slowly returning to the land of the living

This has been me most of last week. I had no idea that I would be so tired after the knee surgery. It was exhausting! I am slowly getting more energy, although am not at my normal yet. That may be a combination of healing as well as being inactive. I find that I am more tired if I do not get out or get exercise, both of which I have not been able to do. I do have the physical therapy and I can now do all 5 exercises with about full range of motion and only one hurts really bad still, so that is exciting to me.


Dominique spent the entire day Monday with her best bud Fiorella, who lives across the street. They like to play Mommy and Daddy, Talking Dogs, Fairies and Butterflies, Barbies... Fiorella's mom said they play so nice together, then they come to my house, add Ivan to the mix and it all digresses!!



This occurred while the trio were playing Stars Wars outside. Ivan was hit in the face by our pine tree. I asked him who the tree was and he said the tree was Darth Vader, and that he had hit his head. So we tried to tell him that he could tell his friends at school that he got a war wound while fighting Darth Vader, but the guy is too truthful and told them all he ran into a tree.

He's quite dramatic and when he first showed me, it was all white from being out in the cold, but it did scab over and looks so impressive.


I got out a couple of times on the weekend to visit each of my cousin's. It was so nice and I got to meet our newest family member... Ian and Janet gave birth to Neve the same day I had my knee surgery and we were finally able to get out and meet her.

Today was pretty exciting. Brian went into the city and did a ton of errands, one of which was to pick up the paint for the basement!!! My favorite part and I have so many plans- should keep me busy for quite a while. Meanwhile, I had a few places I wanted to get to and one I had to go to, so we braved the cold and tested out my improving knee... got bread at the bake shop (and donuts as bribery for good behavior in the grocery store), had PERFECT children in the grocery store and donut eating children in the parking lot, then we got to the library where some books came in for me and we found 25 other books for the kids!! We are book monsters.

Other exciting news is that I am going to take up some part time work. My cousin's friend does commercial building cleaning in the evenings and has several at home moms hired. She started the business because she couldn't stand the idea of going back to work after her mat leave. I'll clean a bank 30 min. a night, anytime between 4:30pm and 8am and get paid about $30/hour!! I had been thinking that I may have to take in kids again once the dust settled, but wasn't particularly looking forward to that. I'll make in 1.5 hours, what I was making in 10 hours keeping 2 extra kids all day, along with my own! If I'm interested in having more hours and pay, she said that she often gets more contracts and the other ladies don't want more than 2 hours/night. I think it will be a great fit for us and I won't have to subject my kids to more change with bringing in others or have to rearrange our lives just as we are starting to figure it out. I will most likely start in mid Feb. as we see how my knee does and if that fits with the other ladies' schedules.