After nursing Lydia through the late hours of Thanksgiving, I succumbed to the same virus in the early hours the day after. How humbling is sickness…

Paul had been sick too and just as he started to feel human (around 1 a.m.) I picked up the baton and continued the race.

I just need a good night’s sleep. Apparently my body didn’t get the telegram and I woke up at 3 for no apparent reason.

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On a happy note, the Bean is plugging away in her “big guhs” There have been accidents but she is taking them in stride.

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Lately I have really been appreciating the way that C. Riley has been treating Beanie. He is constantly giving her piggy back rides and talking sweetly to her. My heart just fills with delight when I see her smudgy little face next to his, her arms wrapped around his neck. And to hear him using this gentle, inviting tone, “You want another ride, Eden?” – it’s like Mom Crack, the drug, that is.

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I will write another time about what we were thankful for on Thanksgiving, since we chose to disrupt a quiet, peaceful meal with what we hoped would be a time of grateful sharing. Dream the impossible dream and sometimes find yourself jousting windmills.

Anyhoo, I’m back…and yes I think my tone is not unlike Jack Nicholson’s in the Shining. Perhaps a little more subdued…slightly… I am tired.

Johnny Cash died less than a year after my dad died when all our hearts were still so sore. We siblings never talked about it, but Johnny Cash reminded all of us of our dad. I know this because once he died there was a flurry of phone calls across the country that went a little like this:

“Johnny Cash died!” The speaker usually said this with a wail and often dissolved into tears.

“I know…he always reminded me of Dad.”

“Me too!”

And then we would talk about Johnny and Dad and mourn them both.

1. This evening my mom was going to spend the night so that Paul and I could go see a movie and not worry about keeping her up late.

2. But then the movies were before the kids were in bed and after I wanted to be starting a movie when we are still catching up on sleep from when our friends visited.

3. We tucked Birdie in with the Puke Bucket because she was complaining about a sick stomach. When she got up at 9:00 and then 9:30 to throw up, I was so glad it was on my watch and not my mom’s.

…I asked her if she had slept at all and she said, “Well I started to and then I thought, ‘I better stay up so that I can be alert in case I throw up.'”

She’s eight, God bless her.

Someone has been wearing big girls (a.k.a. underpants) ALL day. This morning she asked to wear them so I put them on her. She stayed dry until her nap when I switched her into a diaper but she was dry when she got up from her (admittedly short) rest.

Cue the music, “It’s a whole new world…”

My other kids I trained late but it only took one day. I have been trying to summon the strength to lock myself in the bathroom with the Bean and rave enthusiasm and encouragement for several hours. I was hoping she would just train herself, which, apparently, she has.

God bless her.

She is feeling pretty fantasgic since she knows she gets to take a gymn class when she is potty trained. This starts after Christmas, right before she turns three and is a Big Girl. All day long I have heard, “I’m a Big Guh. I’m wearing my big guhs.”

We won’t talk about the little poo that sqeaked its way out into her panties while I raced her to the bathroom.

To endless days of a dry Big Girl and her big girls!

A happy happy Thanksgiving to you too.

The Bean was climbing on an exercise ball with the seeming goal of getting onto the (high) arm of the couch. She slipped and fell.

Lying on her back arms spread out she sighed, “I dinn’t make it to Nanica…”

That’s Canada, for the uninitiated.