Define "Happy" New Year

It's Friday...finally! This first full work week of the New Year has officially ended, and I am already exhausted (despite it being 4:03am and being WIDE awake).

The saddest part of this week is it wasn't even a full week. The week didn't even start until Tuesday because New Year's Day was on Sunday and Americans will be damned if they don't get a day off from work or school just because a holiday falls on a weekend day instead of the middle of the work week. Hell to the no on that. And weekends are freebies and don't actually count as part of the week.

So, our week kicked off on Tuesday. At some point over the two-week break, I forgot that the bus for my 6-year-old comes at 6:50am and in place of that information, my brain was telling me that we left for the bus at 6:50am. Thankfully it was raining that morning, so I drove her to the bus stop, which is at the end of our street, and as I'm driving up the street I see the bus, the parents...and no children because they were all already on the bus...and realized my mistake. I came to a quick stop, I'm rushing Scarlett out of the car telling her to just "go baby, we're late", she's all, "but mama..." and I'm like, "JUST GO! I love you but get out" as the bus turns its red flashing lights off and starts to pull away from the curb. Thankfully the bus driver saw her and stopped and let her on and I'm standing there, half pulled to the side of the street, standing with my open door, waving at the bus at it drives off, with Scarlett on board, looking at all the parents who made it to the bus stop on time telling them, "This is such a great start to the new year!"

In addition to starting out the New Year late, I also decided that it was a great time to potty train my 2-year-old. She's been ready for weeks now, telling me "I go pee-pee", sitting on her little potty in the bathroom when I go to the bathroom, telling me when she poops...all the fun things. So, her little butt has been walking around half naked since the weekend. She sits on the potty, does nothing, gets up and says "yaaaay", walks off to play, pees on the floor, comes to me saying "I did pee-pee", I ask where, she takes me right to the spot where she went. Somewhere I lost in communicado of this potty-training thing with her that the pee-pee is actually supposed to go IN the potty. It remains a work in progress.

Speaking of stubborn children, we have lived here for 2.5 years. This is our third January in SoCal. Our first January here, it rained, everything got green, my kids played outside at the park next to our house, including playing on the large hill that sits behind our house. The only problem with that is all that greenery brough out by the winter rain here includes lots, and lots, of poison oak. And we learned the hard way that both my boys take after their father with the severity of their reactions to that pesky little plant. The first January and February we were here I was at the ER with each of my boys for severe swelling and itching. I told them just to stay off the hill. Naturally, they didn't listen. The following January, I was back at the ER.

It's January again, our third January (just to make that quite clear, again, for those of you still with me at this point), and it's been raining on and off since last week. Wednesday, January 4th, my 8-year-old comes down for school and I'm looking at his face and literally my jaw drops open and I point to his chin and I'm like, "what is THAT?!" and he calmly says, "poison oak."

So far, the swelling is minimal. He woke us up at 5am Thursday, because the itching had finally set in, and he said he was up all night with it. I kept him home from school because he didn't sleep well, and he actually took a solid two hour nap in the afternoon, but I told him I wasn't taking him to the ER because being itchy wasn't an emergency (the other two times his eyes were practically swollen shut so that was a no brainer) but at this point, I told him this is a natural consequence to NOT listening to me when I tell him to stay off the hill. Barring any major swelling over the next few days, he'll have to suck it up with Ditch the Itch soap and Benadryl cream.

And here we are, Friday. Technically Friday hasn't even happened yet since all of my kiddos are still asleep so who knows what chaos today will bring. But, so far, it's been a banner year in the three full days of this 'week' that we have had. Almost missing the bus the first school day of the year, pee-pee everywhere but the potty, and poison oak. If anyone has some sanity left over from this week, pass it over here would ya?