Back in the Saddle

First of all, many congratulations and kudos to Mama J for keeping up the blog and doing an awesome job of it after the birth of the lovely Val. I give her nothing but props because I have literally been unable to concentrate on writing a blog entry until this minute since MARCH of last year.

That's because as some of you may recall, we bought a house last spring, and as many of you don't know, we had a baby this fall. In September, the lovely Ladybug joined her two sisters, the Duchess (who is now 4) and Honey (who is 2) in our little family.  In short, it's been a little busy around here.

When I last posted, I talked a lot about our new house in the suburbs of Boston, and as soon as I get organized, I'm going to post some before-and-after shots, because what is more fun than scrutizing somebody's home?  I had to wait on this until the furniture arrived (which took forever). Nothing is more depressing than entire empty rooms standing at the ready with nothing in them, unless it is seeing our schleppy old furniture in a nicely painted room with fresh carpeting.  Also, to show what my husband's priorities are, we are the proud owners of a truly enormous flat screen TV.

Duchess and Honey have been in preschool this year, which has been lots of fun for them. I had hoped it would give me quality time with the baby, but instead I've been doing a lot of driving. (Nothing was worse than last spring, however, when I decided to finish out the year at her school in the city. Rush hour three days per week, and me having Honey nap in the car because it was too inconvenient to go home and come back again...awful. And I don't have a laptop so I could not write blog posts from the car.) 

Initially I didn't want to overwhelm them with school, so I signed the Duchess up for five mornings per week, and Honey for three mornings (I figured I should leave time for Early Intervention). What ended up happening is that Honey got mad that she didn't get to stay when I dropped off the Duchess, and the Duchess lobbied to continue in the afternoons, so now they both go three days 9-3 and then the Duchess goes two days 9-12 and they still want more school time to be with their little friends.  Meanwhile, my husband thinks I have tons of time to do stuff around the house, and everybody forgets my darling little Ladybug, who is not even four months old, and requires a lot of attention. I barely know what she looks like (ok, kidding) and have to remind myself to take photos or she will have a complex when she grows up.

So now that the school schedule is set, and Ladybug is napping, I finally can set up some time to write. I'm happy to be back, if you will still have me!