Tidbits

As always, there are many things I would love to blog about, but tonight I'm settling for sharing tidbits.

I've been tired today. And I've come down with my second cold in about two months. Which is twice as many colds as I usually have each year. I've decided I need more sleep and less stress. Not sure that's going to happen though. So bring on the vitamins, meds and Kleenex. It's frusterating though.

I'm trying to stay calm and be less anxious. It's working to some extent. But I still have my moments and sometimes entire days that I just feel like I'm drowning in things that need to be done, incomplete home projects and rooms. Today was kind of one of those days. I just want everything to be in it's place, to have a place to be. I want pictures on the wall, decorations in the kids rooms. No more stacks and piles. Maybe in 2011 we'll be there.

I could honestly use a good two or three solid days of no distractions to get all this done. To put stuff away, to organize and purge, to shop for the things I need for the house. But that's not going to happen. Not only is there just too much going on in life, but the kids seem to be really suffering lately with extra time away from me. Which is understandable. Gracie especially has a hard time by the end of my work week or when I have other stuff that takes me away from home. So I'm just not even willing to try to coordinate additional time away from the kids in order to organize. My kids will not always be this young, and they will not always need me so much. The cleaning and organizing will always be there.

Our evenings are getting better. Bean and I are focusing more on the kids and less on the stuff we'd like to get done. But each night, the three bean circus is in full effect. Miss Rose is throwing fits and crying over the smallest things. Gracie is usually running around like a maniac being her wild self. Lily only wants to be held by me and I swear I could put her to bed at 6pm. But who knows how early she'd wake up, so I try to stretch her to 7pm. She was in bed at 6:45pm tonight, so we'll see what happens tomorrow.

And just when I want to complain and have a pity party, I am reminded how blessed I am and how thankful I should be. A longtime friend lost her unborn baby to Trisomy 13 this week. A baby who fought the odds and survived in utero much longer than expected. She's very new to blogging and you can visit her here.

Recent cuteness happening around our house...

Lily is finally mastering the art of sitting up, at a mere 8.5 months.  Some of her peers have been sitting up for a few months now and are beginning to crawl.  She is a loud one, as I've shared before.  She responds to her sisters with a lot of animation.  Lily seems to enjoy music and activity.  She has her own baby dance party during worship at church and recently at a high school football game, she was bouncing and waving her limbs each time the cheerleaders would start.

Gracie is our little glove girl lately, making everyone laugh and smile.  She loves wearing gloves.  Sometimes she'll wear one and on rare occasions she'll wear two.  It's quite amusing.  The neighbors and others we see on a semi-regular basis are always curious to see what glove(s) she's wearing that day.  A few days ago she found our adult snow gloves and has been sporting those monsters on her hands and even her feet!  She has a developing love for her baby sister which is sweet.  Every day when I get home from work she announces to me "there's your Lily."

Miss Rose is doing wonderful in school.  She has great behavior and is learning new things.  Some of it is still repeat from her pre-K program, but the other day when we were reading a book she was sounding out unfamiliar words--very impressive. She tells us that a boy "who's brain doesn't work the same way" sits next to her in class and she's been helping him and her teacher praises her for how she works with him.  That makes us VERY proud. 

I guess that 6:45pm bedtime didn't go over so well, even though the Little One was falling asleep while feeding.  I better go rescue her for a few minutes and see what's going on.

Thats the tidbits around here!