Day Counting is Stupid

Half the reason I rarely blog is because I don't feel like looking at the number at the top, so I'm quitting keeping a counter as my blog post titles.  We are cruising along.  Olivia has been pretty miserable over the past year, and is currently way underweight for her height, so we've spent the last few weeks doing allergy testing.  So far we've found out she's gluten intolerant and allergic to peanuts.  Since she hates peanuts and peanutbutter, we never figured that one out. She's been very brave with all the poking and blood drawing and poop collecting.  Nothing bothered her.

40 pokes at this session, not a tear was shed.

When we went over the first round of results, Olivia didn't even bat an eye at the news of a gluten sensitivity and she didn't care about the peanut thing.  But when the doctor sat down and said, "do you have a dog?", her eyes filled with tears.  Yes, it turns out that my daughter, who prefers dog companionship to any human, is cruelly allergic to dogs.   She was inconsolable in the doctor's office.  Even the doc had tears in her eyes. She cried the whole way home.  "What about all my neighborhood dog friends?"  It was pretty awful.

We are definitely keeping Seamus.  He's a non-shedder, which helps, and I bought some special shampoo for the groomer to use on him.  She is no longer allowed to sleep with him or give him his bath.  We will find out the rest of the results at the end of the week.

Talking to her Dad.

Meanwhile, I have been having an acupuncturist come to the house twice a week for my carpal tunnel (another reason I avoid blogging is from hand pain, and I prefer playing Candy Crush to blogging most of the time).  I am so going to miss Brazil and all the services you can get in your house for very little money.

We have a guy who will come and give Seamus a bath and haircut for $15.  Sure, his haircuts are ugly (see above), but who does he have to impress?  None of the bitches in our neighborhood even give him the time of day, what with him having no balls and all.

Day One Hundred and Forty-Five

Well, Christmas came and went.  I wanted to do all of the traditional things we do at Christmas, like making cookies for Santa, dressing up and having standing rib roast on Christmas Eve, etc., but my heart wasn't in it, and neither were the kids'.  They jumped at my suggestion that we spend the entire two days in pajamas watching Christmas movies and making pizza.  It was way less depressing that way, anyway.  The other snag was that most of their Christmas gifts didn't arrive, even though they had been ordered at the beginning of November.

Five Sad Stockings

What did come was there new pjs and robes.   And the girls were strangely excited to get patterned duct tape.  A quick run to the grocery store yielded subpar chocolates.  It really was the saddest pile of gifts, but my kids were amazing and excited to have robes and stupid duct tape.  They all made coupons for each other and had fun opening those and reading them to each other.  One from Olivia was, "I will do three favors for you.  Not including chores.  Expires February 1."

Robes and pjs!  Woohoo.

The worst part of Christmas day was reading my newsfeed that Mitch's embassy in Kabul had been attacked by the Taliban, and then not being able to reach him for hours.  Only Jack knew what was going on, because he could see that I was upset.  All was well, no one was hurt, but I'm going to rate Christmas 2013 a twoout of five stars, and only because the kids were such good sports about everything, including the Christmas dinner of BLTs I made, which they exclaimed were the best BLTs they had ever eaten. God, I love my kids.

Alas, a few days after Christmas, the mail finally arrived and the girls got their little iPad minis so they can Facetime in style with their Daddy.

They boys both got new guitars, but the best gift of all was the arrival of old friends from Seattle.  We had a wonderful time hanging with Sharon and her two amazing teenagers.  

After a relaxing visit, Sharon, her kids, and Jack headed to Rio for a week of fun in the sun.

And now you are all caught up and we are firmly into 2014, which promises to be a crazy year for us.  Jack has been accepted (early action) to Tulane University so far, and he is awaiting to hear from the other colleges he applied to. ONLY ONE MORE WEEK of vacation, and then the kids will be back in school, yo!  I know I suck at updates, but you can always catch me on Fridays over at my work blog, because I get paid to do that, so that one wins over this one, I'm afraid.   Cheers!