Ugh. Back to the daily grind...

You know those nights when you have all good intentions of getting to bed early - I mean you even refrain from any wine - so you can start the new year at work refreshed and energized... your light is out at 9:30 (9:30!)... then you look at your clock and it's 10:45 and you realize that you haven't yet fallen asleep and your husband's tossing and turning and itching and flipping the TV on and off.... then it's 11:30 and you still haven't fallen asleep and your kid is coughing... then 1:00a.m....then 2:30 and you're fighting to hang on to your share of the sheets...then 5:00 and the alarm's going off for dear husband and the kid's periodically crying/whimpering in her sleep... Yeah, I had one of those last night.

Then you race-walk through biting wind gusts to get to metro to wait 10 minutes on the elevated platform for an overcrowded blue line...Needless to say, I'm just thrilled to be back at work this morning!

The holiday break was nice and actually seemed to run fairly long - probably in part because the kid only napped 2 out of 11 days, so we were on the go with her all the time. I got to enjoy two movies, as previously reported. Had the chance to visit with Massi and Carlo. Got NOTHING done in the house, aside from packing up two 70 Qt. bins of clothes Leila's outgrown. Emily and I - native Washingtonians who should know better - took Leila and Henry to the Natural History Museum last Thursday. And I say, we should know better because of the tourist horror - like the rudeness of a family who's only physical impediment may have been that they were a bit overweight, trying to force their way onto the elevator in front of our two strollers (I called them on it and they didn't even apologize), or parents letting their children old enough to know better just sit in the middle of heavily trafficked floors... But it was worth it because the banter between the two of them in the back seat on the way home had us in tears of laughter for a good 15 minutes. I seriously had to wipe my eyes to make it onto the 14th street bridge. Leila's retorts were a bit less sophisticated then Henry's, like "I'm going to tell your dad you said potty", but she was holding her own fairly well. Henry's best line was "I'm going to tell the Dr. to give you a shot and NOT give you a band aid."

And that's about it as far as the highlights go. Oh, and mom had a fairly decent gift haul too w/ her new pink Sony Cybershot camera, a couple new Coach bags from Aunt Nancy and her scrap sale, some $$ from the grandparents to be reserved until she's back down a size, and a sweet new flat screen High Def. TV for the family from Floyd and Carol. We haven't dealt with Comcast on the high def. front yet, because we're hoping we'll be moving within the next several months, but still, Shrek never looked so good even without that capacity enabled.