Namas... What?

I've been a bad, bad blogger. Dude, Christmas is a lot of work. And I had a birthday.

Something funny happened last night. In Zumba. My lovely, thoughtful new friend A turned to me in the middle of an excruciating dance routine, and said, "namaste." Or that's what I thought I heard. And I was confused. My friends and I? We're not really the "namaste" sort of people. Even my three friends who teach yoga. We're more the "hey, what's up?" type of people. Or maybe the "pass me a slice of pizza" sorts. Anyhow, I lean in towards A, and say, "WHAT? Did you just say namaste?" And she said, "no. I said 'is class almost over?'" I still chuckle when I think about it.

So yeah. Like I said, I've been very busy. In part, because Gumball's nanny took a week off. Not for fun. She had car problems. But it's always hard to be without help in the evenings. We've also transitioned from two daily naps to one. Gumball was on a decent two-nap schedule, but little by little, each nap kept getting shorter and shorter. Two 45-minute naps a day were driving me nuts. These days, we are aiming for one 90-120 minute nap, in the middle of the day. I know this stuff is fascinating. Being a parent is hard. I agonized over this decision, and just want to do what is best for little Gumball. But there's no clear, black and white manual of how to raise baby, or how to maximize sleep, and naps, and to make sure she's always happy and successful. It's a lot of pressure.

In the past two weeks, I've done a lot, not just counting changing Gumball's nap schedule. I also got some help from Nana, and picked up a Christmas tree.

This year's tree theme: pink and silver. Yup. No men in this house.

It's also cold, finally. I'm not thrilled about the cold, but I also get to see this. Not sideways. Hmmm.

And here are some other photos I recently uploaded.

Gumball Hippo

First Art Project

Second Art Project- I didn't even help!

With Big Duck

Measuring the size of her own head

Christmas Photo: Attempt 200000000000000

As I mentioned before, I also had a birthday. I didn't manage to have a date before this birthday, which made me a little sad, but the birthday itself was so much more than I had hoped. The day of my birthday, I got my hair cut and colored. No more zebra stripes! Yay! And Nana watched Gumball, so she had fun too. I even got to go to the grocery store alone. It doesn't sound like much, but the cards, calls, texts (ugh, except for the one from Gumball's dad) made me really happy. And the 80-something messages and wall posts from friends on Facebook- made my day. And on Friday, all my new friends got together and threw me a birthday lunch party. We had lots of kids running around, lots of food, and it was amazing. It really meant a lot to me, and will hopefully mark the start of a year filled with happiness, peace and love. I am very grateful for these friends.