Christmas Break Random Thoughts

This week and next week, our 2 oldest kids are on school break. So, we've got all 3 kids around. This makes for a noisier, busier, and messier household than usual.

"Bits" or "Miss Bitty," which are a couple of the names that they call their 11 month old baby sister, seems to enjoy having them around. For it's 2 more people to watch and entertain. In general, they do a good job communicating with her, although they can be a little rough sometimes. And she does a good job communicating already.

"Bits" seems to enjoy keeping us guessing. She still doesn't have any teeth, although she enjoys gumming food like clementines, frozen peas, etc. She starting crawling on Christmas Day, which was just 4 days ago. Now she seems to want to stand up and even walk with some help. I wonder if she'll crawl and walk in the same week!

Our kids have enjoyed the free merry-go-round right next to the city hall of our district. This is the 5th or 6th year that our district has provided this activity for kids. It's good to see our tax dollars going for something useful.

My wife had the flu today, which is a bummer. She's the straw that stirs the drink at home, so we all suffer when she's under the weather. It's really physically demanding to be the mother of 3 young children, especially during school breaks.

Cindy from New Jersey reminded us in an e-mail to treasure these days. She now has 3 kids who are teens or older. I remembered that yesterday when my 3 year daughter asked me to hold her in my lap while I was doing something on the computer. While this phase of life seems rather long right now, it really is just a relatively short time. Soon they'll be asking for car keys and then we'll be sending them off to university.

I took the older 2 kids to the aquarium for an hour this afternoon. Boy, was that family membership we got last February one of the best investments that we've every done in Paris. We've gone just about every month. Even though it's the same fish every time, the kids love looking at them. They said that their favorite fish today was the seahorse.

We sent out new year's greetings via e-mail yesterday. We listed a link to our December 2006 photo page that had had 100+ visits in the last 24 hours. Of course, the photos of the kids are the biggest draw to this.

It will be fascinating to see how 2007 plays out. We knew that 2006 would bring change as we anticipated the February arrival of our "Bits" into our home. 2007 will undoubtably bring new changes as well. As our kids seem to grow everyday in one way or another, 2007 can't help but be exciting and full of humor.