Quick 5

This is one of the busiest weeks we've ever had, and yet I'm not sure I have enough to fill 5 today.

1.  The reason it is busy is because of the Christmas program.  Lee is playing guitar, so he's had his practices, and the drama has had their separate practices.  We'll finally all run through it together on Saturday.  While there are still quite a few unknowns as to how it's actually going to all turn out, I'm ready for it.  And ready for it to be over.

2.  On a Christmas program-related note, this year there are a couple of kid numbers in the program.  A note was sent home after Cubbies one day asking for permission and explaining the rehearsal schedule for the kids.  This was sent home in early November, when I was so busy I'm surprised my family got fed.  The practices really involved the kids coming early to Awana, and then a few others.  Well, the fact that I was in charge of the drama kind of had me at my limit, so I decided that Alaina wouldn't participate.  I still feel pretty good about that decision, except for the fact that we always showed up to Awana at the end of the Christmas rehearsal, so Alaina really knows all the songs.  She sings them all the time.  I'm just a little sad because on Sunday she'll be in the nursery while her friends will be in the Christmas program.  She doesn't really know about it, but I'm a little nervous that she's somehow going to find out.  Like, one of the nursery workers will ask her if she's supposed to sing in the Christmas program, and she'll answer "Yes!" because the girl loves to be on stage, and then we'll have to get some things straightened out.  As long as she doesn't realize what is going on, she'll be fine.  They don't do a kid thing every year for Christmas, but I'm hoping there will be something else in the future she can participate in.

3.  I've been waiting and waiting for Joya's face to clear up before we take her one-year pictures.  In October and most of November she had a rash under and around her eyes.  That lead to the taking her off dairy, which lead to soy milk, which lead to the Diaper Rash to End All Diaper Rashes.  And still didn't really clear up the rash.  She's back on milk, and the rash around her eyes is gone.  I have no idea what made it go away.  Now she has a rash around her mouth, which I am 98% sure is due to her paci-sucking at night.  So I'm saying to heck with it, and we're going to have our good friend Leah take her pictures sometime in the next couple of weeks.  The beauty of having Leah do it is the fact that I can load her pictures on a jump drive, bring them home, and practice my photoshopping skills.  The world will never know that Joya always seems to have an unsightly rash on her face at this age.

4.  I want to give a shout-out to Kohl's.  They were doing some promotional thing that I don't really understand, except it involved red pieces of paper that looked like and acted like Kohl's bucks, only you didn't have to spend $50 to get them.  They just handed them out when you made a purchase a week or so ago.  I had two of them, and thanks to their crazy practice of making their price tags way higher than the actual price, I walked away with a nightshirt and six pairs of socks for $5 out of pocket.  I love that store.

5.  Alaina has become a pro at getting up in the night and using the bathroom.  By herself.  There was one night where she needed my help, but only because she was wearing her zip-up footie pjs.  Those are hard for her to manage on her own.  But if I put her in her regular pants/shirt jammies, she can handle it on her own.  I think it's adorable, mostly because I don't ever hear her do it.  I can just see signs in the morning, like the soap in the bathroom is moved to where she uses it, and her door is shut rather than cracked open.  I was starting to get nervous, wondering if we were going to have to venture into letting her sleep in undies soon, which sounds like a disaster to me.  But we're not there yet.  For the longest time, her pull-up was reliably wet every morning.  Now it's unreliably dry.  So I'm waiting for the reliably dry days before we have to cross that bridge.  I'm in no hurry, especially since she can now change out of a pull-up and into her undies on her own every morning. 

Only two weeks left to soak up Christmas!  :)