Fine. I'll frickin' post something already.

Yeah, I've been a blog-ignorer lately. But trust me -- everybody's doing it! But my last post is just sitting out there like a giant matzoh ball, so ... time to move on.

What've I been up to? The past eight weeks or so are nothing but a blur. I did finally toss a pair of pants from my GIH's valet stand into the corner. They were bugging me to no end, since they'd been perched up there since BSP's funeral 7 weeks ago! I got fed up.

Church life? Still wearing me out. VBS went well, which is good, considering that I'll be leading it for the next 10 years unless (a) we move away or (b) we manage to attract and keep a few new families to our church (and one of them becomes sucker enough to take this off my hands.)

Bleh - I need to think about something else. Like the big news that I'm happy about these days. My sister is pregnant! Just 9w right now, which puts her due in late March. I am so happy for her. And hoping, just a little bit, that she has a boy. This is likely to be her only child (her hubby has two daughters from his first marriage to the Skank - at least I think that's her name), and since I already have two girls myself, this would give some balance to the family. Schwester's pregnancy has me biting my tongue constantly, not to spew out all the "advice" I'm sitting on. Also has me a wee bit jealous and contemplating adding a 3rd to our family as well. Even though GIH and I agreed, quite a while ago, that having any more kids would likely cause major major damage to our marriage.

Also --- my Busy girl turned two and it is oh so fun! I really mean it, except for the inevitable tantrums. Now that Big has gone to FT school, I have a lot more alone time with Busy. She is such a delightful creature. (I'm telling you this in general terms, rather than providing illustrative examples, because I can't describe anything right now. Only live video feed would let you in on this story. But at least *I'm* getting a kick out of things.)

ONTH, Big started FT school, public pre-K. I am worried because she is not taking to it as well as I thought. I was on the fence for several months about half-day vs full-day, and ended up on this side of the fence because, frankly, full-day worked better for ME. Big is so NOT delightful right now. I'd like to tip my hat to whichever of my friends dubbed this the "fuckface fours." But the school transition has been an abrupt one, and she complains a lot in the few hours that she's home, about wanting to have more fun time with her family. She even said one day that she missed Busy, so you know it's serious.

Today Big became interested in school again b/c I started letting her ride the school bus. Y'all, this is the biggest deal yet. She rides the bus from her school to another elementary, then TRANSFERS to another bus to ride home. At the age of 4-1/2. I've been swearing up and down for six months that I would never let my Big child ride the bus at this age. Yet five days of sitting in the van w/ Busy for 30 minutes, waiting our turn for pick-up, was enough. I decided to take a real leap and put my faith in the city schoolbus system. Which is funny, because another thing that I've always SWORN up and down (why does nobody ever swear left-to-right?) was that my kids would ride the schoolbus b/c I had to, and I thought all those other kids who didn't have to were just spoiled brats. But of course it's just completely different when it's your own precious baby. Gah, I'm just as sappy as all those other moms. Who knew?