Unintended blogging break

Whoa, its been a while since my last post. I think of new things to blog about often, but I just have not had much time lately to sit down and type. I think its the holidays, coupled with the fact that during my downtime I have my mom to sit and chat with over a cup of coffee. Which, by the way, I love.

So this post will be a sort of hodge-podge of goings on here in our household.

Mom has been here a couple of weeks now and all is well. We chat all day long and watch girly tv during Lana's naps. My mom has been keeping my house all neat and clean even though I tell her to stop and sit down, but I am not complaining at all. She has even taught Lana how to pick up her toys which is something I have never been able to accomplish. We have also been Christmas shopping and errand running, well we were doing all of that until the storm hit.

We got a monster snow storm--about 4 inches of snow, which promptly turned into ice. 4 inches is not a lot of course, but it is if there are no snow plows or salt trucks! Holy hell, this town is incapacitated--schools have been closed all week and driving is like ice skating. I read in the paper that it hasn't been this cold in 10-20 years! My poor mom feels like she brought the cold weather from Buffalo. Lana is enjoying playing in the snow, making snow angels and just digging in it with her shovel from her sandbox. We spent a totally festive and fun day at my friend Jamie's house. She made cutout cookies and let the kids decorate them. Lana decorated 2 cookies and then started eating them. After we went sledding in their front yard. We all had so much fun, especially my mom.

Since then, we have pretty much been stuck in the house. Lana doesn't dig being at home for extended periods of time--she gets bored easily, so she has been whiny, which drives me bonkers! We made it to the Children's Museum today which helped burn off some steam.

All in all, we are doing well, despite feeling a little cooped up. It is so nice to have mom here. I hope her job search picks up after the holidays although as we are all too well aware of, this is clearly not the ideal time for job hunting. One funny thing that has been happening to my mom is that everywhere we go, random people have been commenting on how beautiful my mom is! Its happened more than once now and my mom is like, "Wow, people here are SO friendly!"

Update on the sleep issues we have been having: We finally just did CIO with Lana and it was so worth it! I was really resistant b/c when we tried before it was a disaster--she got out of bed and was rattling the gates and screaming like a banshee. This time, she stayed in her bed and screamed like a banshee. The difference was this time she only did that for ONE night. Okay, that one night was 30 minutes of pure hell for me, but it was only ONE night! The next night was 5 min and then it was 2 yells and that's it. To quote the Little Einsteins, "I cannot believe it!" My kid never does anything by the books. When we did CIO when she was an infant, it took like a month at least. Anyway, I write this not to brag b/c believe me, I have nothing to brag about--I have been doing all sorts of wacky things to get this kid to sleep for the past 9 months or so, but just in case anyone who reads this is wondering whether CIO would work on a toddler and they are just so frustrated with all the song and dance associated with getting their kid to "stop talking, put your head on the pillow and close your eyes before I lose my mind and start yelling". But it feels good to have made some progress on that front.

So that's it, my hodge-podge of a post.