Where am I? What day is it? Did I miss Christmas?

I have been in a fugue state for the last couple of weeks just trying to stay caffeinated enough to get out the door before collapsing in my bed (with QT) at the end of another long day.

Did I mention my husband has been out of town since December 2nd and that all the stress and unpredictability that comes along with it manifested itself into a hideous canker sore inside my lower lip that hung out for like a week and made it painful to talk and smile. I somehow found the strength to still eat a ton of unhealthy stuff including bacon wrapped dates and an Italian combo, but I digress.

I think I handled it okay this year. Work actually helped. It gave me a bit of distance from the kids so that when I got home I was able to actually give them the attention they deserved, while still trying to clothe, bathe (not consistently) and feed them (they love pasta--having it every night is not a form of child abuse).

I mean it wasn't great on those nights that QT refused to string together more than an hour and a half of sleep and I would wake up right before the alarm was set to go off, hoping that it was hours earlier and I could go back to bed, before realizing that I had slept for the last hour and a half on about six inches of mattress space, while my almost 6-month-old apparently took up the rest of Lionel, my spacious king-sized bed.

It also wasn't great when I lost it on my neighbor over a pumpkin. Long story, but the essence of it was that the "principal" of not throwing things into adjoining yards was being violated. I guess throwing a ginormous pumpkin covered in non-toxic paint (hand crafted by the Ladies), over the side of a fence into the embankment owned by the state that leads up to an interstate is somehow tantamount to just carelessly lofting it into your neighbors flower patch. I mean there are like rusted metal things and bodies buried over there. I certainly wouldn't throw trash back there, but a biodegradable pumpkin that has been providing nourishment to "Squirrley-Squirrel" our friendly neighborhood squirrel isn't going to open the flood gates to illegal dumping on the interstate side of the fence. I mean did making my dad go back over the side of the fence to pick it up and put it in our garbage can really make any difference in the scheme of things? Now that giant, colorful squash is rotting away in some dump, while Squirrley-Squirrel has to forage for food in the cold New England winter, forced to gnaw his little rodent teeth on rusted metal parts and our Christmas Tree from last year.

Granted, I might have been a little over emotional and clearly, there was no need to get my Irish up over something as trivial as a pumpkin, but I was "living in a powder keg" and she was "giving off sparks" and sometimes life isn't as pretty as that giant, colorful pumpkin, and sometimes you throw a temper tantrum at age 35.

Moving on. . .

We have managed to keep busy over the last couple of weeks although we haven't done one bit of Christmas decorating or shopping and I am not sure when any of it will actually get done. Here are a few pics from our many adventures.

Oh, and as of the writing of this blog post, my husband is in the airport at SFO and soon to be boarding his plane home. My plan is to hand him QT as he walks in the door, jump into Lionel, pull those covers up tight and try to get a little rest.

The Wild Woman and QT

The Lady and the Wild Man make a gingerbread house

The Lady, Wild Woman, Wild Man, The Little Lady, and QT with their Aunt and Uncle enjoying some fro yo