The Challenging Days Continue

Today I had yet another unexpected day home with the kids (and the husband too) and an unexpected evening home alone with the kids - my parents weren't able to babysit due to the storm, so my husband got a friend to go to a concert with.

I had been down to 190.0 after the stomach bug, but I was back up to 191.2 this morning - yesterday was spent eating a lot of pasta and crackers. Today I started out well, but the stress of having too many feet under me, I broke into the Chex Mix and chocolate chip cookies. And dinner was pasta (too much) and nothing else - no veggies, no fruit, instead of the planned Lean Cuisine.

I feel like a Scrooge, but I took down all the Christmas decorations. I was going to wait until Wednesday night when we take down the tree, but since I was home, I figured I would take advantage of it. We took all the decorations, except the lights, off the tree as well. Now I can at least start to put my top floor back together and that will get me one step closer to being organized for January 1. I love Christmas, I really do. But once it is over, I am so ready for it to be over and to have my house be back to normal. Growing up we waited until January 1 to take everything down. No way. But in the future I do want to wait more until December 29th.

Thursday I will finish putting the house back together, go through all the cabinets and do a big purge of all the leftover sweets, make sure the work out equipment is in order, make sure all the kids stuff is in order, and try to have everything in it's place for January 1. Hopefully we won't be thrown off track on January 3rd like we were last year when my then-9 month old son ended up in the ER with a 105.0 fever and I took 3 of my 5 sick days within the first 10 days of the year.

I hate feeling this Type-A behavior, wanting the Christmas toys and decorations away as quickly as possible. But I do feel that January 1 is a clean slate and I am always eager for that to start as quickly as possible. Though next year my feelings may change. My daughter will be in school so it will be our first adventure into "school vacation" so I don't want to spend my vacation organizing and fretting - I expect that my husband and I will split the vacation, though I am hoping my parents will take her one day so I can still have my purge day.

Here's to hoping that the next 3 days can be better than the last 5.