Hello blog!

Hello blog, it's been awhile! Like everyone else, the holidays swept by us and I have no idea where the time went. I hadn't meant to take two weeks off from this blog, but there you go. I think on some subconscious level I felt some pressure to put together a fantastic end-of-the-year post with a photo montage and a video set to music, full of my musings on a fantastic year and waxing poetic about the New Year. That was not going to happen, so I just stayed away.

But I'm back. And rather than try to put together a tardy grandiose post, I'm just going to skip forward to the present. I will give you a quick run down on life between the speed bumps over the past two weeks:

1. Christmas was wonderful, shared with both sides of the family. Charlie really started to get the Santa thing this year and we had lots of fun with our Elf on a shelf - Meghan (after his favorite teacher/babysitter). Something to work on for next year - incorporating the religious aspects of Christmas. All completely unknown to Charlie at this point.

2. New Year's Eve was fantastic for both adults and kids. Ryan and I celebrated at L'Atelier (Mark's house) and the gathering seems to get better every year. I will try to put together a post on the amazing food we had for our dinner party - watch out Top Chef! The kids spent New Year's with their grandparents and cousins, having a party of their own complete with noise makers and streamers and hats. A win, win.


3. Charlie is almost 3. How can that be possible?? Plans are under way for a Lightning McQueen birthday party. It will be here before I know it.

4. Izzy is seeming less like a baby and more like a toddler. She got a walker for Christmas and is making fast work walking around the house. She pulls up on everything. And her first tooth is (finally) poking through! 



5. We went through some sleep training over the past couple weeks. We had a hard time getting to that point with Izzy (we did it much earlier with Charlie) as she was always such a good baby and it just seemed easier to let her sleep with us. But the bigger she got, the more she moved around, the less sleep all of us were getting. So it had to be done. It only took 2 nights and minimal crying and now she sleeps through the night in her crib like a champ (she is the perfect baby, after all!). 10 hours, uninterrupted. OMG, why didn't we do this sooner?

6. I didn't make New Year's resolutions this year, but I did vow to do something drastic to improve my health and eating (see the food extravaganza mentioned in #2). I wanted to get rid of the baby weight for good and kick my sugar habit. So we started a detox cleanse which I've been bloging about here, and is linked on the blog under the tab "Clean" above. Another reason I haven't posted much here - that has been pretty much all consuming.

I will continue posting photos on the tumblr blog, also linked on this blog above under the heading "My Tumblr Blog." It is fast and is the best way to post videos from my phone (check out Izzy walking here!). So look for more frequent posts there. But I hope to be back here soon...now that the end of the year/new year pressure is off!!

Anyone tried posting comments lately? I know that was a problem for awhile. Send me an email if it isn't working...thanks friends!!