1. Scan and shred our endless supply of random paperwork instead of keeping stacks to be filed someday.
2. Keep our house guest-ready all the time.
3. Write at least one blog post every week.
4. Make coffee at home more instead of paying $3-4 per day on mochas.

I’m sure there are many more ways I could improve myself, but this is it thus far.

I still haven’t figured out Christmas giving. I love giving gifts, but it’s never as easy as just giving someone what I think they would like. If I give a bigger gift than the recipient gives me, then they feel awkward, and I feel guilty for giving them too much. If I am in the reverse position, I feel guilty for not doing enough. Friends, if I give you a gift, it’s because I want to and not because I expect anything in return. If you give me a present and I only have something small or nonexistent for you, I hope you feel the same way. It is very hard to anticipate if someone else has a gift for me and how big or small it will be so that I can perfectly reciprocate. Plus, that kind of takes the fun out of it. Let’s all just give and accept gifts because we love each other and not feel a pang of guilt one way or the other, m’kay?

Love,

Andi

Today at playgroup, I was holding my friend’s 3-month-old, and he spit up all over my sweater and pants. (Yes, she also has a son Falco’s age, and yes, the idea of having a 2-year-old and 3-month-old sounds terribly frightening.) Now I’m trying to make a judgment call of whether or not I need to wash the sweater because it takes forever to dry. (I just washed it and finally got to wear it today after two days of drying.) Only a mother would be torn about this. If an adult vomited on me, I would at least wash the clothes if not destroy them. After having a baby who spit up on me and his surroundings for months and months, a little infant puke on my sweater seems like no big. I hope this means that I have grown as a person, but I do think I’d better wash the sweater.

At her recheck yesterday, Adelaide is up about seven pounds, and an overweight whippet is just so wrong. She used to be such a refined, delicate animal, and now she’s a desperate scavenger. The vet told us we could stop the phenobarbital as of yesterday, so here’s hoping that her appetite gets back to normal.

On the Falco front, so far two is the cutest age ever. He is talking a lot (constantly) and is very busy and fun. Right now he’s super snotty with probably his fifth cold so far this winter, but he is enjoying all the holiday decorations all the same. I’ll post Thanksgiving and birthday photos and stories as soon as I can tear myself away from Fable 2. Who can blog about their kid when there’s polygamy and arena battles to be done?

Falco and I just walked in the cold wind to Safeway to buy ingredients for white chili. I picked this soup for dinner because I had a loaf of delicious potato and rosemary bread and wanted something to eat with it. In a moment of weakness, I decided to leave Adelaide out of her crate since we’d only be gone about 20 minutes. I made sure (I thought) to put all food out of her reach…

Upon arrival home, I found said loaf of bread half eaten in her crate. She had to climb pretty damn high to get it off the kitchen counter. I threw her outside in the cold, got rid of the remaining bread, and threw her in her crate. I am so tired of her ravenous appetite and horrible behavior, but I don’t know what to do about it. She has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, where I will hopefully be told we can stop one of her seizure medications, which causes increased appetite. While I hope that will help, she will still be on prednisone and has developed bad habits that probably won’t be easy to get rid of.

I’m going to go try to swallow my rage and let Adelaide out of her crate. Maybe.