Tick, tick, tick...

We're back home and trying to gather the energy to unpack and prepare for Z going back to work. Since we're in a bit of an upheaval anyway, we moved M into a toddler bed today.

I've made jokes for the past few years that she would be sleeping in a crib until she went to university. It's so easy, since I know where she is at night and don't have to worry about her roaming around her room or leaving it. For some reason she never figured out that she could get out of it if she really wanted. Some of our friends called us today and said that they were moving their daughter into a bigger bed and offered us a toddler bed, if we wanted it. An hour later, the bed is set up, M's blankets, toys and pillows are on the bed and T is sleeping peacefully in his 'new' crib. At nap time, I reminded M about her new bed and she ran down the hall and jumped into it - the first and only time I expect that she'll ever be so excited about it. Still, it was very cute. She was more reluctant tonight, stalling every way she possibly could, but now she's sleeping peacefully in her 'BIG GIRL BED!' She wanted to read books about being a big sister tonight and told me as I was turning out the light that she was also going to be wearing big girl underwear tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, the last day of 2011...I decided a couple of days ago that I wanted to get a few things done before New Years. I wanted to make several recipes that fit with M's new diet (we just found out about her allergies, which is fodder for a much longer post), swap T's current, too-small clothing in his dresser for 6 to 12 months clothing, finish my mom's Eleanor shrug, unpack all of our suitcases that we used over Christmas, and try to finish M's Wallaby sweater. So far I've made some of the planned recipes (crockpot borscht and minestrone soup, which M refers to as "Mini-stroller"), cleaned out T's dresser and be working feverishly on my mom's shrug. I've been soaking split peas for soup and made simple syrup for raspberry-blueberry sorbet, both of which I'm hoping to finish making tonight. My plans are to finish mom's shrug tomorrow and make lentil soup and butternut squash soup as well. We'll see how it goes. By the way, did I mention how much I love yummly.com? I love how easy it is to sort out recipes that don't fit in M's diet. If you haven't tried it yet, you should.

OK, clock's ticking...