Also Over Christmas Break.....

A few other very note-worthy things happened over Christmas break:

1) Emily got her hair cut after exactly 12 months without one.  She looks so much more grown up to me.

2) Megan said good-bye to her crib.....

....and hello to her new big girl bed.  She hasn't once come out of her room, whether it's going down for a nap/nighttime or waking up from her nap/in the morning.  We're so proud of her.  Some day we'll have the kids' rooms painted and decorated.  Some day (sigh).

3) After 382 consecutive days of nursing, this baby girl is weaned!!!  It didn't come without a power struggle between myself and a certain stubborn 1-year-old.  Nor did it come without stress and anxiety when she refused for a couple of days to drink any liquid from anything (but me).  She'd been drinking water from a cup happily for months, but she even quit doing that. We tried all kinds of milks (and water) from all kinds of cups and spoons and medicine droppers to no avail. Nor did it come without grumpiness and nighttime rendezvous for a week while we were in the weaning process (was it the hunger/thirst or those painful, bulging gums?)  Well, she just got thirsty enough, and I finally got her fully weaned on Tuesday.  And she grew her third tooth to boot.

4) We got all sorts of projects done on our to-do-over-Christmas-break list.  Since we only spent 4 days out of town, we had plenty of days here at home to get stuff done while Dan was off work.  We took our Christmas decorations down, bought and planted flowers out back, hung rods in the kids' closets that are low enough for them to reach, worked on calking the foundation of our house, bought Megan's bed, made our food storage plan, bought canvases for a painting project I have up my sleeve, hung some hooks in our closet for my necklaces, and we went to the ostrich farm.  We ran ourselves ragged every day.  Even though we didn't get to everything on our list, we feel good about what we did accomplish.