Getting Back to Normal

I'm always sad to see the end of the holidays. I will miss the kids telling me every minute how many days left until Santa comes. Christmas morning I layed in bed wondering why the kids weren't up yet, when I heard my son's alarm go off. I guess he wanted to make sure he didn't miss it! I heard him wake up the rest of the gang. They all quietly came in our room, sleepy eyed, with big smiles on their faces. Then they jumped in bed with us. We enjoyed it! It's not often that your 14 year old daughter will climb in bed with mom and dad!

Santa left the Wii for the kids. My 11 year old looked at me and his eyes started to flood! Later I told him that I noticed that and he said, "I know!". He couldn't believe it either. I'm not much of a video game player (only DDR or Karaoke Revolution) but we actually ran out yesterday to buy a 4th controller so I could pay doubles in tennis with them. Doesn't that sound fun? It's so sad that it's all already over. Will 7 year old still believe next year?

For now, I'm going to try to get my life a little back to normal, or as normal as I can with the kids being off of school. I only exercised once since the kids have been home, and I'm starting to feel fat. I haven't been running because I didn't want to go out in the cold. I know, bad excuse. I have a nice little set up in the back of our basement. We have a big area rug with some exercise equipment on it. We also have a bunch of shelves there with my 3 year old's Barbie toys on them. She loves to play her Barbies while I work out. The other day while I was riding my exercise bike, my 7 year old came down and sat next to me:

"Mom, do you want some of my cheese and crackers? I'll make one up for you!"

"No thanks, sweetie. I need to exercise. Mom's too fat."

"You're fat? Oh, I didn't know that!"

"You're a sweetie!"

That's why I love him so much! So when the neighbor tells my daughter, "He may be a brother to you, but he's a spoiled brat to us", it's makes me want to just cry. But mean girls, that's a whole new subject to blog about.

I'm enjoying my kids wanting me, but I need to get my sleep back to normal, too. My 14 year old is keeping me up late at night. My husband has to get up early for work, so while he goes to bed to saw his logs, my kids and I watch movies or play games. My daughter got season one of Gilmore Girls. I must admit I'm really enjoying it! We watched one episode last night. Then I was going to go up to bed and she said, "We have to watch one more episode!". She had to keep shaking me to keep me awake. It's neat because we talk about the whole show while we watch it. Then when we FINALLY went up to bed, I stopped in her room to see if she was still going to read, and she ended up talking to me some more. For some reason, nighttime is her time to talk, and I hate to interrupt it. She told me she didn't really like the turtleneck sweater that Grandma got her, but she didn't want to hurt her feelings by asking for the receipt. She told me about some of her friends that don't take school very seriously and aren't always the best of kids. She told me how one of her "so called" friends is mad at her for the hundredth time and was picking on another of her friends in gym class, and how bad she felt for this girl. She and another girl were telling this girl to reach up and see how high she could jump, then laughing because they could see her underarm hair (the mean girl subject again). This is all the stuff I don't hear during the day, only at night, when she's ready for bed. I hate to interrupt her to go to bed myself. Finally, I looked at the clock and had to say, "It's 1:00! We have to go to bed!" Luckily the rest of the kids slept in this morning. I think I'll just try to get to sleep even a little earlier tonight, but I don't want to miss out on anything else she wants to talk about! I want to make sure SHE doesn't turn into a "Mean Girl".