the House that Sick Built

We all survived Thanksgiving.

My brother and his wife and family came down from Maryland (they have 6 kids), so combined with my sister and the three of hers that are home right now, and us 4 and my parents we ended up with 20+ for the weekend.  It was a lot of people.  But the Boy had tons of fun playing with his cousins and the Girl was thoroughly overwhelmed and constantly looking for a place to hide out.  It was pretty funny.

My brother and his family took off for a family vacation on Sunday and the Girl promptly got sick.  Then Chris followed in her wake.  So I've spent the week taking care of them and trying (mostly in vain) to get everyone back on a normal schedule.

Sadly, taking care of sick babies means that I don't get much done.  Mostly, I do a lot of this:

Please ignore the no make up, bed hair and slacker clothes.  Let's just celebrate the fact that we're all mostly upright.

I had all of these brilliant ambitions back in the summer to work on the homemade Christmas gifts EARLY this year so that I could just relax and enjoy December, and yet again, humble pie tastes so delicious.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  So I find myself again, faced with not quite 3 weeks and this is my list of gifts still to finish:

• Pajama pants for the Boy (they're cut out, they just need to be sewn together)
• socks for Christopher (1 is done, I just have to make the mate)
• fingerless gloves for Christopher (these are hard since I'm working without a pattern and I've never done the fingers on gloves before.  Last night I worked up as far as I knew what to do, and had to set it aside until I can think through and figure out the next part.)
• socks for the Girl (not even started!  wool isn't even picked out!)
• socks for the Boy (I had the rudest awakening over Thanksgiving, he was wearing his red Gox Box Socks but he was walking on the CUFF!  So I asked him, "What are you doing there, dude?"  And then looked at them, and OH MY HEART!  His foot is 1.5 INCHES longer than when I made those.  Now, if you'll remember that was only LAST SPRING.  His foot has grown an inch and a half since the SPRING.  Pass some smelling salts and also my knitting needles.)

Looking at that list makes me think "Yeah, that's totally do-able, if I don't school with the Boy, cook food, clean my house, bake Christmas cookies, or go visit my parents or Grandma."  But the reality is that I'm not willing to cut those things so that I can work on those presents.  So the reality of what will end up under the Christmas tree on time looks more like this:

• socks for Christopher
• fingerless gloves for Christopher
• hat for the Girl (it's done, it just needs a button)

I'm trying to be all balanced and reasonable about that, after all, we have only so many hours in the day and we have to sleep sometime, and my family is happier with a somewhat sane and lucid M than they would be with psycho-sleep-deprived M.  And when I actually get to where I can be balanced and reasonable about that, I'll let you know.  In the meantime, I'm just dumb enough to keep trying for that first list while still doing everything else.