Drudging Through January

January seems to be lingering this year. I honestly was in a semi state of shell shock when Christmas, New Years, and January 10th flew by. (There is not a single significance to January 10th for me, I just pulled it out of the air.) But now it seems like the last half of January is taking 30 extra days to get out of here. C'mon.

Why is it that nothing goes on during this month? Sure they threw a quasi-holiday into this month, but I think even the banks stay open that day, adding to the drudgery of January.

So needless to say, we have not been up to much. A lot of my off days are spent at home, doing absolutely nothing. The kids spend time wearing out the toys they got for Christmas and Rebecca and I laze around. Sure, Rebecca runs the kids to school and back, does the grocery shopping, keeps the house clean, as if it were any other month, but its still just January. February is so much better than January. It is like the gateway to spring. Plus, it kicks off with one of my favorite holidays... Groundhogs Day.

The kids are not caught up in the January gloom. Haylee has been growing up so fast. I can't grasp that she will be a year old just one month and two days after Groundhogs day. She seems a little older to me for some reason, perhaps it is because she was practicing Beethoven's 2nd in D Major the other day on the piano?

Eli has been amazing me the most lately. I have always worried about his mental ability since he broke his skull at 2 months old, but now I am wondering if that helped him. His latest tasks have been to learn songs. He listens to a song and decides whether or not he likes it. If he likes it, he starts it over and starts to learn it. He can sing along to several songs that I play on the IPOD regularly. He hears and understands the word to fast paced punk songs that even I do not get all the time. He also loves this little toy guitar thing he got for Christmas. He is learning moves to make the ladies scream later in life. Another "one-up" he will have on me.
Tierra is getting too old to quick. At least she is acting way to grown up for a 6 year old. Except for her crying games. She cries a lot when she doesn't get her way. We give her a hard time telling her she cries more than Haylee, which is true because Haylee just doesn't cry much at all. Tierra continues to be a night owl, a trait definitely acquired from me. This stems from the days in Junior High staying up to watch Night Court after the evening news. After we send her to bed, she just sits up in her bed flipping through magazines or reading books. She is getting quite good at reading. Which starts me on a small tangent about Kindergarten....nevermind. Suffice it to say the books the teacher sends home are well below the level Tierra has attained in reading. She loves playing in the snow too. The other night she wanted to watch 24. We have not let her watch this show yet, it seems a little too PG-8 or 9 to us. She gets a little scared of certain things in movies. She reminds me of me a little bit. I remember when I was about her age watching Superman at Randy Monsen's house. I was so terrified of earthquakes that I went around telling everyone that they were not true. It was just something in movies. It worked for a little while. Tierra was persistent though and while Rebecca was talking on the phone Tierra wrote a note and did this with it:

Overall, we are all doing well. I love my new station and get along great with the crew. It is a busy station and I have had some "good" calls lately. Good is relative here... good for me means bad for another. So when I say good, I mean there have been calls where my emergency medicine skills were required. We did miss out on a house fire the other day while we responded to someone who thought they had the flu though.

Rebecca is counting down the minutes until Lost starts again. I just bought her an Iphone. She loves it. She has an application that tells her when to get off her butt and make dinner, so thats good. If only she had an app to get rid of this smog and make it snow more!