Monday Marvels (and a few moans too)

1.  Thanksgiving is upon us!  I bought our turkey today, along with a handful of other staples for the big meal that we'll be making this Thursday.  I am very much looking forward to the holiday, not as much for the food, but for the company that we'll have.  My dad and Aunt Linda will be visiting and it will be their first time meeting Emma, as well as Evan is anxiously awaiting their visit.   Nonetheless, getting things ready for their arrival, while also taking care of other errands and tasks (holiday and non-holiday related), make for a hectic week.

2.  Speaking of non-holiday related tasks, and one of my biggest moans this Monday, is that I will be taking our cats to the local shelter tomorrow.   I am so very torn up about having to do this and as this dreadful day approaches I have become more and more sad about it.  It's just that they have not adapted well to us having kids in the house.  They've scratched Evan numerous times (once on his face by his eye), to the point we "quarantined" them so that they wouldn't interact with him anymore, and then Jasper also is so stressed about our new additions she pees everywhere.  We can't trust either of them to roam freely about the house as they once did, and so they've been living in confined quarters for quite some time.  After Jasper learned how to escape their confinement in the den, right about when we brought Emma home, we had to move them into the laundry room.  They deserve a home where they can snuggle with their owners on the couch or in bed again...and we can't give them that anymore.  I hope the shelter is able to find them a good new home.  I am fortunate to know someone who volunteers there, so she offered to track them for me while they are there and give me updates.  Cross your fingers they are adopted quickly into a loving and purrfect new home (sorry for the silly pun...at least it brought a little smirk to my face as I wrote it).

3.  Let me get all the Monday moans out of the way now...I had to go back to the doctor's today; not for one of the kids, but this time for me.  I have tendonitis on the inside of my right wrist.  It's been killing me for the past month and since over that time it hadn't gone away I finally decided to see a doctor about it.  They gave me a new wrist splint to use and suggested limited doses of Aspercreme applied directly to my skin there.  I mainly need to rest the joint to let the tendons become less inflamed.  I kind of guessed that, as I've had issues with my wrists and tendonitis before, but the location of this episode was in a new area and my old splint didn't isolate it well.  Honestly, the one they gave me today doesn't either, but the way she showed me how to wrap it kind of helps.  Let's hope it can go down soon...as it interferes with my ability to hold Emma, pick up Evan, and even wash/brush my hair (among other things) without being in terrible pain.

4. On to some wonderful marvels...I am constantly amazed by Evan's language development.  He is totally in the parrot phase--he repeats EVERYTHING!  And what I love is to hear him put together his own phrases.  For example, we had just called John (while John was on his way home from work) and I told him to ask Daddy how far of a drive away from home he was.  Evan didn't just repeat what I said, rather he constructed his own way to ask him the same thing.  It was the first time I'd really noticed him take a fairly long and complicated sentence and reconstruct it on his own.  He also repeats full sentences though too, like those out of books that we read.  And he repeats words from video games while he's playing them, such as Candy Crush, which says the words "sweet" and "divine" a lot.  He also just says the cutest things out of the blue.  My current favorite is when he likes something he'll say it's yummy, but he'll get excited and say "yummy yummy....tasty!".  :)  One of the most common things he says these days is "What is that sound?" since he has been getting very scared of every little noise he hears lately.  He doesn't even want his sound conditioner/white noise maker on in his bedroom anymore due to his fear of noises. And rather than just a simple "no", he has started to say "no way" a lot lately.  Lol.

5. We had some friends over for dinner recently who have a girl (Lena) nearly the exact same age as Evan.  Let me first say that having friends over with a kid the same age is great...not only did the kids play together the whole time, but us parents were on the same page too in understanding what the other goes through.  And as for the kids playing together, it was so adorable to watch.  Either they both really understood each other given they are the same age, or maybe they've also finally hit that age where they don't just do "parallel play" anymore and are more social with their play, but it was so precious to see them interact and they both had so much fun.  They played peek-a-boo across the dining table during dinner, they chased each other back and forth around the house, and they played with nearly all of Evan's toys.  It gave the adults time to chat and not have to worry about tending to the kids non-stop.  I recall one cute moment when I looked over at the kids and Evan was on his tummy on the chaise lounge kicking his heels back and forth watching Lena "talk" on his toy phone; she even started to groove a bit to one of the songs it played.  Priceless!

6.  It is so marvelous that Emma has been sleeping even longer at night lately!  There have been a few recent nights now that she slept straight until 5am, and just last night/this morning she slept until 5:30am!  The downside to these last few recent nights is that she has not gone down to bed as easily as in the past (and she hasn't been napping very well during the days recently), but she still gets down to bed around 8-9pm, and I couldn't be more thankful for the extra sleep.