Working on Perfect

wow!
I logged on and relized it's been a long time since I blogged. I don't know where the time goes!
It's been a wonderful and busy couple of weeks around here. Christmas was wonderful. It was a magical morning. Doodle was thrilled Santa had come, and the princess was dumbfounded by the presents and the wrapping paper and the excitement of the day.
The big gift that both kids received was a play kitchen. I hoped that they would share it and I wasn't disappointed. They loved it, and play in it constantly. Doodle makes "meals" for the Princess and she dances to the music on the jukebox. It's adorable.
Santa was pretty good to me too :)
We got a wii as a family gift. I surprised Phat Daddy by finding a wii fit a couple of days before Christmas.
He surprised me with a beautiful necklace, Rachael Ray Frying pans and a cookbook, and a bunch of Disney World stuff.
And - not to be outdone, my parents surprised my sister and I with something we had both always wanted. We each got a beautiful Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I have been baking and cooking up a storm. I LOVE that machine! So does Phat Daddy. We've been making all sorts of stuff and even competed over raisin bread.

But there's been more going on around here.

On Christmas Eve I really injured my finger. I'll spare you the pictures! But, really, I managed to get my finger stuck in the blender and there was blood everywhere. Somehow I managed to stay calm, and convince Doodle NOT to call 911 and instead called my parents to come and help out. It set us a little behind in all the stuff that I had planned for the day, but it really put stuff into perspective. It could have been far worse for me, or Doodle could have been helping me (which he often does). It's also made me really paranoid about appliances. What happened was that the blender was not on the base, and I was simply moving the base. But, my finger happened to be in the place where you rest the glass jar (the thing that spins that blade) and as I was moving I somehow pressed the ice crush button. The lesson in all of this is that I need to unplug equipment all the time. DUH.

The other excitement of the past few days is that our nanny has arrived in Canada. Her sister lives about 10 minutes away from us, so she is staying with her sister for the next couple of weeks to get used to the weather and the culture here before coming to live with us. On Boxing Day she arrived. We've now spoken on the phone (and I also got a phone call from Immigration Canada) and I'm feeling better about things. We still have a couple of weeks before she moves in and then a couple of weeks after that before I go to work.
I've been struggling with all sorts of emotions. I'm grateful to have a job to go to. And, I know I will be fine to go. But, I worry about my kids. And about me. I think knowing I'd be going back to work made me appreciate the time at home more than I would have had I been staying home. But, it also put me in the mindset that I have to appreciate the moments. And, now that I'm reaching the end of mat leave I feel like maybe I missed something or didn't appreciate it enough or SOMETHING.
It's a hard feeling to explain.
But, I'm grateful to be going somewhere I know. It's nice to know that some of the people who I consider to be close friends are the people who I will be working with when I go back, and who will totally get where I'm coming from when I'm having a hard time. But, that feeling of having to trust that things will work out. That's really hard for me!!!

Of course, our house is still in complete disarray thanks to redoing our basement. But, it's looking so good. I can finally see how our basement will look. We've chosen carpet which has seemed to be the biggest issue of all, and now we're just watching it all come together.

And that, in a nutshell, is what's going on around here.