I'm still here

I noticed the other day that it's been quite a while since I last blogged.  The finger incident, which I still haven't been able to bring myself to type out the whole story of my hospital misadventure, Christmas, moving two kids into one bedroom, the birth of my first nephew and a snow storm have just left me in a seemingly endless state of neglecting the blog.  Honestly, after my hospital stay, I've just had a hard time wanting to do anything.  I'm certainly in a bit of a funk but I'm trying my best to get out of it.

I've healed up nicely from my injury and infection.  My finger is still a bit sore but I'm thankfully able to to normal household tasks again.  I had about a ten day break from changing diapers.  I suppose that was probably the silver lining in this whole miserable situation.  That, and me not being able to wash sippy cups.  I really dislike cleaning sippy cups.

Our Christmas was quite nice.  We sat in the front row of chairs for Christmas Eve Mass in the parish school cafegymitorium.  That meant I finally got to take pictures and even some videos of Ellie singing in the children's choir, and I even snapped a few pictures of Madeline altar serving.  Katie was surprisingly well behaved considering she spent an hour before Mass trying to sit with Ellie and the rest of the choir.  We sat with friends at Mass which also made it a more enjoyable experience.

Despite the smaller piles of Christmas gifts, I still feel like the kids got way too much for Christmas.  We give the kids four gifts each (three from us and one from St. Nick) and a stocking.  Once you add in gifts from other family members, though, the piles seem to take on a life of their own.  Fortunately we didn't have anyone crying that she had too many gifts to open this year.  So that was a welcome change.

On December 28th my nephew, Miles, was born.  He weighed 9lbs, 7oz!  That's practically a two month old if you ask me!  Funny thing is, when we got to meet him a few days after he was born he didn't seem like he was a big baby, he seemed very newborn like to me, but that might just be because I'm used to carrying a 24lb toddler all the time.  Katie is quite taken with her new little cousin and kept calling him "my baby" and making this cute little sound as she admired him.  It was the cutest thing.  She was certainly eager to hold him and she has Bryan and I more than a little concerned about how we're going to manage having a 2 1/2 year old who wants to play mommy and a newborn.  I think we're really going to have our work cut out for us.

The past week and a half has been one of transition with regards to the kids' bedrooms.  Madeline and Ellie are now the proud owners of a beautiful bunk bed and are sharing a room.  We're still working on making Madeline's old room a shared space.  I still have to merge their closets and we have more than a few items that need to find new places somewhere else in the house.  We're getting there.

Ellie's old room is about to become Katie's big girl room.  I'm planning to pain the blue room a nice cheery pink.  I'm also trying to decide whether or not I really want to refinish Madeline's old armoire.  Right now it's a honey pine color.  I'd like to paint it white so it matches Ellie's old headboard which I like better than Madeline's old bed which used to be my bed.  So I have a bit of work to do.  I just need to find the energy so I can do it.

I've decided to keep the pretty light aqua blue walls that are in the nursery for the new baby.  The bedding I selected has some aqua in it and I think the wall help to make the aqua accents on the bedding pop.   I have most of the decorative items I will need to have the little guy's nursery just the way I want it.  I'm looking forward to decorating the nursery.  I'm hopeful that I will have the nursery set up by the end of February.

Madeline is back to playing soccer again.  I think she had about six weeks off.  She's playing indoor soccer for the next two or three months and doing training with her travel team one night a week.  Most of her indoor games are at the same time I teach on Sunday morning so I think I may only make it to one or two of her games.  Bryan's not coaching for indoor soccer so he's getting to see what it's like to manage a toddler on the sidelines.

So as you can probably tell from my hodge podge update, we've been a bit busy around here.  There's certainly a lot going on and I don't foresee things slowing down anytime soon.  I'm going to do my best to update the blog a bit more frequently.  I've got loads of pictures to upload so perhaps that will be a catalyst for me to do a bit more blogging.

I also want to wish you all a belated Merry Christmas (nothing like waiting until the 12th day of Christmas to wish you a Merry Christmas, right?) and a happy and healthy 2014!