Where to begin?

I have lots of things on my mind but no great segues, so...BULLET LIST!

• Today was a brutally difficult day with Gray, mostly because Eli has been sick for weeks now and Gray is tired of him getting all of the attention. Also he has become a bit mouthy lately (yay, three-ness) so we are constantly correcting that in addition to the attention-seeking baby talk. It's very cute when Eli says "muck, pees!" but less so when Gray does. Gray also suddenly has all of these ailments appropriate to someone about 70 years older than him- he "can't walk," that toy is "too heavy for me to carry" and his "foot hurts" all the time. Note: he has the tiniest of scratches on his toe that conveniently renders him unable to walk any time I ask him to do something he doesn't want to.


• On the flip side, Gray's imagination is hilarious to observe. He is making up all kinds of crazy shit lately and today was serving us helpings of "Scronto" which apparently is "salty." I will be asking for a side of scronto the next time I eat out. He also told us that "Drive By Truckers" in Spanish is "frondo!" in case you were wondering.


• Eli is in the midst of an epic illness, the timeline of which starts to totally freak me out if I think too much about it. He has had a cough for five weeks and we finally saw the MD a week ago for it. He is on a 10 day course of antibiotics. Then, last week he got croup so we saw the MD for that. This morning the poor child woke up with roseola (we think) and he looks completely wrecked (Gray said, "Who drew pink dots all over Eli?"). His cheeks are bright red, his nose is running, he has little bright pink spots all over his torso, arms, neck and face, and he has had some brutal diarrhea. I also think he's teething. However, that is not enough for poor Eli because this afternoon he fell and split his lip inside and out and now will have a scar in the exact same spot that Gray does. How ironic and also awful is that?


• I got rid of three huge, heavy bags of clothes yesterday. I am here to report that the last time I fit into these clothes (in 2007) waistlines were significantly higher and shirts were cut much shorter. Was I really walking around in mom dress pants and belly tops? It seems to be so. I am trying really hard to only keep things that I love or am excited about wearing. This is much harder than it sounds. My goal is to have one bin of winter clothes in the basement to store instead of the four bins of too-small summer and winter wear that I had. I am pretty close to obtaining this goal since I got rid of almost two full bins-worth of stuff.


• In true fantastic-parenting form, we decided to do some errands and eat lunch out with our very sick baby and behavior-challenged toddler today. Just as we sat down and ordered our lunch I saw a text from a friend that I had planned on doing a sewing class with. Today. At noon. I saw the text at 11:56 and I was about 45 minutes away from the class. However, I did make it about 30 minutes late and managed to almost finish the project. I can sew a pretty cute purse!


• The nanny quit. After the initial shock (and anger, frankly) I am putting my nose to the grindstone and figuring out what we have to do to replace her. Not looking forward to paying the EXTREMELY expensive nanny-service fee but it's a necessary evil. So, here we go again. Once I reminded myself that we will likely go through this (hell) at least a couple more times I got over it a bit.


• My running is going swimmingly. I am pretty damn proud of myself- I am a runner again! Finally! Running a 10k sounds almost easy! I am looking forward to it, that's for sure.


• I have endured three weeks of "no sugar" which for me really only means no chocolate and no baked goods. It suuuucks. I can't say it's any easier now than it was when I started except that now I have a couple of weeks under my belt. I am impressed with my innovation when it comes to craving sweets- I have a newfound love for peanut butter and honey and I sure do love those rice cakes. So I think I need to take my "no sugar" rule a little further to include everything with sugar in it. Now THAT would suck.


• Related: my birthday is about a month away and wouldn't be nice to see a lower number on the scale to start my 39th year on this planet?