Happy Monday to you. I hope you’re somewhere warm, successfully avoiding the plague that has swept through our house this past week. I mean, there’s better ways to ring in the New Year than pink eye and double ear infection, but we chose to spend Friday making a trip to the doctor to make sure that we didn’t give our little niece the RSV diagnosis she had or vice versa. Oh, and while you’re at it, can you take a look at my husband’s eyes?
And so we laid low this weekend, negotiating antibiotic administration with the toddler, washing every surface and pillowcase, and visiting the baby I tried my best to keep in quarantine. Guess that’s all it took to be on the mend and here we are staring down Monday and the Christmas decorations I have to put away, wondering if the scratch in my throat and the crust in my eye puts me next on the list for a doctor visit.
Ah, parenthood. When you’re not bending over to pick up the tiny, plastic cow you just stepped on you’re Googling potential illnesses.
This is our life now. And so we celebrate accordingly.
Coming Home: Ringing in the New Year like the real adults we are
Forum Communications
Happy New Year from the ranch where it’s freezing cold, nobody is sleeping and everyone is having a hard time finding pants that fit.
If I were a resolution-making woman I’d be working on the one thing on that list I can control, but my current motto seems to be “the faster I eat these cookies the sooner I can get on my diet plan.” And I’ve had three already and it’s only 10 a.m., so I’m well on my way to getting started.
We welcomed 2018 just up the hill with friends we’ve known nearly all our lives. Twelve years ago, our midnight toast would’ve just been the peak of our evening instead of something we moved up to 10 p.m. to ensure we all got in on it.
If The Ghost of New Year’s Future would’ve visited us at 22 to show us that scene there would have been some explaining to do.
Yes, now we call our kids down to the basement to show us how to use the new hoverboard thing they got for Christmas and marvel at the speed and agility of the 11-year-old as she spins and swoops on an invention that got its name from an ’80s movie we were alive to see in theaters.
And then, just to make sure everyone remembered that we’re in our mid-30s, I watched my husband get ready to take his turn, but not before I grabbed his hands, looked him straight in the eyes and in front of his high school buddies, his small children and Jesus, reminded him in my best, seriously-I’m-not-even-joking voice that He. Can. Not. Get. Hurt.
If I would’ve pulled that overprotective crap in our other lives I would have subjected my young husband to some serious ridicule by those same high school buddies.
But we’re living a different life now, so instead I watched two of those friends take him by each elbow in order to give him a chance to get his legs without breaking his back.
Because they understand the havoc spending a month in traction would create. They also have cows to feed, hockey to coach, butts to wipe, bills to pay and sidewalks to shovel, so they didn’t bat an eye at my stern suggestion.
Instead they nodded their heads and then relayed a few stories about buddies of theirs who tried this very thing last Christmas and broke an elbow/hip/ankle/brain…
“It’s best to not be overconfident and try this before the second beer,” they suggested. Which comforted me enough to leave them and go back upstairs to feed the infant and set the toddler on the potty, which is likely how I would have celebrated the countdown if we didn’t make some minor adjustments to the midnight-striking schedule.
Adulting can be flexible like that.
And if I were a resolution-making woman, I might resolve we all be more adventurous, but I think it’d suit us all better to resolve to spend more time with the people who know and love us enough to hold us up and cheer us on.
Seems we need it more as the years tick by, in life as well as in new-age gadgets…
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 
Happy New Year!
Blessings 4 Md.xo,j.