Tonight is one of the peak nights for the Geminids meteor shower.  I love any chance to see shooting stars, so we decided we’d try to go find a place to watch with the little ones. 

Josiah had been asleep for an hour or so, and Analise was in her pj’s, all ready for bed.  We snuggled them both into their car seats and set out to find a place on a hill without too much light pollution.  There aren’t too many places like that in Birmingham…  But we ended up at Vestavia Hills Baptist Church on top of Shades Mountain.  The stars were beautiful, the sky was clear, and it was CHILLY.  Brian set out a blanket for us, and Analise and I curled up under it.  Josiah wasn’t thrilled with all the interruptions to his sleep and he grumbled a bit, but we kept him covered up and he was pretty good.  Analise was GREAT!  She’s not one to sit still for more than about a minute, but she looked at the stars and let us hold her close. 

We saw several in the half-hour we were watching.  I LOVE shooting stars.  It’s so amazing and humbling to see the sparkling night sky and just watch.  It was so much fun, and it really just made my day.  Brian and I have gone out and watched a couple meteor showers since we first met, and I’m so glad that even with 2 little kids we can still have adventures like that.    

I think Analise is mostly over her ear infection.  Monday was rough,
though.  After the doctor’s appointment, I dropped off the prescription
to be picked up later. I brought both kids home to eat and nap, and
Analise slept so long I couldn’t get back to pick up the prescription
before Brian started home.  When she woke up, the Tylenol had worn off
and her fever was over 103!  Poor girl!  We got some medicine into her,
and finally yesterday morning her fever was gone for good.  Yesterday
was still a quiet not-feeling-good day, though, and it’s tried my
patience as she’s full of tears and tantrums when things aren’t quite
right.  Hopefully today is going to be better…

Though I wasn’t sure we’d make it with all the unhappiness of the day,
Analise did cheer up enough for us to go to Brian’s department
Christmas party.  The host family has 2 younger girls who love to play
with Analise.  She had a great time, and Josiah was a sweetheart as
everyone took a turn holding him. 

Brian’s wrapping up finals today, and hopefully he’ll be done posting grades soon.  I’m trying to get our house back in order – after several days of taking care of a sick little one, it’s a little out of control around here!    

Ok!  I’m caught up on half-written blogs!  Today and this evening have been a little crazy… after I got interrupted last night by Josiah, Analise woke up with a fever during the night.  So she joined us in our bed, and Josiah was already there.  It was a bit crowded.  Finally, Josiah got bumped out to the swing around 4am, and left some room for the rest of us.  Our 2 little kids take up more room than 2 full-grown adults. Brian and I were both hanging onto the edge of the bed. 

Analise has had a fever over 101 all day.  She’s grudgingly taking tylenol that brings it down a little bit.  She doesn’t seem to be in pain, so maybe it isn’t an ear infection, but I’m not sure what else could be causing it.  She’s just lethargic and quiet.  Josiah’s 6 month check-up is tomorrow, so it looks like I’ll be calling for a 2nd appt tomorrow morning. 

Tonight was comical.  Brian’s working hard to get a final written for his 8am class tomorrow.  Josiah had gone to bed at 7pm, and Analise went quietly to bed at 8.  I was getting lots done and settling into my chair to catch up on blogging.  At 10:30, I heard Analise crying.  Josiah had woken up and was crying too.  I found Analise drenched in sweat, with a sopping wet diaper.  She took some tylenol for me, got some dry pajamas, and asked to go sleep in our bed.  Brian was trying to quiet down Josiah, who needed to eat and get a dry diaper.  Brian took Analise back to our bed as I took care of Josiah, and he found that our bed was sopping wet.  He’d forgotten that Analise had had an "accident" during her nap, and he’d neglected to tell me or change the sheets.  Darn.  I got the bed changed, settled Analise into bed and laid down with her on one side and Josiah on the other to nurse him, while Brian went back to work. 

When Josiah was done eating, I picked him up and propped myself up in the bed to hold him as he fell asleep, planning on taking him back to his bed to leave us some room.  I guess he’d eaten too much, and within a minute he threw up all over me.  Thankfully, my pillow and the bed were spared.  I hollered for Brian, who came and took Josiah while I got clean clothes.  After Josiah was cleaned up, I settled back into bed with him and Analise.  He dozed off and I moved him to the swing.  Analise dozed and I could tell her fever had come down (from 101.5), so I moved her back to her bed.  AHhhhh… Now I’m closing up the computer, and heading back to bed, all by myself.  Hopefully, Brian’ll join me soon.  Hopefully, my two little ones will sleep for a good solid couple hours…    

My little guy turned 6 months old yesterday!  I can’t believe how fast the time has gone.  He’s changed so much, and he’s gotten so big!  He’s so sweet and smiley.  He still thinks Analise is the coolest thing, and he’s really very content in the car as long as he can see her.  He’s making all kinds of noises lately.  The most common ones, though, are lots of little growls, grunts and groans.  He sounds like an expressive little monster.  It’s so cute.

I’ve started calling him my little "Roly-poleon".  He likes to roll all over the floor.  He’s got lots of motivation to get moving as Analise has toys strewn all over that he’d like to chew on.  And if there’s paper somewhere on the floor, watch out!  He’s just decided he likes chewing on sippy cups.  I can’t remember if I mentioned that he had a tooth break through the week of Thanksgiving, but I think we’ve got another one coming in soon.  He really likes chewing on plastic kitchen utensils, too, like the egg separator and the spatulas.  Tonight he got ahold of a big metal cookie pan that was close to him at the dinner table.  His eyes got really wide as he pulled it towards him, and his mouth opened in anticipation.  He was pleased to chew on it through dinner.

He’s getting so big!  He’s got lots of rolls on his soft body.  When he stands on the bathroom counter before/after his bath, he looks like a little baby sumo wrestler.  Darn cute.  If we could rig up some sumo-wear, we’d take a picture.

His favorite sleeping place is still on me.  Yes, I’m still wishing I had my hands free and could be getting more accomplished, but I’m sure this won’t last forever, and before I know it, I’ll be aching for the days when he would still snuggle in my arms.  He just loves to snuggle into your arms and sleep.

We celebrated his 6 month birthday by visiting Santa!  Our church planned an outreach of having pictures with Santa in various neighborhoods.  Great fun!  Josiah was pretty ambivilent about Santa, but like last year, Analise didn’t enjoy him very much.  We did get 2 pictures, including this one of Analise just looking unhappy before she started wailing.  I hope we’ll enjoy laughing about this when she’s older:)

(catching up again, from this past Friday morning…)  We’re settled in our warm house, safe from the "extreme cold" outside – currently 17 degrees, with a windchill of 6 degrees!  Whew!  I know for most of you that isn’t bad, but it’s chilly, specially for Brian riding to work. 

Yesterday was a nice relaxing day while Analise was at Mother’s Day Out.  (By the way, she’s stayed dry the whole time she was at school both Tuesday and Thursday.  Woohoo!)  Josiah came with me to help pack Christmas stockings for children at the Alabama Baptist Children’s Home with the women of my missions group.  It is so fun to pack each stocking full of toys, candy and fun things for these kids.  I love that aspect of the Christmas season (we try to do it all year round, but it’s especially prevalent with others at Christmas).  There are so many opportunities to reach out and give.  It feels so good!  We put together our traditional Operation Christmas Child boxes for Analise and Josiah to send to kids their age through Samaritan’s Purse.  Analise gets to bring a gift for needs posted on an Angel Tree at her school.  Her Wednesday night Mission Friend’s group helped pack the stockings this past Wednesday, and next week they’re having a birthday party for Jesus.  They get to bring baby gifts for a crisis pregnancy center.  I really hope we can raise our children with an attitude of excitement towards opportunities to give, both of their things, money, time and themselves.  

While Analise was at school, Josiah took a good long nap and I made homemade blackberry muffins.  MMMmmm.  This is the BEST muffin recipe (hopefully, I’ll post it soon, with all the other recipes I’ve promised myself)!  The blackberries were frozen from the Black and Blue festival we went to when Josiah was just a week old.  He’ll be 6 months tomorrow.  Crazy how time flies!  

Funny note… We keep noticing that our clock is off in the mornings.  The other morning, it said 5:24 from about 4am on.   I assume Brian is hitting buttons when he’s snoozing/resetting the alarm to sleep a little extra.  This morning, though, the clock is nearly half an hour fast.  Hmm.  I think in his asleep-state, he’s resetting the time instead of the alarm!  Poor guy.  He’s working so hard getting caught up on grading, making up tests, designing a website and attending student stuff.  He was gone Monday, Wednesday and last night for work stuff.  We’ll all breath a sigh of relieve when Dec. 16th rolls around the sememster is wrapped up. 

(Haha… I started this LAST Friday – more than a week ago!  I just sat down to write a quick blog, and thought maybe I’d better finish this and post it!  It’s like a trip back in time:))

Whew – it’s just been a busy week (*the week after Thankstiving), and I’m finally getting the time to pull a blog together.  Nothing too exciting happening.  I’ve been doing a lot of my Christmas shopping online, and I took advantage of a few of the sales on Thanksgiving weekend (Friday and Saturday evenings to avoid the craziness).  That makes us just about done with our Christmas shopping, which is a lovely relief.  On the other hand, I’ve got family pictures that need to be put in the mail with Christmas cards.  And of course, I have high intentions to do a Christmas letter (probably largely electronic so I can link to interesting blog highlights).  I REALLY need to do this since my last one (or 2??) didn’t really make it out.  Or maybe some of them did, I can’t remember!  The point is, I need to "reach out and touch" some of these people that might think I’ve taken them out of my address book, even though they keep sending me cards!  The last project is a little thing Brian and I started on, and it would be so fun to get it done in time for christmas, but we’ll have to see about that.  

Speaking of Brian… he’s doing really well.  For a couple weeks, he was feeling like his legs were really tired, probably from the Ironman.  And he had all kinds of mysterious aches and pains.  But I think he’s finally recovered.  He’s pretty close to logging 10,000 miles on his bike for the year.  I’m sure he’ll post a picture of his bike computer after it turns over into 5 digits:)

Thanksgiving weekend was very relaxing for us.  We just spent some down time as a family around the house.  We all needed it after the travel of the past few weeks.  I did a little cooking!  Thanksgiving dinner didn’t create enough leftovers for me, so I cooked my own turkey breast in the slow cooker.  I’ve never done that before, but it worked WONDERFULLY!  Put it in the am -before church – and come to a lovely, turkey-scented home and whip up a nice dinner with some Stove-top stuffing, instant mashed potatoes and leftover Cheesy Green Bean Casserole (my new favorite holiday casserole). It was juicy, and the meat fell off the bone, leaving us with leftovers for the whole week.  

So with the leftovers, I made my favorite turkey leftover meal, Turkey Noodle Casserole – excellent, as usual – on Tuesday night and Turkey Chili – still searching for the right recipe, this wasn’t quite it – on Friday night.  I’ll post the Turkey Noodle Casserole recipe soon – they’re in progress on my desktop!

Overheard
…while Analise was playing with her little Pooh and friends: "I know, sweet girl, you have to go to sleep."  (This the day after she’d taken an hour to fall asleep and I’d been in there quieting her down several times, saying exactly that.)

…after Analise has gotten back into the car after Mother’s Day Out, seeing Josiah in his car seat, "He’s such a handsome boy!"

Setting up the tree was quite a memorable experience.  In our 3 years of marriage, we’ve only ever used a little 3-foot fiber optic tree that we got in California.  It was simple and beautiful, easy to put up, take down and small enough to put on a table out of reach of a toddler.  Easy was the best part, though, since I’ve been pregnant 2 of 3 Christmases!  This year I was ready for a full-sized tree.  Having grown up with live trees – which we’d cut ourselves as a family, I know the pros and cons of that option.  But here in Alabama, there aren’t too many places to cut your own.  And once again, I think with 2 little ones, "easy" is still something we’re aiming for!  We inherited an artifical tree from Brian’s grandma that was in storage in our shed, so that sounded like the perfect option.  No keeping the water filled, no struggling to get it straight because the bottom wasn’t cut level, no needles falling off (my favorite!), and no allergies flaring from dried pine needles.  I was excited about having a pretty tree with much less work.  

Brian found our tree out in our shed, with a whole chewed in the bottom of the box.  Looked like a mouse had made a little nest amongst the branches.  It was vaguely reminiscent of one of my favorite books as a child, The Christmas Mouse.  We’re going to have to find that one so Analise can enjoy it.  Anyway, the tree needed to be shaken out which Brian did outside, but fake pine needles, pieces of cardboard and a mouse dropping our two still ended up on the floor.  *sigh*  It took surprisingly longer for Brian to put it together than I expected (I think I hadn’t imagined that you’d have to assemble it branch-by-branch), and then I had to "fluff" all the branches out so it didn’t look like it had been in storage all year.  Of course, the dusty tree riled up my allergies… *sigh* 

We had my pretty homemade-by-my-mom tree skirt all laid out and the tree all fluffed when his parents came to visit the next night.  The tree was NOT up to standards of Brian’s dad (although we thought it was fine).  He thought it was unstable – and crooked, in his eyes, and they proceeded to spend more than an hour trying to remedy the situation, essentially un-fluffing and causing the tree to drop a bunch more fake pine pieces.  *sigh*  Finally, the next day (day 3 of the Christmas Tree Tale) his dad brought over a different tree stand that worked much better.  Then I had to re-fluff, put on the lights, fluff again, sweep again, arrange the skirt, and FINALLY it was ready.  WHEW!  I honestly think a live tree is probably easier, at least compared to our experience this year!  You can see the pictures of our fun evening of tree-trimming here.  We’re enjoying it, so it’s all the hassle has been worth it. 

Oh yeah – my Dad called later that week and to tell me he’d decided to wait to set up the Christmas tree at their house until we got there.  Hehe..fun!  We can compare our adventure to the snowy-cut-down-your-own-live-tree experience up North. 

There are 2 half-written blogs saved in text files on my desktop.  I’m too ambitious… they’re full of little notes of stories and recipes I wanted to expand on, and maybe even include pictures.  But I can’t seem to get back to them to finish.  Just like the 2 open emails that I started to motivate myself to let these poor people know I hadn’t ignored their letters…  And now here I am to try to get something posted, and Josiah just woke up.  So much for my quiet evening time.  Gotta run!    But I’m gonna post this anyway just so there’s SOMETHING new here…        

Brian and I stole away for a little date night last night.  It was sweet!  We splurged with dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, always one of our favorites.  Brian had a new dish called Bang-Bang Thai Chicken and Shrimp.  He said it was one of the best things he’s ever tasted!  I had my usual – Shrimp and Bacon Club Sandwich.  I’ve had that every time I’ve ever eaten there… it’s so tasty.  Of course, we enjoyed some cheesecake.  Brian had White Chocolate Caramel Latte and I had Tiramisu Cheesecake.  Lovely.  I’m looking forward to enjoying lunch of my leftover sandwich:)

Analise has a cold that’s been dragging on, so she’s being a bit of a whiner today.  I was going to post earlier this week about how we’re doing SO well with potty-training.  We were!  She’d been staying dry at school, and we even had one completely dry day, including waking up dry.  Sunday was rough because we were at Sunday School and of course she was having too much fun to remember to tell someone she needed to go to the bathroom.  Today, though, I’m not sure what the problem is.  She’s had 2 accidents so far already.  Maybe she’s not feeling well?  I think we’re still doing pretty darn well, and I’m SO pleased to not be changing diapers! 

Josiah’s got some serious sleep issues going on.  He fights sleeping during the day, and it’s so hard to get him to nap.  Today has been a little better as he took a long solid nap in his swing after some fussing.  At night, it’s really hard to get him to sleep, but then its hit-or-miss as to whether he’ll sleep for 4 hours or not.  He’s a very restless sleeper.  And the silly pacifier… it falls out while he’s sleeping and then he half-wakes and wants it.  Arg.  I’m still anti-pacifier…

I’ve got a bit of a sore throat, and it was one of those days that I woke up wanting to call in sick.  I couldn’t convince Brian to stay home and take care of the kids for me.  He knows life is much easier at his office… just college kids to deal with.

Enough from me… hopefully, I’ll be back later to post something I started writing this past weekend!     

That’s what the weatherman said it is this morning.  21 degrees.  Hmph.  I bet my readers from the Great North are falling off their chairs laughing.  To be truthful, he was saying that in reference to the wind chill, which makes it feel about 16 degrees.  Whew… almost unbearable. 

Brian bundled up for his ride to work.  Thankfully, we call him "Nanook of the North" when we’re up there, so I’m not worried about him.

Happy Monday!