2011.01.01

It's a new year...

Here's what we've been up to in the last couple of weeks...

Fiona and I made a gingerbread house together. It was fun, but more work than I thought it would be! Fiona wanted to eat the house walls, and as much frosting as possible, but it turned out ok in the end.

We had a lovely Christmas with Ben's family. Christmas Eve was of course the traditional dinner and talent show at his parents' house. The talents this year were exceptional, including Fiona's "bottom dancing"...

We spent Christmas Day here, in our pyjamas. Ben's family came over and we opened presents together, and tried to polish off the Christmas cookies and desserts. We failed, but it was a good effort. Fiona quickly got into the spirit of opening presents, and found the whole thing very exciting!

She got some really great boxes!

Fiona was too excited and much too full of sugar to take an afternoon nap, and by the time everyone left (around 7pm) she was starting to get cranky. She was annoyed because I told her she could not watch a movie, and stomped off to her room, and turned off the light. I jokingly called out "goodnight, Fiona!' and finished saying goodbye to our guests. Once everyone was gone I went to check on her and she was curled up in bed fast asleep. A Christmas miracle!

We had a wonderful day and Ben surprised me with some lovely gifts, none of which required batteries, micro usb adaptors, or a network to function. Nice job sweetie :-)

So here we are - 2011. We took down the Christmas decorations today, and I think the girls will miss the dancing snowman. 2010 was a wonderful year filled with many happy memories. Here are some highlights...

- Adele came home from the hospital and we started life as a family of 4

- I FINALLY graduated with a Master's in General Experimental Psychology

- We visited Scotland for Adele's baptism

- We had a variety of fun visitors from far off lands

- Fiona learned how to wee in the potty!

- Adele grew bigger and stronger, and worked on learning how to do stuff.

- We got to know our "mommy group" friends better, and shared in some wonderful events, playdates, celebrations, and new baby joys with them.

Here are my goals for the new year... I had to include some that I hope are more achievable.

1. Take regular showers.

2. Fill in blanks in baby books for both girls.

3. Continue to try to cook more new and healthy foods.

4. Be more patient

5. Take more pictures. Get better at taking and editing them.

6. Crochet some stuff

7. Spend more time with people we did not see enough last year.

8. Get Fiona to poop in the potty

9. Go on some dates with the Ben

10. Eat twixes

11. Soak up every wonderful moment with my little girls.

Happy New Year everyone!

Sunday Goals

Sunday is work day in our house. I usually make a list of things that need to be done on Saturday, and then we get maybe one thing done because, you know, we have all weekend, and then spend Sunday working like crazy to get everything done. And it's not extra, optional stuff either, it's stuff that I've been putting off all week because it's a pain to do with Fiona or because I'll get to it at the weekend... like going grocery shopping, or washing socks...

So today I'm making my Sunday goals public in the hope that it will motivate me to actually get all this stuff done today... I'm not sure if it's achievable, but we'll see...

Goal 1. Grocery shopping. We have almost no food in the house. We did have butter, but then Brodie ate that. Seriously. He knocked it off the counter and ate half a tub of butter. SO GROSS. I can't buy anything frozen though because our freezer is almost completely full of breastmilk... this poses kind of a challenge, because pre-made frozen food and bowls of cereal is the only kind of cooking I do...

Goal 2. Laundry. I had to wear Ben's socks for the last few days because it has been so long since I did laundry. My goal is to do all the laundry in the laundry room. Note: not all the laundry that needs to be done, but is in other locations, because that's impossible. I'll get to that next weekend ;-)

(this is not all of it, I couldn't fit it all in the picture...)

Goal 3. Take down Christmas stuff. I know leaving your Christmas stuff up past 12th Night is bad luck, so luckily I am just within the cutoff for that. December 25th to January 10th is 12 days exactly...

Goal 4. Make any kind of start on turning our extra bedroom into Adele's room. I mentioned to the nurse at the hospital that they kind of overestimated Adele's possible coming home date (Friday 8th) and she said that they do that to make sure the parents are prepared for when the baby actually comes home. Aside from the fact that I think this is kind of an awful thing to do to stressed out, emotional parents, it made me realise that we have nothing ready for Adele coming home. I have most of the things we need (clothes, a bed, diapers) but nothing is organised or washed, and her bed is full of laundry (see goal 1). So anything would be an improvement at this point, and that is my goal.

I'll check in this evening and let you know how much I accomplished. And for those of you who might wonder why I am spending time writing about this and not just doing it, I also have to pump every 3 hours (for a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes of the day) so I am totally multitasking here :-) No photo illustrating that goal? You're welcome :-)