Do more this holiday season

It's a quiet morning in our home, so far. Only one mini me is awake, and she's snuggled up in a chair watching "Sofia the First."

The coffee in my cup is fresh. I just brewed it.

There are two pies in the oven I made last night and a dish of squash in the refrigerator to go with dinner later. I've picked out a few bottles of wine to enjoy with family on this Thanksgiving.

We aren't hosting the holiday, but I love food and I love to cook and bake, so I offered to do as much as I could.

I wish I could do more.

Because I have a warm house, and others do not.

Social experiments: The spiritual cup

After a week of whatever the heck virus kicked my 3-year-old's tush, I think Josie is finally on the way to good health.

Now Charlie has it. We're on day four of vomit, though she might have skipped a day and I just don't remember. Sleeping (if you can call it that) sitting up with a trash can next to your bed for your 2-year-old to puke into tends to blur time and days.

I'm hoping this isn't going to be the beginning of a repeat of Winter 2012-13.

I refuse to panic about this. We're back to popsicles, Pedialyte and watered down juice. Charlie refuses to eat solid food, I think more out of fear of how much it will hurt if she throws up again. At the very least, I need to try every trick in the book to get fluids into her.

But all this trying to get them healthy is exhausting, and I hate to complain about my babies because they can't help what's happening, so on Sunday the kids stayed home with the Boy and off to church I went. I had a pie fundraiser to help button up so we could start baking on Monday. And my spiritual cup needed a refill.

No less a rock star

Sick kids are the worst.

It sucks.

It's not just sucky because they're sick, though. Sadly, it's more because the problem can't always be fixed and as a parent it makes you feel helpless. You spend all your time guiding, teaching, snuggling, kissing away the ouchies.

But then along comes a virus that wreaks havoc on your preschooler's intestinal tract and leaves in its wake little hands and little feet and, in our case, even a little nose covered in hives.

The magic of Christmas

It's right around the corner. I know it's coming and I'm just not ready for it yet. Not one bit. No ounce of me is prepared, with the exception of having picked up on some clearance sales.

It's Christmas.

No, I don't want to think about it yet. We haven't even gotten through Thanksgiving yet. I refuse - REFUSE, I tell you - to get the tree up or pull my Dickens village houses out before Nov. 29. I did break down and hang some jingle bells on the front door. I probably have broken my own rules just with that one smooth move.

It's hard. So, so hard.

In the moment ... but not really

I'm really bad about writing things in the moment. You know, something spectacular happens and then I don't write about it right away and two days later I try to ... and it all sounds like shit. This is because of my kids. I blame them. They're so needy and I, like, never get time to do things I want to do like pour out my soul in one shot.

So, jump into my time machine. I'm taking you back to Tuesday Nov. 12, 2013. Are you there? Good. Because this is going to be written like it all happened today.

*que funky time machine wavy mirage visual effects*

My hope filled VBAC: She's almost 2

Somewhere in the vicinity of two years ago this week, I stared at my very pregnant belly wondering when the little goober was going to give up the hostage situation in my uterus and wave its white flag. I was three days past my due date, still working full-time and went to bed every night praying God would give my body the ability to birth my child as He intended.

I've told the story of how Josephine had been forced out before she was ready. Devastated doesn't even begin to describe how I felt, and though I tried part of me still can't even put into words the full range of emotions I felt over the course of my healing - both physical and emotional.

And then eight months later I was pregnant again. I was "late" and tested. Negative. Tested again a few days later. Negative. Spent my birthday attempting to have fun hanging out with my family ... could hardly stomach the beer in my hand and though I so very badly wanted a cigarette, the smell nearly made me vomit. On March 8, I had a biopsy done on my thyroid and went home scared to death of the results of that test. To clear my head, I peed on another stick figuring if it was negative this time, I was going to stop worrying. My body was probably just getting back on track after Josie had stopped breastfeeding.

Acquired fire hazards (aka: shit people give you)

There are a lot of things I didn't do before packing up and moving.

• That giant box of old papers I wanted to go through? Sitting in the front room.
• Clothes that should have been sorted and sent to the Rescue Mission? Scattered throughout three rooms.
• Old computer monitors/printers/cables I wanted him to find new homes for? Currently surrounding me in the basement office area.
• The Popular Science mags I begged him to sort and toss 16 months ago? Still in the same box they sat in at the other house, only now at this house. And still pissing me off.
• The filing cabinet that holds next to no important papers because they're all in the box upstairs in the front room? Still haven't sorted through the junk we're keeping in there.

 It's an epidemic.

Strategic plans of attack

Things have been quiet around here.

Well, if you can call the ear piercing screaming that has replaced my 3-year-old's beautiful little voice "quiet" that would be a fairly accurate statement.

By "quiet" I'm hoping you've read between the lines. The kids haven't gone totally berzerk and started climbing the walls again like they did when my husband was out of town for the better part of two weeks at the beginning of October. Yeah, they're less crazy (ie: quiet) lately, which makes me wonder what they're secretly plotting.