7QT

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When Christian came downstairs to go running on Tuesday morning, I said, “Hey, wanna hear how my morning’s been? At 3:45 Michael woke up with a soaked diaper, and I could tell his diaper area was bothering him, so I knew I had to find the diaper rash cream. But I couldn’t find it in the drawer. So after five minutes of searching I went and got the new tube. But there was a seal on it, and I couldn’t find the scissors to break through it. So I finally managed to punch through it with the end of a tube of Vaseline from the hospital, but the stuff still wouldn’t come out, no matter how hard I squeezed. Until it exploded out the far end, all over everything else. So you can imagine what an angelic mood I was in by the time I got back to bed, and I couldn’t sleep, so I came downstairs to the couch. And when I got back to sleep I had this vivid dream where we were trying to leave to go on a date, but you kept talking to (DS associate)’s kids. And then you had to have a long in-depth heart-to-heart with (work associate who is in our choir), and then I couldn’t find my eyeliner. I was crying, and then the alarm went off. So I tried to take my temperature, and I heard this.” Insert anemic broken-basal-thermometer whimper. “So that’s my day by 5:30 a.m. How’s yours?”

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Do you like beautiful handmade cards? You need to check out this site: http://www.etsy.com/shop/CeiliGirlCrafts. This is my sister’s new business. She’s incredibly talented. But don’t take my word for it–go see for yourself.

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Having achieved my weight goal, I’ve had to shop for new clothes recently. Because, yanno, my jeans are falling down. Now, I normally don’t like shopping, but I’ve been really enjoying the process. I’ve been prepping for it for quite a while (remember “fashion demystified,” and its sequel?), so I started scouring the winter clearance racks as well as hitting the spring sales. And it’s been very enjoyable…but. It takes a lot of time to shop. Even someone who knows what she’s looking for and is on a mission, ruthlessly culling the possibilities, can’t do one of the big stores in an hour. And I’m constantly squeezing in the shopping while I have babysitters. And I hire the sitters to give me time to write, not go shopping. So you can imagine the teeth-gnashing I’ve been doing lately. I finally tipped over the edge from “this is fun” to “I can’t stand this stupid process!” this week when I spent an hour at Kohl’s and found not one thing that I wanted to bring home. Kohl’s is a full twenty minute drive from my house, so I was even more annoyed at the waste of time. I had time to do one more store but I gave myself a good talking to about how I was paying a babysitter for this…and I plunked my butt down at Panera with my NEO and wrote one page of a Christmas bulletin insert that’s due in a couple of weeks, and considered the day partly redeemed.

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Alex’s first Communion is this weekend. We’ve been shopping for him, too. He has a new shirt and tie. That was an ordeal, too. We had to go to four stores before we found a white shirt in the right size at a decent price. (Insert Parenthetical 1: See, this is my problem: I’ve bought virtually no clothes at all for my children, because people have given so much to us, and when I do buy, I buy secondhand at Children’s Orchard. So the sticker shock of a full-priced dress shirt for an almost-8-year-old is considerable!) (Insert Parenthetical 2: I would never, ever have considered $20 at The Children’s Place a decent price for a child’s shirt, until I realized it would cost $45 at Dillard’s.)

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I’ve been cooking on my novel this week. So exciting…and it feels so irresponsible! I have a good list of nonfiction (read that “paying”) projects on my plate right now, but they’re juuuust far enough from deadline that I haven’t been able to force myself to focus on them this week. I’ve torn through fifty pages of major rewrite on my novel, and begrudged having to get up and do anything else. When you get the momentum gpoing, man, it feels good. But I realize today I have to clean my house in advance of weekend guests. I’m afraid the blissful days of novel-writing-until-three-p.m. are past. Sniff, sniff.

___6, 7 & bonus___

Let’s finish up with some pictures!

(Julianna making friends with the next door neighbor last weekend)

Alex practicing baseball in the back yard.

I love taking pictures of my husband (though I’m not sure he likes it as much as I do!):

And Nicholas always wants to do whatever Alex and Daddy are doing:

And, just for fun, here’s one more:

Have a great weekend!