Too much caffeine, not enough sleep

My first post on this blog. I've been blogging about my girls, but lately I've been wanting a place to jot down some of my own thoughts. So here goes...

Isa is currently napping. She has not been sleeping well the past few nights (read Lori and Matt have not been sleeping well the past few nights) because she's either coming down with a cold or teething again or all of the above. Fun fun fun.

Isa's first birthday was on the 11th. Really, we hadn't hosted a kiddo birthday bash since Abigail turned one. (For Abi's 2nd birthday we were in the throes of newborn-ness with Isa being just a month old, so we had a simple immediate-family party.) People who know me know that I love parties and celebrating - pretty much any excuse to call together the people we love and celebrate. So I kicked it into high gear for Isa's party.

Matt will tell you that while I love having parties, the organization of them all usually stresses me out to some degree. Isa's party was no exception, but I have definitely made progress since Thanksgiving '04 when during one of several meltdowns that day over minute details like pie crust Matt told me that if I couldn't pull it together we would never host Thanksgiving again.

In the end, we had a great time. But the next day while returning from DIA, the neighborhood grocery store, I had a realization that I have taken on another of my Mom's quirks. I had forgotten one of Isa's birthday presents that was hidden up and away in my closet. Suddenly I was flooded with a whole bunch of memories from childhood. Growing up for Eric (my brother) and I it was practically a holiday/birthday tradition that anywhere from a few days to a few weeks after the event Mom would find one of us and say, "Look what I found in the closet/under the bed/in the garage. I had totally forgotten that I had this for you," and hand us some sort of shopping bag with some kind of gift in it. It was kind of fun because just when we thought that Christmas/our birthday/graduation/etc. was over, we were surprised by one more gift.

So, I did the same for Isa. The next day after breakfast, I pulled out the Elmo doll that sings the Sesame Street theme song in both English and Spanish that had been sent to her from the states and told her, "Look honey, look what I found up in Mama's closet. I had totally forgotten that we had this for you," and handed her that doll. Hopefully this trait will be one that endears me to my kids as it did my mom to me.