Madness

It seems hard to believe that its been almost a week since I last blogged. It seems a lifetime has passed by since then.
Valentine's Day was a nice day. We have a wonderful little Italian market in a town nearby that has pasta made fresh and sent in from the Bronx. Every year around V-day, they have red heart raviolis. I picked some of those up and made a heart shaped chocolate cake with a white chocolate-sour cream frosting. It was heavenly.
Friday night was the first of our big sleepovers. My friend's birthday was last week (and, of course, V-day) so we hosted Maddie and Beth here at our house. We picked up pizza and watched Animalympics. Does anyone else remember that movie? It was the go-to movie (along with The Neverending Story) at school. Kyle and I found it in our free movie section on our cable package a week ago and went on a little trip down memory lane. The girls loved it. Fun fun.
Saturday was another make-up dance day from all our missed classes while everyone was sick. Luckily it was the last round of classes that we had to make up. I am banging my head on wood right now as I type this hoping we don't have to miss anymore! I HATE going in on a Saturday to make up those classes. The girls both don't want to take dance next year. Its completely bittersweet to me. I am not particularly fond of our dance teacher so it will be a relief there, but it goes against that picture I had in my head. I always imagined the girls dancing forever. Oh well. Soon it will be soccer time (sign-ups are going on right now!), swim lessons and both girls want to take tennis this summer.
Over the weekend EVERY. SINGLE. lymph node in my head and neck swelled up for no apparent reason. Back during the Deep Dark Hole We Crawled In (as I like to call the two straight weeks of flu) I had a little flare up of the lymph nodes while I was fighting off the virus. I still have no idea why they are swollen, but on Monday, my doctor's office was completely booked, so I had to take all the girls with me (it is Winter Break week!) to the walk-in clinic. Besides the one other person in the waiting room, we were the only ones who walked in that day. So, why oh why, did it take them two hours to tell me that yes, my lymph nodes are swollen? And they don't know why. Take this prescription for an antibiotic. And you can triple the ibuprofen amount for the pain. Thank goodness for the pain relief, though, because it has been extremely painful and I haven't been "fun mom" for a few days.
Monday night we were going to have a split sleepover. Maddie was going to come here and Jenna was going to go there. Lisa and I had also invited the girls of a friend of ours whose two year old son has a rare form of luekemia to come to the sleepovers, too. The oldest would come here and the middle would go to her house. Both of these girls were pre-school friends of my girls and go to school with Maddie. Anyway, because I was in so much pain and didn't think I would be up for 3 squealing girls and Riley, I postponed our sleepover.
Yesterday, I was determined to act like a normal mom and do something fun with the girls during our vacation week. We went to the Eric Carle museum with Lisa, Maddie and Beth. It is such a beautiful place with lots of artwork (like the initial original illustrations of famous children's book authors and illustrators - there is even a Dr. Suess's Cat in the Hat!) and a room for the kids to do arts and crafts. As we were getting in the van, I realized I didn't have my keys. Kyle took them with him to work! Arrrgh. So, we had to wait on him to bring them back. Meanwhile, Lisa brought her girls over to wait with us and I broke a glass. Then once we got there (the museum is in Mass and is a little over an hour away) we met Sarah for lunch. The place we were meeting her at closed down! We ate at Friendly's (the North's version of Shoney's) instead. Then headed to the museum. All in all it was a very fun day even though I felt we were living in a sitcom. The girls were all fabulous. Then we rushed home for the sleepover, picked up the other girls and made it home.
Today is dance day. Seriously. Its vacation week and she doesn't cancel class. I wouldn't dare miss, though, because I don't want to go on Saturday. Arrrgh. Arrrgh. Arrrgh.
And you know what? We're having another sleepover on Friday...but its not at my house. Thank the Lord.