Well, hello.

Sorry for the abrupt disappearance, especially after that last post, which you may or may not have noticed has since been mysteriously deleted since – OOPS! – I am totally a fame newbie, and as it turns out, it should have never been posted in the first place. I promise to post updates later (when I’m able).

Now… on to now.

Things have been busy. But they’ve also been slow. This is my least favorite part of winter, when I feel like I could go absolutely crazy from being stuck indoors. I like to go out at least once a day, even if “going out” is just running to the grocery store for a couple things or to Target to wander the aisles for a few hours. Luckily, my dear daughter feels the same way I do, and more than happily accompanies me on these little escapades. Eric likes to stay home unless he has to go somewhere, so usually on weekends Molly and I venture out together, leaving him to keep the dogs company and keep the laundry cycling while we’re out gallivanting.

This weekend was a little different. First, Molly was sick last week for the first time. I know! Wahhh, wahhh. My sister’s kids have had colds a couple of times since she’s been going there, and until now, Molly never so much as sneezed from being around them. Internally bragging, I patted myself on the back for all that breastfeeding and all that immunity I was surely passing along. But alas! Her wellness streak ended Monday. She was a snotty, red-eyed, achey, feverish, coughing, crying mess for three solid days. Wouldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. And she certainly inherited my flair for the dramatic, because beyond just not feeling well, she was SO overtly miserable about it. She wanted everyone to know just how terrible she felt, and expressed herself through intermittent bouts of whining, moaning, whimpering, screaming, and good ol’ fashioned crying. It was a fun time, let me tell you.

Finally, once we were past it (and yes, her little illness coincided with my “PRETTY BIG DEAL” of a trip last Tuesday, so that wasn’t cool), she passed it on to me and to Eric. So now it’s a sick house all around (super fun Valentine’s Day over here!). Tissues everywhere. Lots of moaning and groaning. Oh, and I didn’t leave the house ONCE this weekend. Like, didn’t even set foot outside the front door. Feeling poorly coupled with temperatures below zero meant that I just wasn’t motivated. And we basically have no food in the house, so by lunchtime today I was scraping the bottom of the proverbial pantry barrel, suggesting things like, “Canned cranberry sauce… and… tuna fish?” Plus, even though I do not work at a bank, we are afforded holidays like a bank, so we’re off for President’s Day. It’s now Monday and still like the weekend for me. But I can’t breathe, and there’s no food, so I don’t really know how much I’m enjoying it.

Things we’ve been doing since Friday night: napping. Sneezing. Sniffling. Eating. Watching TV. Napping again. Which sounds nice, and I guess it is, but as I believe I’ve mentioned, Molly is in a phase right now where she either needs to be held or be right next to me while she’s sleeping, otherwise she will not sleep. Which is all well and good, except when I want to get things done, which is usually. And trust me, I’ve tried pretending to nap with her only to sneak away once she’s good and asleep, and she rarely falls for it. It’s like she has some sort of radar. So I’ve been sleeping every day from 9-11 and 3-5. Not very conducive to housework.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about my baby’s first birthday party. And when I say thinking, I mean stressing. We have a fairly large back yard, and we’ve had parties here before, but having a party here would require a fair amount of clean-up. The remnants of the bathroom remodel were sort of just thrown back there in a pile, and as much as I’d love that motivation (PEOPLE ARE COMING OVER! CAN’T LOOK TOO WHITE TRASH-Y!) to get it taken care of, I’d also worry that we physically couldn’t do it in time. There’s also the matter of rain. If it were to pour, my tiny house could not accommodate half of the guests I plan to invite, much less the whole lot of them. It could be disastrous.

So I was looking into a local park that has pavilions, but there are all these rules and a rather large deposit required if you want to serve alcohol. Which I do want to. But then I think, what kind of person am I if I choose not to have a first birthday party at a place solely based on whether or not I’d be able to serve alcohol?

Sorry for the rambling. Any great ideas for first birthday party venues? I really do want it to be outside (since she was born at such a beautiful time of year), but with a back-up plan for rain. If you’d like to volunteer to help me clean up my back yard, that’s cool, too.

What else? Sorry, my head is foggy. I’m sure this post makes very little sense and is riddled with typos, but once a certain amount of time has passed I feel a sort of obligation to say something. I have plenty to say but no time to actually get the words from my head to the keyboard.

And now she’s fussing. Talk to you soon-ish.