Dinner Party

Here is the birthday boy! He was crushed when we told him pineapple upside-down cake doesn't get decorated the way other birthday cakes do. Grandpa, not wanting to ingest any food dye, convinced Daniel that he could decorate his own piece of cake, rather than the whole cake. BTW: Somewhere along the line, Daniel lost any natural smile for pictures. Most of his photos are goofy. He'll get a kick out of them later, I'm sure.



This is a bag angle for my sweet little one's nose. She actually has a tiny little face and features, but she's gaining weight rapidly. We're already using 0-3 months clothes, although she still fits into a few newborn outfits.

Daddy made the spaghetti sauce, but other than that he helped me by keeping Anna content. We are both so tired that whenever we sit in the rocker with Anna, we drift off to sleep, only to have one of the boys shake us awake every five minutes. What a frustrating feeling that is, let me tell you. LOL



Blogs are quite the thing for relaxing. We had my dad and his wife over for Daniel's seventh birthday - a spaghetti dinner and pineapple upside-down cake, at the birthday boy's request. The dinner party was preceded by mad-woman cleaning, since our house, as I mentioned, was a disaster. Even my husband, who is basically a slob, commented on it. "This house is seriously trashed". In the past I would have been offended, but now that I'm a mature 42 years old, I just smiled in agreement. Tempers are one thing that get better with age, so even though you'll abhor looking in the mirror at your wrinkles, at least you'll be able to reflect on how much nicer you are.

BTW: My hands are starting to get those ugly sun spots, or are they called age spots? Anyway, all you twenty and thirty-somethings definitely want to wear sunscreen while driving. I wish I had; driving without it ages your hands in ugly ways.

Don helped me enormously today, by holding our fussy Anna Grace so I could scurry around after church, dusting, vacuuming, windexing, and collecting clutter in a laundry basket. I know, brilliant move. Now instead of taking said basket off the master bed and processing the clutter so we can crash, I am sitting here reading blogs and writing a post, even though we are averaging only four hours of sleep a night, and walking around like cranky zombies. Anna now wakes every three hours for feedings, and we stay up late doing the minimum chores. I'm sure there's a better way - I'm just too tired and wired to think of it and make it happen.

These are the best days of my life though. I have no complaints, other than that I wish I had a Christian sister nearby, with whom to share burdens. My father has been very helpful, bringing us soup once a week, and now, tomorrow, he will help me through Anna and Emily's routine doctor check-ups. I had visions of Emily touching everything in sight, bringing home more viruses. Grandpa will help keep her in line and be there to comfort her through the immunizations. That's a comfort to me, since Anna will undoubtedly poop at least twice while we're there. Who wants to deal with mustardy poop and a curious toddler simultaneously?