I am sitting in my closet right now

No, I am not crying or eating chocolate.

I know, you're baffled.

I'm here because guess what - there's carpet in here! Who knew, right?

I'm here because it is now the one clean room in the house and I can sit quietly and type at 12:30 in the morning to my little heart's content!

Our next big organizing/building project will take place in here. For now, I am so happy to be able to walk up to the shelves instead of scaling a mountain to get there, and also I found my favorite new red tee.

Meanwhile, this little one has not had the happiest week.

[except she is trying to look happy here!]

The week before Christmas, she was diagnosed with pneumonia and put on an antibiotic. 

(Two weeks earlier, she tested positive for strep and was put on the same antibiotic.)

She didn't respond well the second time, in my opinion, but by Christmas she seemed much better. She had missed a full week of school before Christmas. She stayed well through the break, and then the night before they went back to school, she spiked a fever again. She has been home again for the past week! Finally I took her to the pediatrician. She saw a nurse practitioner who diagnosed her with asthma. We'll see about that... The mystery is the 103-degree fever that comes every afternoon between 2 and 3 pm. I don't think that's even in the medical textbooks???

Anyway, she did a nebulizer albuterol treatment there in the office for starters.

Every time she coughed, it echoed through the tube, so she began pretending she was shooting a gun, to make Kate and I laugh.

(Oh yes, Kate. She was home with me today because we're fairly certain she has strep now!)

Anyway I love this cheerful little trooper who can take a positive spin on even the most miserable times. She drew a darling picture for Travis and me today, of us as owls, with a note that said she worked really hard on it because she wanted to do service, like Kate's family home evening lesson. It was the sweetest.

Today while I was taking Nolan to the bathroom, I thought to myself that soon he was going to have to learn to go by himself, so he can be more independent at home and so others won't have to help him when he's not at home, and I told him so. Later tonight, he got out of bed and told me he needed to go to the bathroom. He ran in the bathroom and pushed the stool up to the light switch as I followed him. Then he pushed the stool to the toilet while telling me, "I don't need you, Mommy. I'm a big boy! I can do it myself." And then he did. My pride at his independence and listening to what I said earlier was completely smitten down by that pang that I imagine every mother has to suffer through, when the baby says "I don't need you, Mommy." It hurt for just a minute.

Then he tried to put on his pants before his underwear and he needed me again.

For now, anyway.

Oh I love that little blond munchkin so much.