conversations with invisible pigs and sheep

Colin eats spaghetti

Colin is smitten with Elmo

jim in hoodie

my sunshine

nana’s flower basket shawl

is how a radio commentator described this year for America, and it’s also an apt description for our family this year. Whenever we think we’ve faced our hardest challenge, something new was thrown at us. But we’ve survived, and we’ve been blessed with out children, our new home, our friends and family.

Every day Jim wants me to buy him toys. Taking him along Christmas shopping is trying because of this.

I finished my big Christmas knitting project Saturday afternoon, leaving myself just about 20 hours for it to block and dry. I think the house is so dry that it was done by the time we got home from dinner Saturday night. It was a shawl for the boys’ Nana (Dad’s grandmother, the kids’ great-grandmother). I took some pictures in the terrible light we had Sunday morning — it was raining. But I still need to get Photoshop on the new computer before I can post them.

I still have shopping to do, and I’m trying to churn out two presents for Jim’s two teachers. I’m making less complicated fingerless mitts than I made last year, and I’ve got one done and another started. I picked up black and white cashmerino, but I think I’m going to just make two black pairs. His one teacher wears black most of the time, and the other seems to wear bright colors, so black should match with most anything.

Oh, and I also have shepherd costume to make, for Jim’s play on Friday morning.

I have many cute photos to show. But they have to be scanned and imported. And then there’s video — I’m importing all our old videos, and there’s much cuteness going on.

Yay snow!

Today was a back-to-normal day, with taking Jim to school, going to therapy for my back, and then trying to fit in grocery shopping and a couple-few other errands too.

Colin, who slept like a champ again for us last night, was not happy to be at therapy. I’m not surprised at this, because he’s been napping at that time of day for the last couple of days (around 9.00 – 9.30am). But it’s really the only time I can go, unless I want to bring both kids. I can tell that the therapists are not happy with him being there and being cranky. Luckily he responds to the head therapist. He just doesn’t like being confined to the stroller, which is the safest place for him to be. So, next week I got some earlier appointments, and we’ll see if Dad can take Jim to school and watch Colin while I go alone.

Anyway, after leaving the therapist’s, we headed to the bank, and then it started to snow. So I decided to brave the grocery store because we had hit the “must get” mark on certain necessities. But it wasn’t any more crowded than usual. It was a quick stop home to drop off the groceries, and then back to get Jim.

At home, they started excavating for the house next door. It wasn’t too noisy, and the front-end loader entertained Jim for quite a while. It was a nice quiet afternoon. I finished all the Christmas shopping that I could online. I still have one trip to Target to make before the weekend, to get stuff the church’s giving tree.

I just figured out how to get my iCal (Mac calendar that I’ve been using to track our life) loaded to my iPod mini. It’s not pretty like an iPod Touch, but it doesn’t cost $300 either. And now I have access on the road — something I’ve been sorely missing with all these doctors appointments lately.

Last night Colin slept in his crib all night. There was a 4.00 waking, but he ate and went back to sleep. He woke again at 6.30, and went back to sleep after eating. And the 4.00 waking was after falling asleep sometime before midnight, which is when I last looked at the clock.

All of this means that he’ll be waking every hour tonight, but it was a nice night.

I was going to take a pic of Colin sound asleep in my bed after taking a nice boogie-cleansing bath, but it seems I’ve misplaced the CF card for the camera and the reader too. Which means that they are together somewhere, but who knows where.

We did little things around the house this weekend, since we were tag-teaming with Colin the whole time. He’s been miserable most of the time, or sleeping. I was able to get most of my “office” together, and Dad got the extraneous pieces of furniture out of here last night. Now we can see that there is still a decent amount of room in here. I’ve got the big desk and a drop-leaf table, and a tall, narrow storage cabinet.

Last night I also tracked down the socks that need fixing, along with my lone Christmas project and sweaters for each of the boys. Jim’s needs the front finished, and then sewn up, and Colin’s just needs to be sewn up. But I really have to finish up the Christmas gift first. Taking care of sick Colin is really making this hard. I had to skip PT today too, because I really don’t want him out of the house much.

Well, if I can get some laundry put away, maybe I can get some knitting in before Prince Cranky wakes up.

I just took off my shoes and discovered that I quickly sprouted a hole in each of my socks. And this is my last pair of handknitted socks (and the first I knit!). I’ve only made four pairs — one as a gift, one pair that I felted in the dryer, this pair, and another that sprouted a hole in the leg area after washing. I think if I can track them down, I have a good chance of frogging it down to the hole and reknitting it, as a quick relief for warm socks.