I suppose it’s the price we pay for having school-aged children, but we’ve had a wicked winter of illness around here. Colds, respiratory infections, fevers, flu…we haven’t had a 100 percent healthy household since mid-November. Brayden was invited to two birthday parties last weekend but had to leave the first one early because he was acting up and couldn’t go to the second one at all because he was throwing up. He also cannot seem to kick the cough he’s had for the better part of two months. Sigh…

Justin turns six in a few weeks, which means he’s about to lose three-quarters of his autism funding (cause everyone knows autism is cured by age six, right? Argh.) He’s done so well in the program at the child development centre that we’re going to keep him in it one day a week, even though it’ll be $200 a month out of our pocket. He currently goes three times a week and gets speech therapy and occupational therapy as part of his package, all of it paid for by the government, but we can’t afford to keep that up. I realize we’re extremely lucky to get any funding at all, but I don’t get why the money dries up once they’re in school.

There’s a nasty windchill around here these days that really has me longing for spring. At least February’s almost over…

We had what turned out to be a really fabulous birthday party for me last night. We ended up with three men and five women, which was an exceptionally good ratio considering most of my friends are single moms. We played ’80s trivia and it proved to be quite a lively game, probably because we also drank copious amounts of alcohol — Dave and Chris split a case of beer, plus Chris had a couple coolers, and Teri didn’t drink all that much but was still in no condition to drive home (we returned her van this morning). I had a buffet table set up next to the game, so we ate, drank, laughed lots and just generally had a good time. The kids slept through all the noise (yay!) and Dave stuck around for a while this morning to entertain them, so overall it’s been a great weekend.

OK, so I’m one of those losers who doesn’t get around to writing about the new year until the new year is five days old. I’ve had good intentions of writing about the family visit, but other things (cooking, cleaning, refereeing the kids, catching up on sleep) keep getting in the way. I now have eight minutes before Brayden finishes his quiet time, so let’s see how fast I can type.

The family visit over New Year’s went really well. Chris and I finally got to meet our niece, who is just too adorable for words; our boys were curious about the newcomer but weren’t too sure how to approach her. I’d heard that Serenity doesn’t like crowds or too much noise, but she seemed to handle her two cousins’ rowdiness just fine. There was enough snow around that we could take the boys sledding almost every day, so that was a nice way to burn off some energy (check out the pictures in the photo gallery). So a good time was had by all, I think.

And now we’re back into our usual routine of work, school, etc. Justin seemed really relaxed over the holidays and didn’t have a single meltdown that I can recall, so that’s a big plus. He still wants to write all the time, but we noticed that he’s not just writing out names anymore — he writes notes on his iPod about what he’s been doing or thinking, so he’s basically keeping a journal (I’ve kept one for over 20 years, so I find this very cool). He’s way more confident than he used to be and his teachers tell me he’s participating in things that used to make him anxious — yay!

Brayden had fun over the holidays too, although we did discover (the hard way) that he’s allergic to cats. He’s at that stage of asking a million “why” questions, so between that and Justin’s constant queries, our house is never quiet. His play school teacher thinks he looks older now than he did a few weeks ago– our little man is growing up. He’s also done with quiet time, so I guess I better go…

I had a few more “bah humbug” moments than usual this year, but it still turned out to be a decent Christmas. The lead-up to it was the best part: the boys have been so into all the different Christmas stories, and they were crazy excited on Christmas Eve (Brayden wanted to go to bed at 7 a.m. to make the big day come faster). They kept checking Santa’s progress via NORAD online, which they thought was pretty cool, and the whole day just seemed to be full of magic. Awesome.

Christmas Day itself was all right. There weren’t really any “wow” gifts, but Justin seems intrigued by his sentence building dominoes and Brayden of course loves his new trucks. I was going a little loopy from being housebound with not much to do besides referee the boys, but they went to Grandpa’s house for a few hours this morning, so harmony has been restored.

My family arrives in a couple days to do Christmas: The Sequel, so that should be fun. Ho ho ho…

There were dire predictions that this winter would be a bad one, and a month ago I believed them, but these days we seem to be blessed. Right now the sun is shining, it’s about +7C and all the snow is melting. We’ve had a few chances this year to play in the snow with the boys, which is good (for them, anyway), but there’s a strong possibility that we’re going to have a green Christmas, and that suits me just fine.

Our household went through a couple weeks of illness, but we seem to be over the worst of it and we’re all now looking forward to the holidays. Justin has his school Christmas concert tonight, which should be interesting given that a) singing in front of a crowd of strangers is not exactly his favorite thing to do; and b) the concert starts at the time he normally goes to bed. He swears he’s looking forward to it and his aide seems optimistic, so we’ll see how it goes.

Brayden has his preschool Christmas party on Friday and I’m guessing it will go much better than Justin’s did (last year Justin had a complete meltdown when Santa arrived at his preschool…that was one of the incidents that convinced us something was up with him). Brayden might even be willing to sit on the jolly guy’s lap, so I guess I’ll have to have my camera ready.

Both boys are really into the whole Christmas thing these days. I’ve been trying to introduce them to the various songs and stories, so we’ve been busy watching Frosty, the Grinch and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and listening to everything from Jingle Bells to Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. I put the presents under the tree last weekend with strict instructions to the boys not to touch them, and amazingly, they haven’t. Justin did of course go around reading all the tags, but all the gifts are still exactly where I left them. Nice.

Happy holidays everybody!

It seems like the focus is always on Justin these days, so I feel the need to balance things out by giving an update on Brayden. Not only is he doing better at preschool (he’s not blindly copying the other kids anymore, he makes real contributions at circle time and he actually sits still when he’s supposed to — that teacher is a miracle worker), but he’s now using the computer independently and learning lots from the same program that taught Justin about phonics. He points out letters everywhere and constantly informs me that B is for Brayden, M is for Mommy, J is for Justin…you get the idea.

The biggest news is that Brayden’s now out of diapers and doing great. His potty training was kind of stalled, and various people have suggested I just put him in underwear and see what happens, but I was mighty reluctant to go that route after the year and a half of accidents we went through with Justin. But Brayden just seems to get it, so all’s well on that front.

We took the kids to a Peter Pan stage show at the community theatre on Sunday, and it went pretty well. I bought the tickets last week even though the kids knew nothing of the story, so then I was scrambling to find a book or a movie or anything that would introduce them to the characters before we went to the show. I lucked out and got the Disney movie from the library on Thursday, so after watching it a few times they knew enough to be able to follow the stage show. We only have the movie for a week, but we already burned it for their iPods, so at least we won’t lose it completely.

We also got our tree up this weekend — bring on Christmas!

I know I said I like being busy, but this is getting to be a bit much, and it’s my own stupid fault. With kindergarten, preschool, Justin’s autism program, Brayden’s soccer and Justin’s gymnastics, our schedule was already pretty packed — and then I added twice-weekly swimming lessons for both boys (they’re in the same class at least, so we can call that multitasking). We haven’t done swimming lessons in almost two years, largely because Justin’s anxiety used to get in the way, but he’s about to become too old for the class he needs to take, so I figured we’d better try again. The lessons have gone really, really well so far — not so much in the sense of the kids learning to swim, but in the sense of the kids listening to the instructor and trying to follow along, so that’s a major step forward. So the boys are busy and loving it, and Chris and I are exhausted.

We’re also deeper in debt than we were a week ago because we just bought a minivan (a used Odyssey, so not new, but still a lot of money). We’ve been noticing that there are more and more situations in which the boys need to go in different directions at the same time, and my little Festiva is not the greatest car for hauling kids around, so we finally got a van. Chris was pushing for a sports sedan, but I think we all know that was his midlife crisis talking. At any rate, now he gets to drive the Accord instead of the Festiva (which we’re hoping to sell soon), so that’s a step up for him. And now I’m Minivan Mom. Huh.