Sorry I've been out of touch for so long. I started back to work in the middle of December and things have been sort of crazy since then. Everyone's fine but we're all tired and a little cranky and the holidays damn near killed us all. It was hard enough to adjust to our new routine of me going to work and Steven caring for all three kids solo during the day, but then a 4 day trip to my parents' house for Christmas really threw things off kilter. There were endless visitors and parties and missed naps and I felt like I had to be up Logan's butt 24/7 to make sure he didn't break anything or set anyone's house on fire. Or steal anyone's keys. Or eat the plastic decorative fruit. Or chug-a-lug someone's abandoned cocktail. Or climb someone's Christmas tree. Or jump on someone's glass table. Or hug-tackle any of the other children. Or manhandle all the bowls of nuts/candy/eggnog.

Christmas was stressful this year.

And then, with Christmas almost over and visions of piling everyone and everything into the minivan and taking off for New Hampshire dancing in our heads, Logan had to fall on the stairs and bust open his lip. A split lip makes a lot of blood. And an overtired and oversugared little boy who has just split his lip makes a lot of noise. But the bleeding stopped fairly quickly and something shiny or furry or bouncy caught Logan's attention and he was fine again. Of course, I nervously retraced his steps and wiped up the bloody fingerprints he left on my aunt's walls and floors. And then I think I had a glass of wine to calm myself and in that amount of time Logan managed to completely drench himself by sitting in the bathroom sink and turning on the water full force. Yes. He is such a buzzkill.

So, we changed him into dry clothes and threw all our loot and all our kids into the minivan and headed out on our long trek home. I insisted we use my phone's GPS to get us home - and I will never use that goddamn thing ever again. It took us through the heart of Boston and we did not get home until midnight. We left at eight. It should take about an hour and half . . . you do the math. Yeah. Steven was LOVING me and my crappy GPS while we were sitting at a standstill in Boston for two hours on Christmas night. Good times, good times. Logan cried and screamed. Emma cried and screamed. Molly cried and screamed. Steven peed in an old Dasani bottle. I quietly wept in the front seat.

Isn't Christmas magical?

Even My Eyelashes Are Tired

Logan had a good time at his birthday party.

I don't know why it says the date is January 18th. This photo was taken today with my dad's camera.

Go, Go, Go

Tonight, I am exhausted. We had a full day of food shopping (our first time taking all of our one million children with us) and errands and cleaning and cooking and present wrapping. Tomorrow, we are having Logan's 2nd and my mom's 40th (you can thank me later, mom) birthday party. My parents were coming up anyway to watch the kids while I go to my six week checkup so we figured we might as well do the birthdays too.

Did you know that Veteran's Day was being celebrated today? Because I didn't and we went to the Town Hall to register our new minivan and relinquish my entire paycheck to the state of New Hampshire and the town of Merrimack and no one was there. That was fun.

Yes, we have a new minivan! It's sort of a bittersweet new addition to our recently grown family. We're very excited to have it because we could not all leave the house at the same time before. We had a Honda Civic - there was no way in hell. But, we're also kind of bummed since we had bought the Civic brand new two years ago and we had strong faith that it would last us forever and not leave us stranded on the highway or having to replace random doodads every couple of months. Our minivan is used. And while it's a year newer than our Civic, it's not a Honda and who knows what might go wrong.

Anyway - whatever. At least I can leave the house now. I spent the past six weeks trapped in the house and I don't think I've ever gone that long without going somewhere, even if it was just to work. Oh, and the minivan has power door locks and power windows, which is a step up from our Civic. I bet you didn't even know they made cars with manual door locks and crank up windows anymore, did you? Well, if you want to save fifty cents a month on your car payment that's the model you go with.

Well, I have presents to wrap and my grammy's famous baked macaroni and cheese to make for tomorrow and a bathroom to clean and a dozen balloons to blow up before I can call it a night, so I better get off the computer and get to it. Thank god I took the lazy mommy way out and bought a Carvel ice cream cake instead of making my own.

Pie. It's What's For Dinner.

Steven and I just had pumpkin pie for dinner. It was a mutual decision based upon the fact that we are so very tired. Not just tired . . . zombie tired. And we have officially depleted the stockpile of food we acquired before the twins were born. So it was either pie or we'd have to crack open the dusty can of kidney beans that's been sitting in the back of the cupboard since early 2005.

Department of Social Services, if you're reading this, no we did not feed pie to Logan for dinner. He dined upon last night's (the night before we ran out of food) leftovers. And what might that gourmet delicacy have been? A lovely concoction consisting of ground beef, various condiments and spices, and frozen vegetables. If you ran out of dog food and you couldn't get to the store, this is what you'd make for your dog to eat. Okay, maybe not quite. I mean, it was lean ground beef after all and that's the expensive stuff!

So, we fed Logan his dog chow, put him to bed, and had yummy pumpkin pie for dinner. Oh, the joy of being an adult. But Steven put pumpkin ice cream on top of his pie. This bothers me more than it should - let's blame it on sleep deprivation and vicodin. Putting pumpkin ice cream on your pumpkin pie is just wrong. It's too much pumpkin. Too much orange. It's like that one woman at work who has to match head to toe from her lime green earrings to her lime green ballerina flats. It's like this:

Introducing . . .

I hadn't pooped in eleven days. ELEVEN DAYS. So, maybe I didn't have to push Emma and Molly out, but I sure as hell gave birth to that damn poop. Without an epidural.

No Sleep

I'm not exactly sure why hospitals refuse to let you sleep after you've had a baby (or two). I think they must get a kick out of giving you pain meds that make you sleepy and then coming in every 2 hours to jump up and down on your c-section incision. Or, as was my case, the opposite order. Yes.