Today was a really trying day.  Things went awry during the night when Sophie woke up and refused to go back to sleep unless she was in our bed.  On my side of the bed where I could not even touch my own pillow.  Then, the early risers got up and started mayhem somewhere around 5:30AM.  Around 8:30 Sophie refused to take off her pajamas and get dressed, throwing a tantrum that lasted forty minutes.  She would wear pajamas all day if I'd let her, but the new pajamas she got for Christmas are a whole different thing.  These would become fused to her skin if I let her wear them as much as she'd like.  And who can blame her?  I remember having pajamas like this when I was a girl and I loved them too.

By 10:00 I was yelling to try to control the chaos, and had been unsuccessfully trying to get us all geared up to go to the store for almost two hours.  We made it to the store, no one melted down or ran away, and everyone actually took naps in the afternoon even though it was an hour later than normal.

And, breaking what feels like four years of silence, I've started to talk on the phone again.  I picked the time when Marty was gone to get this going.  I talk to Kathy almost every day and Sevda occasionally, but with most of my friends I just catch up with them through email.  It seems like there is perpetual chaos here which is not very conducive to phone conversations. So thank you to Molly, Megan, Meghan, and Heidi for calling and chatting even through the interruptions to get more fruity cheerios, Italian ice, and for understanding if I had to cut it short.  Just having some girlfriend conversations again made me almost feel normal and definitely made the chaos a little easier to handle.