Happy New Year

I'm stealing Danifred's idea and doing an end of the year countdown as a "wrap up" for 2010. (You can check out her blog for "Friday Night Leftovers" and other end-of-the year reviews.)

2010 in Review:

1-# of bedrooms we moved (we moved Emma from the baby wallpapered old bedroom to a new "big girl room" at the beginning of the year.)

1-# of new schools Emma has attended this year. We made the decision to pull Emma from the
private school she attended for daycare/pre-K and enroll her in the elementary school beside the middle school where I teach. Thus far, we're (mostly) happy with the way things are going.

1-#of "BFPs" I had this year...though it sadly turned out to just be a chemical pregnancy.

2-# of trips DH, Emma and I made to visit family and friends in Ohio.

3-# of books DH has written. (2 novels and 1 children's book---wow! He continues to seek agent representation in hopes of being published someday.)

6-the grade I am mostly teaching this school year.

6-the age Emma turned in September. How the time flies!

5feet-the depth of the pool in the area Em likes to swim best. She really took off as a swimmer this year!

12-# of boxes and bags of Emma's old infant-4T clothing and items we donated this month.

1-# of garages on our house we can now walk through and store items in (without fearing for our lives due to an avalanche of old stuff) due to the donation of Emma's old Baby stuff.

109,000-# of miles driven on my H.onda C.ivic as of last week.

2-# of date nights DH and I had at the M.elting Pot this year. Soooo yummy!

1-# of national reading teacher awards my principal nominated me for. (Though I didn't win, I was truly honored to be nominated.)

3-# of days I took off work to have "date days" with DH when he was off work too. :)

10-#of days the in-laws allowed DH, Em and I to stay with them at THEIR house due to the air conditioner at OUR house breaking and waiting on a replacement part.

3-#of trips DH, Em and I took to D.isneyWorld....ah how I love it there!

742-# of "points" I had accumulated from classes and trainings I took. The points go toward renewing my teaching certificate.

300-#of points I actually needed...yup, I can be a bit of a nerd sometimes.

12-#of years DH and have been married as of Sept. 5th

15-#of years DH and I have been "together." Smiles.

4-#of TVs with U.verse in our house (thanks to DH's work discount!)

3-# of TV/U.verse remotes that were missing in action at the beginning of this week. (Locations when found: 1-under Em's bed; 1-in Emma's art tray/table; 1-on Emma's dresser. )

1,247-#of conversations we had with Em regarding NOT moving remotes from one room to another.

Ending the year with an Irish toast I posted on F.acebook earlier:

Here's to the bright New Year
and a fond farewell to the old,
Here's to the things that are yet to come...
and to the memories that we hold.

Happy 2011!

Merry Christmas!

From my corner of the world to yours...

Wishing my loved ones near and far a joyous holiday!

My Quirky Girl

Tidbits from my ray of sunshine, my quirky girl...

A dinner conversation with Emma:

Emma: I'm sad because Ms. H and my boyfriend both won't be at school tomorrow.
(DH and I exchange "huh?" glances.)
DH: Who is your boyfriend?
Emma: Bryce.
Me: When I spent time at your school, he seemed pretty nice.
Emma: Yeah, he is.
Me: What does it mean to 'have a boyfriend?'
Emma: It means you love someone.
DH: Indeed.
Me: Does Bryce call you his 'girlfriend?'
Emma: No, I haven't told him yet.
ROFL. Gotta love kindergarten romance.

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A Laundry Conversation:

This weekend as the washing machine was filling with water and I was loading it with clothes...
Emma: Mommy, what are you doing?
Me: Honey, use your sense. What does it look like I'm doing?
Emma: Do you mean use my SENSE of humor?

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Staying Warm:

When we went to Ohio for Thanksgiving we bought Emma the Cutest.Kermit.hat.EVER! (Of course we forgot to take it along. Doh!) However, it has been cold here recently, so Em has been able to wear her winter hat a lot. Turns out she LOVES it and has even been sleeping in the hat.

This weekend at T.arget I bought myself a sleeping mask in the $1 section. I thought it was cute and cheap and might come in handy on the occasional nights DH stays up watching TV while I try to sleep. As soon as Emma saw the sleeping mask, she coveted it.

Last night I checked on Em (who had been tucked in for over an hour) before I went to sleep. My child cracks me up....the pics below show my SOUND ASLEEP girl in both the HAT AND the MASK. HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!





How I love my little sweetie. :)

A Bit of Progress

This weekend I made HUGE emotional progress. While I still want a 2nd child, I've been working myself up for a few months to try to accept that I may be "meant to be" the mother of a singleton. I am NOT by any means giving up on my dream of a 2nd child yet, but...

Rather than decking the house with Christmas decor as I intended when I awoke on Saturday morning, I instead cleaned the garage. Mind you, the majority of this "cleaning" consisted of loading hubby's mini van and my car until they were filled to the max with Emma's old baby clothing and items. I had large R.ubbermaid bins filled with infant clothes, 1 year clothes, 2 year clothes, etc. from each year of Emma's life. I included the baby Exersaucer, the crib mobile, the baby kick-and-play-station items, bedding, infant/toddler toys a whole R.ubbermaid of books, etc. With the exception of the wall hangings and crib set (which match the wallpaper border still in Em's old room) I got rid of everything except for:
--2 boxes of my ultimate "favorite" clothing I plan to gift to two of my girlfriends who recently had baby girls
--1 Baby swing I already offered to a PG friend.
--Em's old high chair (it perfectly matches our kitchen table, so we'll store it in the garage for a bit longer.)

I shed a few tears looking at some of the clothing before packing up our cars... But then I realized that the tears weren't really for the baby-who-isn't. They were tears of nostalgia as I remembered people giving me the outfits for Em, or times/places Baby-Emma wore particular clothing.

We tried to sell the items to a local consignment shop, but they were super busy and had specific requirements as to how they wanted clothing "delivered" before they would review it and provide an estimate. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle, so we took the rest of the things to the S.alvation.Army and donated them. The men working there were very gracious saying they would likely use some of the things "to give some families a really nice Christmas."

Obviously, as Emma is SIX, I had been hanging on to many of these items for a long while. I originally kept the items with hopes of saving $$ for Child #2...but as time went on, we were running out of storage space. (We don't have a basement or attic and our garage was getting to be out of control with floor-to-ceiling storage containers in many places.)

The best part... I know it has only been 24 hours, but I DON'T HURT. Even as recently as summer (4 months ago) it still tore at my heart to think of getting rid of the old baby items. It made me feel like I was giving up on my dream. Now I feel like I am moving on emotionally...

As I said, I still want Child #2, I just realize logically (for once) that keeping hand-me-downs for 6 years isn't going to work! Yay me! :)