Week In Review

The tummy bug seems to have left the building (thank God!) and Emma and I have been spared so far. The girls were bouncing off the walls on Tuesday, which is worse than when they are sick. Because I am still tired from taking care of everyone and am moving slowly, and they are running full steam ahead. It's completely exhausting! Elliott decided to stay home from work again on Tuesday too because he didn't want to infect everyone at work. Wednesday he was back to the grind, which threw the girls for a loop; he had been home so much between holidays / vacation / sickness that they had gotten more used to having him around than not.

I tried to find some new activity for the girls to do on Tuesday morning while I woke up a bit more, so I had them sort some holiday Hershey's Kisses I got on clearance by color.  I plan on using them in our Valentine's gifts for the girls' teachers and Elliott's co-workers.  (We'll probably use the green ones for another project, but the red and silver will work nicely.)

Wednesday I spent alot of time in the kitchen, trying to can some soups and marinara sauce for our food storage. In between sessions of running the pressure canner, I tried to take the girls on a walk. It was a gorgeous day in the 50's. We wandered down to the little playground around the corner and played for awhile until the dirt became more of a draw than the slides. So I thought we would move on, but Ava's feet "hurt" so we went home and played in the front yard for awhile.

I also (finally) folded the diaper laundry. Lily and Piper have become really good little helpers, enjoying folding the inserts for me. And I have to say, they are better at it than you might think.

We also did alot of this:

Well, we tried to anyway.

The girls were back in preschool on Thursday, but between sessions I ran errands with the remaining three girls. It was a rough day, I will confess. Girls behaved themselves fairly well at stores, but Lily and Piper had complete meltdowns over my lunch choice (and the fact that it wasn't their requested macaroni & cheese) and I knew I should have put them down for naps. But once they pulled themselves together and scarfed down (you would never know they didn't want to eat it) their lunch, they perked right up and insisted they didn't want a nap. I knew I should not have listened to them. But I did and the afternoon was super rough, with lots of tears, time-outs, and raised voice on my part. I was very, very ready for them to go to bed last night, but since Piper had been up so much the previous night, I knew I couldn't put her to bed too early. I tried to drag it out from 5pm with extended pajama-dressing, two kid shows on TV, several stories read on the couch, and prolonged song and visiting time. By the time I had the older three in bed it was almost 7pm, which is a good bedtime for us around here (since the big girls like to be up by 7am). Whew!

I tried to find some peaceful and happy moments in the day, which was harder to do, but this helped:

Today, since Emma was up from 3-4:15am and I am still trying to recover from earlier in the week (and probably the fact that overdid it in the kitchen on Wednesday) I have designated that today will be a play day with no real work to be done.  That being said, I have already reorganized the hall closet, organized my recipes, and gone through my coupons and thrown out expired ones (which Ava is currently using for cutting practice).  And I still want update our 72-hour kits.  But I also fully intend for the girls to take naps and let them watch loads of TV (while I do the same upstairs).  Ahh...  gotta love Fridays!