One week

My sister-in-law Carrie, her boyfriend Jim, Lilly (the yellow one) and Violet all "take a smile." That's what Violet calls taking a picture.

Today Lilly celebrates her one-week birthday.

Ok, maybe I have had too much caffeine the last few days. :)

Got my sister-in-law and her mysterious boyfriend (Jim) to the airport this morning. Got up at 4:30 a.m. and got home around 6 a.m. The TV weather morons were calling for icy conditions and snow last night, but when I got up and checked, it was 37 degrees and raining.

We took the van and the trip was without incident.

Carrie and Jim live in Boston, and Carrie has been a huge help the past week keeping Violet entertained. Her leaving is a big loss as far as easing into the whole taking care of two kids thing. Now we are flying without a live-in net.

I say Jim is mysterious only because Carrie has kept his last name a mystery. Mostly to keep her family from Googling him. All we know is that he is a real estate lawyer in the Boston area. I am sure if I was nosy I could narrow down who he is, but if Carrie and he don't want to share, that's their right.

Jim saw Cindy and I at our worst, under stress with lack of sleep and desire to really impress anyone. So he probably thinks that people from Oregon are hicks who talk about football and kids all the time -- football is my default conversation when I am tired.

I am just very thankful Carrie came out and helped us. She even took care of Christmas dinner and for that I will always think she is good people.

Today is another fun-filled and exciting day. We have yet another blood test and doctor visit for Lilly, the heating and air conditioning guys are showing up to do their standard maintenance to our system and Cindy and I are both still running on about three hours of sleep.

The formula we started giving Lilly is making her gag or spit up -- scaring the Hell out of me and having me worry she is going to choke. So the doctor is going to get an lecture from me about formula today -- I hate the stuff and I think she should just be on breast milk.

I think the plan this afternoon is to get a nap, Cindy's mom is coming over and I think Cindy and I are going to try to steal and hour of two of sleep. Friday my folks are going to come over an help, my goal is to feel human by Monday.

Our doctor's appointment is at 11:30 a.m. with a blood test afterward, so I will try and update this later this evening. For now, I am going to stare into deep space until the heating guys show up.