In other news today....

I went shopping again today. I took Alison shopping yesterday to pick out a Christmas dress because we are getting pictures taken Friday. Then I took a quick tour through the ladies' department to find something for myself. Alison had swimming lessons, so we were running short on time, and I was only able to find a top for me....found some pants that I liked, but had grabbed what I thought were a size 14 and a size 12, only to find that I had grabbed two 14's and they were too big. I had also intended to pick up some "winter" pajamas, since it's cold now and my current pajamas are a cap sleeved top and capri length bottoms, but in my hurry to get us out of the store and on our way to the pool, I forgot about the pajamas.

So I found myself back at the store this morning, after dropping Alison off at school. I picked out some new pj's and then set off in search of the pants. It took some searching, but just when I had resigned myself to trying on a pair of size 10 and knowing they would be too small, I found a 12. That was exactly what I needed. And just to see if I was really a size 12 or if it was just the style of pants, I grabbed a pair of jeans and they fit, too! I haven't worn a size 12 since, approximately, my sophomore year of college.

Oh, I tried on the size 10 pants just for the heck of it and yes, they were too small. But they weren't way, way to small. Keeping in mind that it wasn't that long ago that I wouldn't have been able to get size 10 pants up past my knees, I was able to get the on, waist buttoned and zipper zipped. They were still too tight in the seat, but it was great encouragement to work on losing the 9 pounds I have left to make my goal weight.

Yesterday was election day, and so I took myself and my four year old down to our precinct's poll location and voted. The plan had been for me to plop her in her stroller and walk there, since it is conveniently located at the end of our block, and then she would have been confined and I wouldn't have had to worry about her wandering around (she will still sit nicely in a stroller, believe it or not!). Unfortunately, by the time Alison was up from her nap, a misty rain had started, so we drove instead and didn't use the stroller at all. I was slightly concerned about how it would go, since the parking lot was pretty full when we got there and I didn't know how long we would have to wait, but with a little bag of animal crackers in hand, Alison walked into the building and stood quietly in line until it was my turn to vote. She finished her animal crackers just as we got to the front of the line, but agreed to stand quietly with her hands in her pockets until we were done. She even got a sticker when we were all done.

We used a new voting system this year. In the past we had used punch cards, but in the wake of hanging chads, we now have a large paper ballot where you connect the two parts of the arrow of the candidate or issue that you are voting for. Then the ballot gets fed into a scanner and read that way. At least there is a paper trail in case there is any question about tampering or whatnot.

I'm happy to say that in the statewide races, I voted for the winning candidates, and 3 out of the 5 issues went the way I voted, too. However, most of the rest of the people I voted for didn't win, unless they were running unopposed. That's not really all that surprising, seeing as we live in Republicanville and I'm not a Republican. But at least I voted!

How does a 4 year old putt-putt golf?

If you're my 4 year old, it goes something like this: put the ball down where mommy says, hold the putter so the head is upside down and then take a whack at the ball. The ball will then go about 2 feet down the green. Grab the ball, walk up to the cup and put the ball down next to it. Try to hit the ball into the cup. If it makes it, GREAT! If not, try one more time. If it doesn't make it that time, pick the ball up and drop it in the cup.

Repeat at the next hole.

That's pretty much how she played the whole course last night (except for the hole where I helped her get a hole-in-one, but was unable to get a hole-in-one myself @@). I laughed every time.

In my opinion, when the phone rings before 9:00 in the morning, it's not going to be good news. That definitely proved to be the case when the phone rang at my house at 7:30 this morning. Before I picked up the phone, I thought that maybe it was just my neighbor calling to let me know that she was on her way over to pick up the cookie dough that she'd sold for us at her office, but when I looked at the Caller ID I saw that it was not her number but the number of the grandparents of one of Alison's classmates. Oh joy! There are only two reasons for calling that early on a school day. One is that the school is closed for weather related reasons, and cold and cloudy is not going to close the school. The other is that they need someone to co-op for them.

Now, if they had called yesterday, I could have just pretended that I wasn't home, let the machine pick up, and hope that they found someone else before I "got the message." But that's not something I could really do at 7:30 in the morning. So I answered the phone, and yes, Classmate was sick and they needed someone to co-op. I had just gone on the field trip on Monday and worked my scheduled co-op day on Wednesday, and I really didn't want to work again today, but, since I didn't have anything else planned -- other than finishing up the newsletter -- I felt guilty about saying no. So I went to school again this morning.

The good news is that the kids weren't quite as crazy as the were on Wednesday. But it was still an eventful day. One little girl cried when her mom left and wanted no part of getting her picture taken (it was picture day today). Then in the middle of our "work" period, the fire alarm went off. We had just been told in our class meeting Tuesday night that they were going to have another fire drill soon, but this wasn't it. A couple of ladies from the church office came out to see if we needed any help, since no one knew what was going on and they had to evacuate, too. You know it's not good when even the head maintenance guy doesn't know what's going on. It turns out that everything was fine...there's some construction going on in the church and one of the workers somehow accidentally set the alarm off.

I'm so glad that tomorrow is Saturday. Kevin will be home and I am planning to abdicate my authority to him for the day so I can take care of the things I need to do. I'm not dealing with anything that doesn't involve blood or serious bodily injury.

Thank goodness today is Wednesday. That means it will soon be Saturday. And although Saturday is a day that we tend to catch up on things around the house, at least I don't have to worry about getting my child up and out the door for whatever activity we have for the day. And Saturday is the day that I can sleep in!

Today was a school day. And it was a crazy school day. It was my co-op day, and generally I like being in the classroom. Today started out bad and stayed bad. I got to church and there were no parking spaces available in the church parking lot or on the streets surrounding the church. Fortunately there were a couple of non-permit spaces in the city lot, so I quickly took one of those. The reason for the lack of parking spaces? A rummage sale at church. Also on the agenda today, pictures for our 3 year old class and, to make things nice and confusing, it was fundraiser pick-up day. There were people all over the place. There were fundraising committee members in and out of the classroom, talking to the teacher, talking to me. It was quite chaotic.

And the kids must have been picking up on the chaos, because they were crazy! The teacher said it was like the first week of school all over again. They were having a lot of trouble following directions. They were having a hard time being quiet when it was time to be quiet. They were having a hard time listening. They were having a hard time sitting still. It made for an exhausting morning. Hopefully everything will calm down on Friday otherwise picture day is going to be quite exasperating for the photographer.

Since I brought my cookie dough home after our class meeting last night, I was able to run home, get Alison out of her twisters an into her regular shoes, grab my camera and the books belonging to Alison's friend and get us on our way to Wendy's for lunch with our friends from dance class pretty much on time. From there we headed to Chippewa Nature Center for the afternoon. We had never been there, and it was a lot of fun.
We hiked to the Homstead and visited with (and fed) some pigs, chickens, and cows. We checked out the school house and the sugar house. Alison also got to experience the outhouse. We went back to the visitor center and checked out all the exhibits they had there. There's a lot of hands on stuff for the kids, and ours all had a very good time. Alison's preschool class will be going to the Nature Center for a field trip at the end of November, and I know that Alison will be looking forward to it, now.

It made for a very long day. Alison did take a nap when she got home, even though she said she was just going to rest with her eyes open. But she's still going to bed early tonight. And I think I will probably be going to bed early, too!

As of today, I have officially lost all my baby weight from last year. I've been within 5 pounds of it since April and kept gaining an losing the same 3 pounds all summer, but I finally got myself in gear and got to work and hit my goal. Now that I've done that, it's on to the next, and final goal....only 11 more pounds to go.

And in other news, it's October 12, and it's snowing to beat the band right now.
Seriously. If this keeps up, all the leaves that just started coming down last week will be buried in snow. It's not snow that's going to last past today, but still..... snow on October 12? We could be in for a long winter.

It's a good thing that my mom bought Alison a new winter coat at the end of the season last year or we would have been in trouble this morning when it was 29 degrees when it was time to leave for physical therapy.

Right now, my daughter is out in the middle of the backyard, sitting on a chair that is sitting in a wheelbarrow (daddy is standing right next to her), with a bucket containing a worm at her feet and with a stick in her hand. She's fishing. The wheelbarrow is her boat. She also has a little plastic shovel and a little plastic rake that are her oars.

This morning, we made cookies. Again, they were chocolate chocolate chip....Alison new favorite, I guess. As I was mixing in the chips, Alison was looking in the bowl and she said "that cookie dough looks like poop." Gee, isn't that an appetizing thought? The sad thing is, later on I noticed that she had something on her pant leg and since Kevin was closer to her I asked him to check it out, saying it was either cookie dough......or poop.

I had promised myself that I would try to blog more often, and yet time has gotten away from me again. It's been an adjustment to get used to the new school schedule, but we're getting there. Alison loves school. She get so excited when it's a school day. And she gets excited when it's swimming lesson day. And she gets excited when it's PT and dance class day. I guess you could say she's excited just about every day. :)

I'm getting used to having free time on school days (at least the days that I'm not co-oping). I've been trying to use that free time to exercise...either running, when the weather permits, or doing an exercise video. I was doing really well for the first few weeks and then ended up with a cold, or something, and got out of the habit for a week or so. So now I'm struggling to get back in the groove. But I'm getting there.

We've been pretty busy the last couple of weekends and I'm looking forward to a break. Two weeks ago we had a pot luck at church for our couples group. It was a huge success. It was our first meeting of the year and we doubled the size of our group. Hopefully the new couples will keep coming. We had church and UMYF the next day, and for Alison it seemed like she was at church every day that week.

Last weekend we helped out at a pancake breakfast benefit for our friend Dylan on Saturday. He's three years old and has leukemia. It was a long day, but we raised a good amount of money for him. The best news is that he was healthy enough to be there, running around and playing with the kids of the other volunteers. On Sunday, was the annual CROP Walk. We were the only middle school UMYF counselors that could be there that day, so that meant Alison had to be there, too. We decided to make it worth her while this year. We signed her up as a walker and got to work raising money -- figuring the people we knew would be more willing to donate to a (disabled) 4 year old than to either one of us -- in an effort to get enough to get her a t-shirt. Between people in the neighborhood and online contributions from out-of-town family and friends, she raised $165. That was enough for a t-shirt and a pin.

This weekend, we have nothing specific on our agenda. I am so glad. :) I'm looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning, especially since Alison hasn't been sleeping well for the last couple of nights. Wednesday night we had some really bad thunderstorms, which, of course, woke her up (but not until about half an hour after they woke me up -- I laid there awake, waiting for her to wake up and was just about back to sleep when she did end up waking up). Last night a bad dream woke her up. And when she wakes up, I wake up. She has been taking great naps, but I haven't had that luxury. I've been forcing myself to stay awake so that I won't be wide awake until all hours of the night. So I'm tired. And it doesn't help that I'm sitting here in a recliner, in the very warm sun. I guess I should get up and go do something worthwhile, or I'll be asleep before I know it!

It was a first! Alison sat through an entire fireworks display, only cried a couple of times and actually enjoyed large parts of it!!

Kevin's company picnic and awards ceremony was last night. It was fun. They had a moon walk and a huge bouncy slide set up for the kids, and both were a big hit. Clowns were on hand to paint faces and make balloon animals. Alison couldn't have the balloons, though she really, really wanted them, but she did get her face painted. She usually chooses to have a cat face, but last night she picked a mask. It turned out really well, and even inspired a couple of other mask requests. She spent a little time in the moon walk and got to go down the slide several times before we ate, and then she got to do them both again after dinner. Once she got her earmuffs on (we had brought them to wear for the fireworks) so that the really loud sound system didn't bother her as much, Alison sat nicely and listened to the awards presentations with. Figuring that he wasn't going to get a Continuous Improvement award, Kevin sent Alison and I off to the bathroom so we would have that taken care of before the fireworks. We came back to find him holding his grand prize plaque. We missed it!

Then it was time for the fireworks. I had parked close to the tent so we wouldn't have too far to go in case we needed to make a quick getaway. We pulled out the chairs and sat down just as the show began. Alison whined and carried on a little, but didn't beg to go home, as she has in the past. She didn't seem to like the ones that went up high and exploded into a lot of color. But she did like the low launched ones that were more noise and flashing than anything else. During one round of that she sat up and stared, shouting out to me "I love those!" Go figure! That was what I thought was going to upset her the most! She talked about the fireworks the whole way home, telling me how much she loved them. "I've never, ever seen fireworks like that before!!" Well, that's right....you've always been too afraid to stay and watch them before.

We are definitely getting our money's worth out of those big earmuffs! So far they've been to a parade, to the movies, and to the fireworks.

Well, we finished the first full week of our new fall schedule. I think we survived! It's been a little strange for me, in some ways. In others, it's the same old stuff. I'm used to carting Alison off to swimming lessons, dance class and PT. I'm not used to dropping her off at preschool and coming home to a (blissfully?) quiet house for almost 2 hours. But I'm getting used to it fast!!

Alison is loving all her new activities. Her swimming class is just her and one other little boy, who happens to be her buddy that lives behind us. They are having a good time. PT is PT, not to much you can say about that. But she seems to have settled back into it a little better. She still has her moments where she tries to run off and do whatever happens to catch her eye, rather than what she's supposed to be doing, but she's getting a lot better a getting down to business and doing her work. Maybe that's because she gets to do a little bit of yoga if there's time left after doing all her work. As far as dance class, I think she's missing her two buddies that had been in her class since the beginning of the year. They are in school on Tuesday and Thursday, and Alison is in school on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so they're in a different class. But she's having fun.

Alison's preschool is a co-op, and I got to help out in her class today. It was fun. I had no idea what I was doing, and told the aid that I would be much better at it next time, but I think I did ok. I'm not sure how much attention to give Alison while I'm there.....is it ok for her to be sitting on my lap during the class meeting for instance? I'll have plenty of chances to get it all figured out. And it looks like Alison is going to give her teacher a run for her money this year. Wednesday she accomplished a first in the 20 years her teacher has been teaching. Alison took all the dishes and the "sink" out of the sink base in the play kithen area, climbed into the cabinet and then stuck her head up through the hole where the sink was supposed to be. That's my girl! @@ Today, as she was running across the room, her teacher asked me if she ever walks. Nope....she has two speeds -- fast and faster.

Tonight, we're off to Kevin's company picnic. It should be a fun time. They have a moonwalk and a giant slide for the kids, and face painting, too. We get some fairly good food, as catered food goes. The employees get their awards. And the night is capped off with a fireworks display. We have not been able to stay for the fireworks for the past two years. Alison has freaked out at the first shot. We're going to give it a try again tonight. She's not quite as skitish about loud noises as she has been and we're going armed with earmuffs and ear plugs, so maybe it will be ok this year. We'll see.

Tomorrow night, we're planning to go to the Balloon Festival -- hot air balloons, that is. We've never been before, but we've seen the balloons. They whooshed over our house one year and scared me half to death, as a matter of fact. Alison always get so excited whenever she sees a hot air balloon, so I think she'll have fun. At least I hope she will.

I ended up on the bad mommy couch this morning. I made a promise and I couldn't keep it, and I hate to do that.

Yesterday Alison wanted to have some birthday cake. Since it was pretty close to dinner time, I told her she couldn't have it right then, but she could have a piece for dessert. After dinner, she said she wanted a special dessert and I told Kevin that she was allowed to have a piece of cake. At that point, she changed her mind on the cake and said she wanted a cookie. No problem, I thought, since she still had a piece of the dancing bear cookies that we made for a birthday treat for dance class. But that was not what she wanted either. She wanted a chocolate chip cookie out of the "cooker guy" (also known as the Pillsbury Dough Boy -- we have Pillsbury Dough Boy cookie jar). Now we had a problem. There haven't been any chocolate chip cookies in the "cooker guy" for about 3 months. But she was adamant that she wanted a chocolate chip cookie. I knew that we didn't have any chocolate chips, so I promised that we would go to the store and buy some this morning and then make chocolate chocolate chip cookies.

And that's what we did.

When we got home from the store and she immediately pushed her cooking chair into the kitchen, from the dining room. We had the butter and shortening in the mixing bowl and were rounding up the rest of the ingredients when I realized that we were a lot lower on brown sugar than I realized and we didn't have enough for the cookies. We were also now very short on time, and couldn't make it to the store and back and still have time to make cookies before it was time for lunch. Alison was pretty disappointed, because she loves to help me bake.

So that's how I ended up on the bad mommy couch. But this afternoon I will be back in Alison's good graces. Since Kevin comes home for lunch every day, we called and asked him to run by the store on his way home. Alison and I went ahead and measured out most of the rest of the dry ingredients, and they are ready and waiting for us when she gets up from her nap. the "cooker guy" will be full by dinner time, and Alison will be able to have a special dessert.

And I have learned to doublecheck and make sure I have all the ingredients I need before I go to the store!

I've got a bunch of half finished blog entries just waiting to be finished and posted which I hope to do sometime before the summer is over -- I get started then get interrupted and don't get back to finishing them -- but I wanted to get this written down right away.

My daughter cannot keep a secret!!!


Yesterday was Kevin's birthday. Saturday we took him shopping so he could use up a gift card he had gotten from his mother for Father's Day. (Yes, he's 37 years old and still needs someone to help pick out his clothes!) Alison and I took a detour through the pajama department, while he went off to browse through the shirts, and picked out a pair of short sleeve/short pant pj's for a birthday present. I managed to get them purchased and home without her telling what we bought. Yesterday morning, after I reminded her, she ran off to tell Kevin happy birthday and this is what I hear: "Happy Birthday Daddy!! We bought you some pajamas!!" At that point, I decided not to even bother wrapping said pajamas and just taped the shopping bag closed and gave them to him that way.

I did not have time to make a Mississippi Mud Pie for the acutal birthday, so I planned to make one today. We went shopping for a few ingredients that I needed this morning and I told her not to tell daddy what we were doing. Kevin got home from work, and was sniffing around (hard to mask the smell of chocolate baking) and Alison pops out "we made you a cake!"

She was very upset when she realized she ruined the surprise. But she'll learn how to keep a secret one day. (I hope!)

A couple of months ago, while at Home Depot, I saw some inexpensive seed kits. They came in an aluminum bucket and had the dirt, the seeds, and a couple of small digging tools. We had the choice of sunflowers or tomatoes, and we got one of each. I thought it would be a fun "project" for Alison and I. I put them into the coat closet until it was warm enough to be able to sit the buckets out on the deck. That time came last week. We dumped in the dirt, buried the seeds and tried to keep them watered but not drowned. Today, while trying to water but not drown, I noticed that we have sunflowers!! There are at least four little plants shooting up, maybe five. Nothing's happening in the tomato bucket yet, and I'm not sure whether they are going to make it or not, but we'll keep an eye on them. Alison is pretty excited about her new flowers. Heck, so am I. :)

A couple of days ago, Tuesday I think it was, I strapped Alison into her stroller and off we went for a walk. We did our old 2 mile circuit, and I think she talked the entire time. She might have stopped for a minute here and there, but I really think she talked almost nonstop for 40 minutes. Anyway, she spent much of the time pointing out various flowers. We saw crocuses, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, but the "flowers" she was most fascinated with? Dandelions. She thinks they are just the greatest thing. She picks them and brings them to me...."I brought you a flower mommy." And I'm a good mom. I thank her and then take it and put it in a glass of water.

Took Alison to the ped to get her MMR vaccine this morning. We did not get it at the recommended age, opting to wait until we absolutely had to -- meaning, for school, and I was planning to have her get it when I took her in for her physical for preschool. Well, we have mumps in our area (though not in our city), so I figured it would probably be a good idea to go ahead and get it done now instead of waiting until June, which is when her check-up is. The doctor gave me a hard time about not getting the stupid thing in the first place and the nurse gave me a hard time about wanting to get it now....."it says here that you refused this vaccine." "Yes..and..now..I..want..to..get..it." Maybe she doesn't watch the news.

Alison was not at all happy about getting a shot, but she recovered quickly after it was done. She screamed and carried on for about three minutes, until the nurse mentioned picking out a sucker and a sticker. But she still told me, several times, that she does not like "little pokes."

It's been a long time since I've acutally published something in this blog. I have started writing some things and saved them as drafts, but never got back to finish them up and publish.

Life has been kind of busy lately, I guess. My 3 year old has a very packed schedule these days....some might argue it's too packed for a 3 year old...though in reality, she hasn't picked up any new activities. The ones she's been in are just scheduled a little differently so it feels like there's more. How can one small child make me feel like I'm running in 10 different directions?

My brother and future sister-in-law's wedding shower was the first weekend of April, so Alison and I spent the weekend with my parents so we could attend. It was a bit of a challenge to keep a slightly hyper, slightly overtired 3 year old from tearing the room apart, but we managed and nothing got broken. :) Really, she wasn't that bad, and could have, in fact, been a lot worse. It had just been a long day, complicated by changing the clocks and being up early for church, where she had been pretty well behaved.....we've been practicing being in church so she can go to the wedding without being a disruption.

Somehow, Easter snuck up on me this year, even though I was well aware of when it was and that it was coming up. I raced around the whole week before trying to get this, that, and the other thing done before we headed back to my parents' for the weekend. Somehow, I managed to get everything done, and we even got to see the Easter Bunny, just before he had to go back to Bunnyland. We got a pretty good picture, too, even though you can see the guy's face through the mesh mouth.....just don't look too closely. :) I did some frantic shopping and came up with something new to wear, since I thought I deserved a new outfit, only to arrive at my parents' to find my mom had bought the same skirt! I don't know exactly what that says about her taste....or mine....but at least it was just her second choice outfit and not what she had really planned to wear to church.

So now we're settling in to our new schedule for the rest of the spring. The Saturday swimming classes were all full, so Alison is going on Tuesday mornings instead. By the time I get used to that, the class will be done. It did solve a problem for us though, because the last class of the session, and the one where they get to go down the water slide, would have been the same day as my brother's wedding if she was going on Saturdays so she now she won't have to miss it. However, the wedding is going to cause another conflict for her. It turns out that there is another dance recital at the end of this session.....and it will either be the night before the wedding or the afternoon after it. But it will all be all right because her teacher is going to have a special dress rehearsal that week, just for her. :)

A recent look at our calendar showed me that the soaring price of gas is going to put us in the poorhouse by the time we finish all our travel obligations this summer. I think we might be home for two, or maybe three, weekends between the Mother's Day and the middle of July. The killer is going to be our trip to Maine. I am really not looking forward to that trip.

The weather has finally started turning nice. We've had quite a few days with above average temperatures lately, which is nice for now, but I dread what that could mean for the summer. So we've been trying to have Alison outside as much as we can. We moved the flowebed to another place in the yard, so we've got a bare spot where we're attempting to grow grass and she's been "helping" keep the area watered. Gonna have to keep an eye on her because she can turn on the spigot by herself now. Kevin was going to take her for a trike ride around the block on Friday, and she made it as far as two houses away before she jumped off her trike and into their sprinkler. She was soaked, but thrilled. It also brought to my attention the fact I've got to work on a summer wardrobe for her. She can still get in to her shorts from last year, but I think she just a little too young for the Daisy Duke look.

And that's some of the view from here.

Well, something has apparently jump started my metabolism or something, because I have lost 5 pounds since my last entry, and most of it came without any exercising. The family cold finally caught up with me and I haven't been to the track since last Sunday -- 9 days and counting. If I could just lose either my cough or my constantly running nose (it's so annoying because there's nothing to blow....it just runs and runs and runs), I might make it back there in the near future.

When I do finally get back to the track, I will be fully prepared to distract myself from the fact that I'm in agony. I bought myself an iPod nano last week, and it arrived yesterday. Kevin set it up for me and loaded a bunch of music, so I'm all set.....

....if only I could get rid of this cold!!

I gained 35 pounds when I was pregnant. Under ordinary circumstances, that wouldn't seem like such a bad amount, a little above average maybe, but not too bad. But when none of the weight was amniotic fluid (because there was none) and the baby only weighed 3 1/2 pounds, it's not a good amount. I was down 5 pounds by the time I got home from the hospital, and another 3 pounds by the end of the first week. Unfortunately, I gained it all back by the middle of the third week. Not being able to do much more than sit on the couch and eat Christmas cookies will do that.

So the week before Christmas, I started going to the Community Center and using the track. I started out taking it kind of easy. I walked a mile and a half that week. While at my parents' for Christmas, I used my dad's treadmill and increased my distance by a quarter of a mile. I did a few days of walking 2 miles and then started to add in some jogging. The track is 1/12 of a mile, so I'd walk two laps and jog one. Then I moved on to jogging every other lap. Now I'm up to walking a lap and jogging two for a mile and a half and then jogging every other lap for another mile. I am not a runner in any way, shape, or form, so most days it feels like I am going to die by the time I get done. But still, my long term goal is to be able to jog three miles.

This week, I also started adding Tae Bo and Pilates back in to my workout routine. Tae Bo was pretty easy. I was surprised. The only problem I'm having is dragging myself out of bed in the morning to do it. Pilates was a different story. It's an ab workout and I really struggled through it, which I guess is to be expected after having a c-section.

I lost 5 pounds in the first few weeks. But for the past two weeks, despite all the exercise and a big reduction in food intake (back to eating the Dr. Phil way), the scale has not budged. I keep trying to tell myself that it doesn't matter because I'm building muscle and muscle weighs more than fat, but if that's what was actually happening, then my clothes should be starting to fit a little bit better, and that's not happening either.

I'm starting to get very discouraged.

Today has been a really crappy day. You'd think it was Friday the 13th or something. @@

I was greeted this morning with an e-mail from my uncle announcing the birth of my cousin's son. I knew this was coming...his wife and I were originally due only a few days apart....and I have been dreading it. I was praying that they would have a girl....it would have been the only thing that would make this even remotely bearable...but deep down I knew it would be a boy. All I could do was cry.

And I'm angry. Rightly or wrongly, I am angry. As I got my daughter dressed this morning and put her in her brace and her twisters I wanted to know why did they get to have a healthy child and I don't. Why does their son get to live and my son is dead, his ashes sitting in a box on a table in my living room? Why do they get to be happy and I don't? What have I done to deserve this?

And I know it's only a matter of time before pictures arrive. I have pictures, too. To be specific, I have 11 pictures. And that's all I'll ever have. But I haven't shared them with anyone who hasn't asked to see them, which means I haven't shared them with very many people because, let's face it, who wants to see pictures of a gray baby covered with tubes and wires and who has a leg that sticks out at an unnatural angle because his knee joint never properly formed.

So that's the way my day started. And it never got any better. I ended up cutting my workout short because I just didn't feel like doing the whole thing, and I will be kicking myself for that tomorrow.

My daughter, who was perfectly well behaved this morning, woke up from her nap and turned into the the devil's spawn, yet again, by dinner time. She ended up in her room for the rest of the night. That came back to bite me in the butt, because instead of letting me know that she needed to go to the bathroom, like I asked her to, she wet her pants and soaked her bedspread. The only good news is that it stopped with the bedspread, so I didn't have to change her sheets. All in all, I'd say it was the perfect end to a crappy day.

Well, we survived Christmas. Things didn't get off to a great start, so I wasn't to sure we would.

We had planned to leave for my parents shortly after Kevin got home from work on the 22nd, which would have been between 3 and 3:30. I spent the morning dealing with Alison and trying to get her stuff rounded up and ready to pack. Then I spent the afternoon getting suitcases packed and ready to go and trying to find time to take a shower. While all this was going on, I was also going in to settle Alison, who was supposed to be napping, down every 20 minutes or so. She kept saying her stomach hurt. Because she hadn't pooped in almost 2 days, I figured that was the problem, especially because I specifically asked her if she felt like she needed to throw up and she told me no and because she told me she did feel better when she passed gas. Despite it all, I had everything out in the garage, ready to go in the trunk, by 3:00. Kevin got home and had everything in the trunk by 3:15. At 3:20, I called my mom to tell her we should be leaving within the next 10 minutes or so while Kevin got Alison up and took her to the bathroom. The next thing I knew, Kevin was yelling that Alison just threw up. Great. When I got into the bathroom, there he was, standing in front of the closed toilet, holding her while she threw up all over the bathroom.

When she was done, he layed her down on the floor. She needed cleaned up and the easiest way to do that was going to be just putting her in the tub. I got her out of her puked on clothes and told him to get out of his, and tried, in vain, to get Alison calmed down. Kevin gave her a quick bath while I tried to clean up the bathroom. It became evident that more than clothes needed to be washed, so I grabbed the rugs and threw them and the clothes into the washer. Then I came back and made another go the bathroom. I don't deal with vomit well, and the smell almost made me sick, too. I couldn't even open the window to help with the stench because it was covered with plastic for the winter.

Alison, who was now dried off and dressed, rested on her bed for a little while and then decided she was fine. She hopped out of bed and pranced off to the living room to watch a Christmas video while we tried to decide what to do about our trip. We decided to wait a little longer and see how she was doing. In the meantime, we got her to eat a Pedia-pop. That seemed to be staying down. Kevin ran out and picked up McDonald's for the two of us. (So much for having all the dishes done before we left -- he served up burgers and fries on real plates). Alison came begging for french fries, so we figured she must definitely be feeling better. So we grabbed her "puke bucket," strapped her in the car seat, wrapped a big bib around her, just in case, and off we went.

We finally got to my parents' about 3 hours later than we had planned.

Friday was a real laid back day. We basically just hung out around the house for the day. My aunt and uncle were coming for lunch on Christmas Eve, so I helped my mom get some things ready for that. We also finished up baking some cookies. We went out for dinner and Alison "entertained" our server. As soon as he came to the table she asked him what his name was. Then after he asked what her name was she told him she was Alison "and that's grandpa, and that's grandma, and that's mommy, and that's daddy." I think we need to work on getting her to stop asking people's names right off the bat, but at least our server was a good sport about it. After dinner, we went out looking at Christmas lights. There was one house in particular that my mom wanted to show us. The house was covered in lights. Unfortunately, the lights weren't on that night. On the way back "home," we passed a house that had a yard full of those inflatable yard ornaments. Alison loved that, especially because one of them was the Grinch.

My aunt and uncle came for lunch on Christmas Eve. I don't think any of us were really looking forward to it, but we muddled through. The basic feeling is that my uncle is just sucking up to my mom until he gets his half of the money from my grandparents' estate (mom is in charge of it and will divide it up when she's good and ready....probably not until after they sell the house). At least it was over in a few hours.

We went to church Christmas Eve night. I was really dreading it. I knew it was really going to suck, and I was right. Seeing everyone for the first time since Matthew died was difficult. There were lots of hugs and lots of tears. The sermon made everything that much worse. It was entitled "Upside down Christmas," and the minister kept harping on the idea of things that didn't go as planned. By the time it was over I wished I'd just stayed home.

On the way home, we took another drive out to see the house with all the lights, and they were on this time. My mom was not kidding. The entire house, all the trees, and even the fence around the yard, were full of lights. We saw it as soon as we turned onto the street, and that was two block away from the house. It was a sight to behold. Alison couldn't have cared less.....she just wanted to see the Grinch.

When we were finally able to get Alison ready for bed, she came out and helped me pick out some cookies for Santa, and we put them and a glass of milk by the fireplace. Then we finally got her to bed. Once that was done, I wrapped one last present (I'd had it delivered to my parents' because I didn't want to take the chance that it wouldn't get to our house before we left) and then we started bringing out the stacks and stacks of presents. I know we didn't buy as much as last year, but there was as much, or more, than last year. We got to bed around midnight. My brother and his fiancee were going to be there at 7 Christmas morning. Coleen kind of rolled her eyes when we finally decided on a time, but we were planning to go to church at 10, and she hadn't seen the stash of gifts..... we were going to need that much time to open presents, eat and get ready for church.

My brother arrived at about 7:15 and woke us all up. He went into my parents' room saying, "I thought we were opening presents at 7:00, it's 8:30 and I've been here for an hour and a half!" Alison flipped over all the present under the tree. She had a lot of fun opening everything, but we still had to occasionally prod her along because she'd stop to play with one toy or another. When she got clothes, it was like the scene from "A Christmas Story" where Ralphie and Randy took the briefest look at the socks they had just unwrapped before pitching them over their shoulders and moving on in search of something more interesting. She'd tear open the boxes, see it was clothes of some sort and give it a toss and move on to the next thing. I don't know how we managed it, but I think we only opened one, or maybe two, new toys before we came home.

After the initial rush of the morning, Christmas was pretty laid back day. It was hard, too, because it was never far from my mind that Matthew would have been a month old that day. But there was reason to be happy, too. We made it through the day without anyone dying this year.

Kevin had taken the day after Chrismas off, which was nice. We didn't have the rush of getting packed and getting home so that he could be at work on Monday morning. My mom also had Monday off, so rather than leaving in the morning, we decided to wait until after lunch. It worked out well. We had one thing that needed to be returned, as Alison got two of the same jumper, and Kevin had won $12 on his scratch off lottery tickets. My mom and I went to exchange the jumper and cash in the lottery tickets. Let me just say that $12 was not worth the hassle I ended up going through to get it. We stopped at a gas station on the way home. I got out of the car and walked up to the door. There was a man standing in it, talking to the clerk. I would have been happy to wait a minute for him to finish up and come the rest of the way out. In fact, that might have prevented what happened next. He stepped out of the way, holding the door open for me, and the next thing I knew, instead of walking in through the door, I fell in through the door. Somehow I had missed the first step. I went down hard, but wasn't hurt, other than a scrapped up knee. I felt like a complete idiot, though. My mom saw it happen, and thought I had slipped on some ice, until the guy that had been holding the door drove away and she saw that there was no ice. No, it was just me being a total klutz. @@