A Day in the Life: Crazy time

Has it really only been 11 days since I last posted? Wow, I thought it was a lot longer. Probably because I have "posted" in my head several times but have failed to actually get them onto the computer. Let's see what we can do. Oh, and the title has so many implications. I actually do think that I have gone crazy, am crazy and am behaving in a manner that could only be described as crazy.

First off, our weekend visit with my friend Autumn (well, our friends Autumn and Andrew, but no offense Andrew, I was really looking forward to seeing Autumn) got cancelled because of a stomach bug. Once again, after posting something about the possibility of Ellie getting sick, I promptly got a phone call from day care that morning saying that she had a fever and had to come home. Other than the surprise puke in the crib and the fever, she was otherwise pretty fine. I, of course, use this excuse to coddle her and let her have her way, but if you didn't know it, you wouldn't have guessed she was sick. However, I was not so lucky. I woke up feeling not so great, aborted a run 2 miles in for various reasons and then headed off to Ellie's music class where it was no less than 90 degrees in the room. And you do a lot of jumping and dancing around as a parent. The long of the short of it is that eventually I started puking and once Autumn caught wind of that she turned her car around and said see you next time! Which was the best because I was in no shape for the next 36 hrs for a visitor and I don't want to be the one who gets the pregnant woman sick. But I was so bummmmmmmmed not to see her and her little belly.

You know how some people are emotional eaters? Well I have decided that I am an emotional acter. Not actor, acter. Meaning that I will only accomplish something once I have decided that I will not accept the guilt that will come along with knowing that I didn't do something I said I had wanted to do. I don't know where I get this extreme guilt complex thing but I have it. I mean, I was raised Catholic, but not in that extreme Irish-Catholic-live-in-guilt sort of way. Here is an example. I decided that this year I was going to make Christmas cookies. However, Ellie is not quite at the age yet where she can help, in fact she quite makes it difficult by clinging to my legs screaming or insisting that I hold her. So any sort of an activity like this requires her to be sleeping. The evenings this week got away from me with laundry, finishing Christmas gifts, a presentation, a holiday party and a well needed night out for Mike and I. But on Sunday I realized that I had 1 1/2 days to accomplish the cookies and everything else on my list. It was going to be cookies or bust. And I had also purchased a cookie cutter to boot. I decided that I couldn't let it go and that somehow I would feel unaccomplished if I didn't make the cookies, so wouldn't you know it, they got made at the 11th hour. And I must say, the gingerbread men looked good.

The funniest thing about all this is that I have never felt so much like a mother until I was wrapping up the cookies and packaging them all up for Ellie's daycare teachers. Of course it didn't actually occur to me that I was supposed to do anything for them or buy them gifts until a frantic phone call to Lisa Chatigny last Thursday night (Ellie's Christmas party was Friday). But they got done and looked really pretty and it felt great to drop them off this morning with her.

Funny that I didn't prioritize packing for our ensuing Christmas travels over the cookie baking last night....Family and friends--here we come! Here's to safe travels and lots of drinking because we are on vacation for 10 days culminating in a wedding in none other than Oklahoma City on Jan 1st. Lord help.

Some recent pics of Ellie D.