Back to the grind

It's amazing how quickly Christmas just disappears once January hits. For all the build-up and anticipation and preparation that goes into Christmas, two weeks later it's over. Almost like it never happened. The entire season seems to start the day after Halloween, but by January 2nd it's done. And by January 8th it all seems like a distant memory--except for when I venture down to the playroom and can see the shelves are all a little more crowded than they were pre-December 25th.

This week has been all about getting back to the business of every day life. Shaun went back to work on Monday, Kyle's back in preschool every day, our weekly playgroup has resumed, and I'm back to ignoring the mountain of laundry that spends all day calling to me. It was nice having our two weeks of holiday, but it's good having things back to our typical routine, too.

We're even going to throw a couple of extra things into the routine over the next few weeks--Kyle's going to be taking Little Gym classes, both Kyle and Natalie will begin swimming lessons starting next week, and a friend and I have started swapping babysitting so that we'll each get some time during the week to venture out in public without kids in tow.

Oh yeah, and snow. We're adding snow to the routine. We're at the point where the snow has covered the ground and it's not leaving until springtime, so that means snowboots, hats, gloves, and occasionally snowpants, are also now part of the routine. Warming up the car before we can go anywhere and clearing the end of the driveway from where the snowplow deposited a neat little mountain of snow is also part of the routine. Shoveling the sidewalk to the front door and clearing snow from around the back door so that we can still open the door in case of emergency are also part of our new routine. It's great, all this snow. It should be really interesting what else is added to the routine once we actually get more than 5 inches of snow at one time. Perhaps school closures and power failures? Lucky for us we've also gotten to add sledding, snow angels, snowmen, and hot chocolate to the routine--which means all the other stuff is totally worth the trade-off when the kids are having a blast.

Anyway, I should get back to work. I caught Kyle sneaking downstairs from an abbreviated nap a little while ago, I hear Brandon starting to talk to himself in his crib, and the laundry isn't going to ignore itself.