Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I am writing this while sitting on the toilet, it is the only free time a mother has but at this moment I would trade it in for a clean bill of health. Eva and I have bonded more and more throughout 2014 by sharing communicable diseases including my current ailment, a week-long stomach bug. I didn’t know that existed until I had a two year old in nursery, only one of the amazing discoveries I have made this year! Daddy seems immune but that is probably just because he chose the year of the terrible twos to become a Stay-at-Work Dad, working two jobs and starting a new career in 2015. He has decided to get into the field of security systems, that seemed like a better way to profit from the growing crime rate than to turn our basement into a marijuana farm. I was leaning toward the marijuana farm but never mind.

Eva has become more and more verbal and expressive like her mother. Just last night she said, “I like it when Daddy is not at home.” We are getting closer and becoming more and more alike. I am pleased to report that she has recently learned how to pick her nose with her big toe. Mommy is not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed. Most people are still unsure of Eva’s gender, but that is because she spends more time in a turtle costume than in normal clothes.

She takes pleasure in outsmarting us. When Daddy tried to feed her grapes for breakfast the other day, she said, “turtles don’t eat grapes, they eat jelly fish.” Later on I struck a deal with her that after her bath I would allow her to get back into her turtle costume only if she allowed me to brush her hair. She agreed. When I whipped out the hairbrush, her response was “Turtles don’t have hair.” Mommy still has a lot to learn about arguing with a toddler.

She has also become quite observant. After climbing on Daddy recently, she noticed the top of his head, and asked him with much concern, “Daddy what happened to the hair on the top of your head?” Mommy is not free from her toddler torment either, every time I use the toilet in her presence, she warns me, “Don’t break the toilet seat mummy.”

Everyone seems to think Eva is some sort of genius because she could do three year old puzzles and use adverbs from the age of one and a half, but I am not so sure, now that she is almost three and still can’t figure out how to climb out of her crib. I knew ballet was a lost cause so I have started Eva in gymnastics lessons, it might help.

As for me, after being unemployed for several months at the beginning of the year I now have two projects on the go, that are inevitably growing larger and getting more and more expensive, which is exactly how I would describe the reality of having a child, and probably how my husband would describe having a wife especially one with a sky miles credit card.

I am coming closer to convincing Eva that by the time she is three she can’t expect Mommy to carry her into school and to the car and next door and basically everywhere all of the time but I figure as long as she isn’t standing on a street corner yelling “Pick Me UP!” when she is twenty then we are all good.

I also find myself carrying Piccolo around now that he is too fat and arthritic to get down the steps. Piccolo is a sausage dog, but now at the ripe age of almost 12, he is more sausage than dog, and requires all the care of a doggie old folks home. I am thinking of putting him on the treadmill, that treadmill that I don’t ever get around to using.

I asked Santa for an amazon.com slow cooker and a soda stream for Christmas, it was only upon reflection that I realized how middle aged that was, that and the fact that I haven’t checked out the new restaurants, or even been away more than once in a year and a half. Maybe I am aging in dog years, and that’s why Piccolo and I are such good bedfellows. We roll over and leave Daddy at the other end of the bed.

For Christmas I ordered the largest tent I could find on amazon for Eva and shipped it to my mother’s Boston apartment and then told Daddy, “I have to fly to Boston to collect the tent in January, maybe with some friends and it might take a week.”

For 2015, I am wishing to not get hemorrhoids, to not get run over, to not get divorced or pregnant, and to never get the stomach flu ever again, especially the strain that lasts for a week.

I just reached into my desk drawer to find a pen to sign this letter, and found a deconstructed tampon. It’s a toddler’s metaphor for my life. At least I didn’t whip that out at client meeting.

All my best for 2015. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already, I would love to break the 100 followers mark ( I have 49). Pathetic, I know. Undiscovered. Not for long.