Some griping... and other stuff

So, we've been really busy with day-to-day activities the last week or so - I've been really feeing like my calendar is so booked up right now between doctor and dentist visits, activities for the kids, visit teaching, Young Women stuff, baby showers, girls nights, babysitting, and on and on. Mostly just regular old events and appointments that keep life busy and fun, but still, it seems I've had an extra amount of it all. Thankfully, it's been good timing for all the business on my calendar, since Ben has been away all the time! I've been feeling like a single mommy while Ben's been keeping up crazy hours at the hospital for his surgery rotation this month. He's up in the morning at 3:00 am and sometimes doesn't get home until 7:30 or 8:00 at night. It's just crazy - and this weekend the poor boy was on call at the hospital and was there from 5am Saturday until 10am on Sunday. Good grief! They run these students ragged sometimes. Well, despite it all, we are all surviving and I've been impressed with Ben's stamina to keep up - he's coming home relatively cheerful and doesn't seem to be collapsing of exhaustion just yet. We'll see how much longer he can keep it up - he still has 2 weeks left of surgery! I'm thankful that Ben doesn't want to be a surgeon for his career because I don't think I'd be able to survive the residency years! I've learned through all this that I wouldn't fair well as a single mom - I desperately need a hubby that works reasonable enough hours so that I could at least remember him leaving in the morning and have time to give him a hug and a kiss in the evening before having to go to bed and start it all over again. I bite my thumb at you surgery rotation!

Alright, moving on.... Emma had her 3 year well check this morning (almost a month overdue) and she was just relieved that she didn't need to get any shots this time around. She was sooo pouty at the thought of having to get a shot at the doctor's office. Her stats were nothing exciting or dramatic - 50th for height and 25th for weight - nothing surprising there for my petite little Emma. It was a quick visit with nothing much to discuss, considering I don't really have any medical concerns for her. I'm happy to have a healthy, normal 3 year old! What a blessing! In other news, I noticed this morning the signs of a tooth in baby Becca!!! Can you believe it?!! There's finally one coming in! 11 months old and her first tooth is on its way! Good work Rebecca - way to really take your sweet time! She'll be so happy to finally have some teeth to help her eat, because she sure does love to eat. I've been impressed with her skills at gumming just about anything. Another new Becca thing is that she's signing! She doesn't do it much, but she can sign milk! And it's really cute. Here's a weird video of me pressuring Becca to sign for the camera.



The weather has been just perfect lately - ranging from 75 to 85 for the high over the past couple of weeks - it's just lovely! Needless to say we've been spending a lot of time at the park. I love the park! I love being able to sit outside while watching my kids play. I'm proud to say that Becca is doing quite well playing at the park without eating much of the sand. A couple months ago I couldn't put her down at the park without her going straight for a handful of dirt in the mouth, but now it's much more uncommon, which is nice. :)

Sorry this post is all over the place! This week we made shamrock cookies as a pre-St Patrick's Day activity. I used Taya's sugar cookie recipe and it's awesome! My previous recipe always resulted in rather thin and crispy sugar cookies, but these turn out thick and soft and yummy!! Thanks Taya! Anyway, they turned out nice and I was particularly grateful to be able to give a number of them away to friends, because I just kept eating them! Eeek! So many calories!! I've been becoming a little more calorie conscious this past week - I actually tried counting my calories for a few days just to get a better idea of what I usually consume in a day. It was frightening! I tried to get away with only eating 1500 calories/day for a couple days and that was way too hard for me!! I also decided I need to focus less on calorie counting and more on just eating a little healthier and mostly exercising more! I've been running a lot this past week and it feels great! I'm going to do my first 5K at the end of month and I'm so excited! I've never done anything like that before. I'm surrounded by all these athletic, fit friends, and I want to do better at joining in the fun! I don't know how some of you do these triathlons and marathons - you crazies!! Well, really, I'm just jealous and would love to work up to doing something like that - but first I've got to lay off the shamrock cookies and the double stuff oreos!! wink, wink Heather. There was a lot of exclamation points in that paragraph!

So, because Ben was on call this weekend, I missed the Spring Fling - what a bummer! But, it turned into a pleasant evening anyhow - I offered to watch Addy for the Hunters while they went to the dance (since I was just going to be home sulking anyway!) and we had a lot of fun actually - we played Easter Bingo and I was surprised at how much they both loved it! It was funny - we used Easter M&M's as markers and every time someone won they both got to eat the M&M's off their board. Obviously, they just wanted to play that over and over again. :) In addition to that, they colored and we read a bunch of books and then when it started to get late we put in Little Mermaid, which put Emma to sleep after a bit. I also enjoyed indulging in my Oreos which Heather gave me as a little present since I was having to stay home from the dance. Did you know that there are 140 calories in one serving of Oreos - and one serving is only 2 cookies! Oh my!!! But despite that, I love Oreos and thanks so much Heather!!