What we've been doing...

A little bit of everything.

• I finished Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife, from which the BBC miniseries was derived.  It was very, very good.  Happy and sad and interesting and revolting all at the same time.
• I finished the Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, it was also very, very good.  Funny and smart and interesting with just a hint of sad behind all of that.  (Bear in mind that it's a modern novel, and so has none of the aesthetic of a classic, but it was a fun break-from-thinking read.)
• I'm up to my elbows in a dissertation that I'm editing.  I told Chris, I never think of myself as a good writer.  I think I'm adequate, but nothing special.  Until I read some of these dissertations, then I think maybe I am a good writer.  Because I know not to end a sentence with a preposition (I still do it, I just know better), and I know the difference between to, two and too.
• I'm halfway through a little short-sleeved shirt for my Girl.  It will match her bloomers and I'm trying to finish it before she outgrows the bloomers.  Talk about a race against time.
• Chris has been working a lot and he made this crazy trip in the middle of the night to a semi-local gun store to camp out for an AR-15.  He came home to sleep because I mocked his desire to just drive there after work and sleep in his car all night.  He got in bed.  He read for a while.  Then he tried to sleep but couldn't, so he got up (at 2am!) and drove an hour south to wait in a cold, dark, rainy parking lot to buy this gun.  The really sad thing?  He wasn't the first one in LINE!  But he got his gun, so he's happy.  And given the season of the year, I'll take anything that makes Chris happy.
• The babies are awesome.  
• The Boy is struggling a bit with what would appear to be some social anxiety.  He had a meltdown in Primary yesterday (Primary is the children's portion of our church service.  It's set up so that they sing and learn together for an hour and then have a sunday-school-esque class for an hour.), he was in the large group portion (the age range is 3-8 years old) and another boy was making weird faces, and all of the kids were talking and goofing off (as children are prone to do), but being an introvert like his Mama, it was a little too much stimulation for a very tired boy (we go to church right smack in the middle of his rest time), so he just melted down.  I tried to calm him and get him to go back to class, but he just wouldn't (or couldn't) settle.  So I cut my losses and took the children home.  He slept for two hours and then explained all of this to me, and we talked about what he can do next time to calm himself down when he feels overwhelmed. 
• The Girl is teething like she's behind schedule, she cut three teeth in a little over a week, and one of them was a molar.  She's had a string of nights where she doesn't sleep well, she's fitful and fussy and I have to keep going in to settle her down and once I saw all those teeth pop out, I thought, "Well there you go!  That's why you've been such a bear!"  But otherwise, she's hilarious.  She eats voraciously, particularly when it's something she really likes.  I'll peel and cut up an apple for her and she crams her mouth so full she can't close it.  Naturally, she chokes and spits half of the pre-chewed apple out, which is gross, but it's so funny to see her swiping the apple slices and cramming them in her mouth that I keep doing it.  Hopefully, all of these new teeth coming in will help her out.
• I've finished a charming little gift for my friend Brett who is expecting another babalah.  It's been done for a while, but I need 10 minutes to sit down and write her a little note and then I can send it off to her.  I'm excited for her because she and Ben make adorable and perhaps more importantly, hilarious children.
• Chris' birthday is this week.  I convinced him to take the day off of work, so we'll all go to lunch as a family and I'll be making him birthday PIE.  I already told him that I'm buying him a new pair of shoes for work for his birthday, but I need his cooperation for that, so I'll also try to get him to go shoe-shopping on Wednesday.
• And that's about it.  Other than Chris' birthday this week it should be quiet.  I'll finish the dissertation and send it back.  We'll do school and all of the normal Burnstopia things.  I like weeks like this one...with not many things fixed, but enough going on that life isn't dull.  I've started another new book (the follow up to Call the Midwife) and finally found a decent formula for knee-high socks.  I'm only a month behind, but I'm just starting to pin down some goals for this year...maybe I'll share them and maybe I won't.  That way no one will be disappointed if I get side-tracked.