It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, and I have felt so far behind on things that I was actually somewhat eager to spend a day at home with Anna, who has a cold an can’t go to preschool today. I began the day (after the requisite child-prep) by making a long list of stuff to do, which really amounts to my usual list of stuff carried over many days, plus some extras. Through the day I have been whittling away at it. Some items are very old, like hanging up the “new” shades in the dining room, which may have actually been purchased in 2003. Others are less old, like returning the Christmas tree (taken down weeks ago) to its place on a high shelf. Our fake tree is very heavy because I believe the wiring is solid lead, rather than that chintzy lead-veneer like you see on modern fake trees. Anyway, it’s about eighty pounds, which is why I picked a nice shelf that is seven feet off the ground and in a corner of the garage behind the workbench to store it every year. Excuse me while I write something else down on my to-do list (”get possible hernia checked out”).

Anna was fairly miserable last night, and this morning, though she has since been feeling better. She has been napping for over an hour now, and I promised her an outing of some sort, so we may go for a bike ride in a little bit. Over the weekend, she participated in her first dance recital. Dance class is something she has been doing since the fall, and it’s very convenient that she is able to have class right at the preschool. I have stopped in on the class on several occasions, and based on what I had seen, I was quite amazed by how well all the children did with their 45-minute show. There were several songs/dances and a short interview with each child–part of the class includes speaking into a microphone, manners, and modeling. I got a lot of good pictures, as I borrowed my friend R.’s gargantuan zoom lens. Even in a room full of camcorder and camera-wielding parents, the guy in the back with the big white lens always stands out.

Also, we believe we may have struck gold over the weekend in figuring out a complicated cross-family babysitting exchange in which the babysitter and the babysitter’s child go to the babysat’s house, while the babysat’s parents go on a date. The babysitter then pump-fakes to the slot receiver, then hands off three children to the flanker on the reverse in the backfield and blocks on the weak side. Got it? Ok, BREAK! What can I say, it’s the playoffs.

I hear Anna waking up, so it’s time to check off “post something to the blog” on my to-do list and see where the afternoon takes us.