Yeah yeah, cut me slack on the lack of postings and website updates. I'm typing this with left hand only, on a relatively luxurious 3 straight hours of sleep (and spent the rest of the night dozing while sitting up).

I go back to work in just over a month, and finally feel like I can get out of the house and get something done during the day. It's been great doing holiday and grocery shopping in the middle of the day without crowds. I had fairly reasonable expectations of being able to get more accomplished during my leave, but the extreme lack of sleep and inability to put Lena down for more than 15mins have thwarted my grand goals of cleaning out my closet and writing my thesis methodology.

The last 7 weeks have been a fog. The first couple weeks were painful and exhausting, and then I was just stupid tired, and for the last 4 or 5 consecutive weeks we've had house guests, which has been nice but a little tiring. Somewhere in the fog was the blur called "Thanksgiving" which involved cooking 4 sides, 2 deserts and cornbread for 17 people at Thanksgiving with 9 family members visiting from out-of-town and all wanting to see Eli & Lena while I tried to function on an hour of sleep. Fortunately my cousin helped in the kitchen since I had the approximate mental capacity of a yam when it came to multitasking and forming complex thoughts.

Just to toss things up a little, Eli decided he was ready to wear big boy underwear the Monday after Thanksgiving. It's been going well overall and he's stayed dry almost everyday at school. Once he gets home things get a little dicier and he's had several accidents in the evenings, mostly because he's scared to poop. There have been a couple memorable nights when Eli has had an accident while I was upstairs cleaning up Lena's diaper blow-out. Good times.
Evenings in general are a challenge - getting Eli on the potty, fed dinner, bathed, into his pjs, teeth brushed, and tucked in, all while holding or nursing Lena is no small feat, especially when there's an accident or tantrum. When I'm lucky Justin can come home just long enough to give Eli his bath and get him into PJs, or my mom can come over to hold Lena while I do Eli's evening routine.

Eli's 3rd Birthday is coming up and the holidays are in full swing, so I know the next month at home with Lena will zoom by. My laptop monitor died and I'm semi-unplugged for a while, so no guarantees of more postings soon, but here's a new photo of Lena...