Here I Sit For The Third Sunday In A Row...

Yup, that's right, the kids are still sick. At least Noah still is. Like the title suggests, it's been three weeks since the first signs of a cold infected this house. Sydney started the month off and kindly passed it on to Noah. Sydney was pretty out of it for just short of a week, but Noah, well, he's now going on his third week and just can't seem to give it up. I was optimistic this morning that we just might be able to go to church so I got everyone dressed and ready, but as the morning continued on I kept hearing Noah coughing and sneezing and just plain looking half miserable, so I decided to keep us home again. I know that if I heard a kid in the nursery coughing and hacking like Noah is, even though it's very seldom, I'd still think a little badly of that kid's parent for bringing their kid in and chancing getting my kids sick. So not wanting other people thinking poorly of me, here we are. I guess one positive thing is coming out of this time, I'm finally writing something new here. It's been a while, sorry. I'm not even really sure where to go from here. Should I spend a long time catching everyone up on the past month since I last wrote anything, or should I just forget that I haven't written anything and go on like nothing was missed. I'm leaning toward the just go on like nothing happened because, well, my memory isn't very good and I don't remember a ton from the past month. But I guess I'll give a few quick highlights.

Christmas was great! We had such an awesome Christmas and were so blessed. Money has been a little tight for us and we weren't expecting to have a very big Christmas this year, actually we weren't expecting to have much of a Christmas at all this year, but well, God is awesome and blessed us hugely. We joined this online recycling thing called Freecycle where people post things that they don't want any more, absolutely anything, and no money changes hands. The idea that is instead of giving your stuff to Goodwill or something or just throwing it away because you're too lazy to pack it off to Goodwill that you put up a post describing what you want to get rid of and then people respond to it and someone ends up getting the thing you're giving away. It take recycling to a whole new level. Some things that are Freecycled are good quality totally usable things, others seem a little strange, but I guess someone might want it. It's all ran on the idea that if you get stuff, that you should give stuff too, so people aren't just getting and getting and not giving. It's pretty cool. So, through this Freecycle thing, we were able to get a ton of toys for the kids for Christmas. One person put up a post about toddler toys that I responded to and luckily for us they picked us to receive the toys. Now I was expecting a couple little things, nothing huge but a few toys, but when Jeff got home from picking the stuff up I was blown away. There was probably more than $200 worth of toys, most in excellent condition and with working batteries. It was so amazing. So that was Christmas. I'll try and possibly put up some pics sometime soon.

Then it was time to tear down Christmas to make way for Sydney's birthday. I'm starting to understand why people decorate right after Thanksgiving. It makes all the work seem worth it when the decorations can be up for a month, not so worth it when they're only up for a couple weeks. Anyways, Sydney's birthday was New Years Eve so we had fun with our family celebrating it. We had saved a couple presents from the toys we got through the Freecycle thing to give her for her birthday and she had so much fun opening the presents. Although, her favorite thing was the $2 worth of helium balloons. We had ice cream cake, which she wouldn't even try, even though she loves ice cream, and played and had fun with just the four of us. Maybe next year we'll have a big party with Sydney's friends, but well, she still doesn't grasp the whole birthday thing yet, so the party would be more for me than her and well, I didn't want to go to all the work.

I know there's been a bunch more stuff that's been happening in the past month, but like I said, I don't have a very good memory and I don't want to bore you with all the stupid daily details, which there really hasn't been that many because we haven't done a lot with the kids being sick.

Oh, Sydney learnt how to climb out of her crib just days after her birthday. It was pretty crazy the first time she did it. I put her down for her nap and she started calling me and I just ignored her (she does this every now and then) that is until I realized that the calling was getting closer and closer and then she was banging on her door. I never heard a sound of her getting down from her crib, she did it perfectly. So I got her and put her back in her crib and she climbed out three more times before settling in and taking a nap. Then she did it again that night and even walked into our room in the morning while we were still in bed. So we decided it was time to get her a bed so that she didn't fall and hurt herself climbing in and out of bed, well, mostly out, but still. So Dan and Cheryl had been keeping a toddler bed for us and we went and picked it up and changed Sydney's room around to now have a bed instead of a crib. We did amazingly well in the bed, only getting out of it for the first day, otherwise she stays in it, calling us even when it's morning. She has also figured out how to take off her pajamas and diaper and a few times I have now found her completely naked in the morning or just before she's going to sleep at night. Also, dresses are kind of on hold for the moment because she seems to like to take off her diaper when she's wearing a dress, especially if it's full of poo and she can smear it around. One nice thing is that she'll often put the diaper into her diaper pail, but she hasn't figured out how to wipe her butt so anything that was clinging on ends up any and everywhere that she sits. Sorry if that's just way too much info, but I'm sure there are a few mom's out there sympathizing with me, remembering when they too were cleaning poo off of everything.

So I think that those are the highlights from the past while. Hopefully you feel a little more caught up on our lives and hopefully I'll do better at keeping you updated. Have a great day!