New Year's 2012

It's 1:23 a.m. on January 2, 2012.  My husband's sound asleep to my right.  My precious baby girl is sound asleep in her crib and my yellow lab is asleep at my feet on her quarter of the bed which leaves me with yep...a quarter of the bed.  Pretty typical end to a typical day in our daily lives as a thirty-something family trying to make ends meet in these uncertain times. 

My husband is a Paramedic who is working 3 jobs to support our family.  He just got off work at job number 2 at 10 tonight and will be back in at 9 a.m. for a 10 hour day tomorrow.  I still can't figure out why he texted me to "thank me" for "letting him take on this gig".  He enjoys his work and I'm thankful for his sacrifice of time away from us so that I can spend it with our daughter. 

I work full time as an insurance variance analyst for a major medical center in our area but the only job that I want is to be mom.  Our daughter is the light of our lives.  She's currently 2 1/2 independent years old.  Going back to work full time when she was 9 months old remains one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do.  Funny how priorities change at the moment of birth.

We played outside as a family in the extremely late first snowfall of the winter this morning. Belle looked like a little pink abominable snowman by the end of it.  I think we'll get on the sled tomorrow!

Isabella and I spent this first day of the New Year doing our semi-annual deep clean of our place.  This was intermittent at best and I'm pretty sure I burned up the vacuum.   Of course, we just bought a new filter for it yesterday.  Belle and I also played Candyland and Elefun about a hundred times when we weren't changing her babies' diapers or having pretend lunches/dinners that she carefully cooked on her stove.

This is just a bit about my family and our daily lives together.  We aren't rich, poor or perfect but we are perfectly us.  I hope to blog about our daily imperfections in order to document this incredible journey we are on together.  Hopefully you'll join me along the way!