!!!!! :)

Elijah has been taking some nice pictures lately. Here is a classic Cars pose.

Here are my two darling boys.

Here is a rare picture of yours truly.

Here is me and my baby. I always said that he would probably be crawling before Christmas, but he had not shown any inclination. In fact, he would cry when we laid him on his tummy. This week, however, he decided to make good on his Mama's prediction. He has just taken off like a rocket. He is now interested in scooting around and rolling around my floor. He spies an object and goes after it. The world is very suddenly an interesting place to him. Just in time for Christmas!

I notice that my kids grown by leaps and bounds. At the same time, I fall in love with them by leaps and bounds. Today, I fell more in love with that little stinker than ever before. Just watching him try to move around the living room, watching him sit in his chair and munch on cookies and dump juice on his shirt from his little sippy cup, and later snuggling with him while he nurses himself to sleep, it melts my heart. I really did worry with each new child that I would never be able to love them as much as the ones I already had, but each time, I have fallen more and more in love with all of them, and with their dear father, too.

Today we also got to go over and visit with my sister, her husband, and his beautiful little daughter Aurora. Aurora is only a little younger than Olivia. Olivia has only had a chance to play with boys in her life, so meeting another little girl was bound to be an interesting experience. I think they did well together. Aurora is an absolutely dollbaby. She is beautiful and well-mannered.

Thanks to my friends for the bagels and the bread - it was wonderful to see you guys, too. You are in my thoughts and prayers.

When we got home, there was a package of Christmas presents from our "Auntie" Lisa in Texas - a small stack of books carefully chosen for each of us. So of course we had to spend an hour on read alongs, and Mama spent the later evening with her nose in a novel. Thank you, Lisa, very much. I will write to you more later.

If you can't tell, I am over the moon tonight. Christmas is coming!!!!

I need some sleep, time to...

I shouldn't blog right now. I am tired, have indigestion, and feel everything just hitting me. Not new things, but just the weight of the last month. This was the most challenging semester yet, yes, somehow even more challenging than the one where I moved and had a baby... slightly more challenging course material I guess, combined with the whole emergency surgery thing. I feel like I did well- so far, one A and one B - but I am still waiting on one grade, and that is stressing me out.

Why is the one grade stressing me out? This teacher was very cool about the whole hospital thing. Most of my assignments were about two weeks late for the second half of the semester. Only, he hasn't graded one of them yet. Usually I feel pretty confident about my work, but these were all assignments in software I have never used before, not even equivalent software. For example, I had to put together a funny video from random old video clips. I have never worked with video before at all. I also had to work with animation, which I am particularly bad at. So by Thanksgiving I am about caught up, but I haven't received a single grade. I emailed this teacher, and he did not get back to me. Eight days later, I emailed him at his personal address to ask him to verify that he has received all my assignments. He said he wouldn't start grading until the semester was over (December 12th) and to check with him again around then. So, I emailed him again on the 12th, and he was again very cool and wished me a Merry Christmas and what not. But I have more than half a semester with no grades, so I have no idea of where I stand. I am, frankly, a little panicked. I'm not trying to be nasty - this is a teacher I really respect, as far as knowledge of the subjects - but I am just a little freaked out.

Then the class that I really, really loved, had a killer workload. The last three weeks I have been coding every free minute. That one paid off - it's my A. The teacher emailed me the last day to let me know that it would be to my benefit to turn in one more homework assignment that I missed. Now isn't that nice? Hence the A. He also gave me A++ on my final report, which I worked my tushy off for. I was supposed to create a web site for the North Pole. I used JavaScript to create a form that you fill out with your kids name, what they want for Christmas, whether they were good, etc, and it generates a cute personalized letter from Santa. I was pretty proud of it. But it was all consuming. I am drained right now. I really, really, really learned from this class. I am taking another class from this guy next semester and I am super excited about it.

Meanwhile, last Friday, er, two Fridays ago now, Julius decides to get sick. He had a high fever for two days, then developed a very minor rash. This would be fine except he also developed that tell-tale symptom of Mommyitis. He did not want to be out of my arms for one second. So a lot of my exam work was done with an audience! I had to work three shifts. Two of them, Lee watched him and made sure he slept the whole time. Lee has learned the secret of letting him cry for about five minutes - not to where he gets freaked out - but just enough to let him calm himself down. The third shift was with Nan, and she doesn't believe in letting babies cry, even for a minute or two. I respect that, I really do. For the most part, I am with her on that. But by the end of that give hour baby sitting stint, she was exhausted and upset. He just cried and cried. he would sleep for twenty minutes in her arms, then wake again and cry. And Nan is not young. Her back hurts her and she has arthritis in her fingers. So she was beat. She was upset, and then I was upset. And then I took him in my arms, and he stopped crying. He went home and slept like a lamb. He's a mama's boy.

But the sickness, plus the school wore me out. And then I have been taking Nan shopping, making cookies with her, wrapping presents, wrapping more presents. Trying to keep the house clean. Trying so hard to be a good wife, and a good mom to the other two. Lee needs me to listen to him and I am only half there in the moment sometimes. Right now, just right this second, I feel like I am failing in every respect. The sad part is, I am fine now. The house is ok, though not fabulous, I am caught up on laundry, there's plenty of food to eat, the kids are healthy for the most part, Lee is happy in his school, and seriously, ALL of my Christmas presents are wrapped and hidden (even if the kids know where half of them are). But its just all catching up with me, now.

I am almost never moody nowadays, I spend most of my days just being happy and grateful for my countless blessings. I remember when I was a teenager, I would have serious mood swings where I would just hate myself. You know what always fixed it?

Sleep. :) Next post will be all pictures, because I have no words left inside of me.