Happy Friday! We made it through another week and next week is a short one for us Americans thanks to Thanksgiving! Yay! Here's a TGIF-style recap of our week.
The book I'm reading is Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (physical book) and The Final Revival of Opal and Nev (ebook). I'm only reading 2 chapters/day of Caste as it is a heavy topic and I need to slowly digest it. It's my book club's December read and will make for a great discussion. Opal and Nev is from the Modern Mrs. Darcy Summer Reading Guide. I should love it but I feel kind of meh? Maybe right book, wrong time? It's an oral history of a fictional band and they cover topics of racism so there is some overlap between the 2 books I'm reading which should make me appreciate it more but again, I don't feel super connected or compelled to read it? But I like it enough to keep reading it so it will probably end up being around 3 stars.
The high of my week was getting a massage on Tuesday. I was glad I was able to reschedule the massage I had to cancel when Will was home sick. I went to a place a couple of blocks away for a deep tissue massage. It did not have the ambiance of the usual place I go, but the massage was great and the convenience of walking there was amazing! It was my first massage in about 2 years (thanks, pandemic!).
The low of my week was just a general sense of feeling tired. We've had lots of early mornings and Will's been awake more than usual during the night, probably because of his ears. Things seem to be getting better and I think the kids have maybe finally adjusted to the end of daylight savings?
A recipe I made was Cauliflower Chicken Tikka Masala. This is a recipe that I tend to make once a month. The leftovers are even better as the flavors really meld together! I fed Will some peas from it which he seemed to like. It's pretty spicy so that is the extent of what I shared (Paul won't touch it, of course).
A show we are watching is Dopesick on Hulu. It's a dramatized documentary based on the book, Dopesick, which is about the opioid crisis. It's very well done. Michael Keaton plays a doctor in West Virginia who prescribes OxyContin for patience with moderate pain because the drug label says less than 1% get addicted. He then takes them when he gets in a car accident and becomes addicted. It does a good job of looking at the Sackler family who owns Purdue Pharma, the company behind the drug OxyContin and the false claims that it wasn't habit-forming. After each episode I usually vent to Phil about how so many people have no conscience! It makes me want to read the book, "The Empire of Pain" which is a deep dive into the Sackler family and how they profited off of Oxy. But I need to be in the right mind set to read that...
For workouts I went for a run on Monday, did beach body workouts Tuesday and Wednesday, and ran yesterday. I'll do another beach body workout today and maybe on Saturday and then will run on Sunday hopefully.
The best money spent was a contribution to my local United Way and to the library. It was "give to the max" day yesterday which is a day of giving for non-profits in Minnesota. There tend to be matches from large donors if non-profits raise $X that day, so it's a good day to give! I also bought some lipstick and facial cleanser from Beauty Counter and ordered Christmas cards. So it was an expensive week!
My plans this weekend include laying low tonight, like usual. Tomorrow morning Phil has his physical and then I am going to a wreath-making party. On Sunday we are putting up our Christmas tree! I used to be firmly on team decorate after Thanksgiving, but the pandemic changed me. Now I like it up a little earlier so I can enjoy the warm glow as long as possible!
Bonus Will and Paul photos:
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| He loves to play at the train table with Paul! |
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| Bath time shenanigans! |
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| Cuddled up with dad. Paul is sharing cheerios from a snack cup. Will has learned to put out his palm when he wants some! |
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| Bit of a blurry action shot, but Will's new thing is pulling books off our bookshelves. I worry that he doesn't love books as much as Paul because I haven't read to him quite as much as we read to Paul (although we still read at least 4-5 books/day to him). But he knows how to turn pages in a book while you read to him and loves to pull books off the shelf and look at them so he probably likes books as much or more than the average baby? |
What was the high of your week? What recipe did you make this week?
7 comments:
Those pictures are so adorable! Those sweet little smiles and the shared Cheerios is so precious (reminds me of the Jim/Dwight altoid scene in The Office). These snapshots of life will be so sweet to look back on as they grow.
Yay for massages.
Sorry it's been a rough stretch with early/night wakings. It is so hard and feels like it will continue forever. I need a lot of sleep and that was the hardest part of the early stages of motherhood for me. Sleep deprivation is a torture technique and any mother can attest to why that's the case. One of my friends has a baby who has basically, since birth, woken up every hour every night (the longest stretch was almost 4 hours, but she considers 2 hours a good night). Another mutual acquaintance of ours just had a baby and it has been sleeping 12 hours from the get go?! How unfair!!
Hope it's a restful weekend. I grew up never having any decorations up before the middle of December. I tend to be pretty minimal in life - and decorations - but we just put up our small artificial tree in the basement earlier this week. It's out of the way, but I just love the glow. I'll slowly add other things upstairs, but yesterday morning I did a treadmill run with just the lights of the Christmas tree (while listening to the tail end of BOBW Holiday Gift guide + a Lazy Genius holiday episode)...and it was so cheery and festive!
The wreath making party sounds fun. We're doing the greens market this weekend -- must be the time for wreaths, and not a moment too soon. I hope you get that energy up and the whole family is feeling much better (and sleeping later) soon as you get into the really busy season. I probably won't put Christmas up before but I'll be taking down fall gradually and bringing things up so they can get easily placed right after TG. Maybe even on TG, since we aren't hosting. We'll see. I have no energy and not doing well so who knows. Yup. We'll see.
I was excited for Opal and Nev but gave up on it. I did not like the writing style at all.
A massage sounds so nice! I've actually only had a professional massage a small handful of times in my life! It's one of those things I haven't done in so long that I almost feel a little unsure/awkward about it? Like I don't know exactly how it works, the correct protocols, etc. Haha. I'm sure I'm overthinking it. The last one I had one was just on the beach in Acapulco- not a "real" massage, but it was super cheap and I just had to lay on my towel under an umbrella while a nice lady massaged me! lol!
We have all of our decor up EXCEPT the Christmas tree! We just haven't gotten to that yet, with being gone on the weekend and all. Hopefully soon. Although my parents are coming now for the whole weekend, and typically our tree tradition is something we do "just" the 4 of us (or sometimes just me and the boys). So I have to decided if I want to do it while my parents are here or just wait until next week. :)
Hooray for a lovely massage! I'm glad you were able to reschedule that after your shouldless-days-that-weren't! I was also someone firmly on Team Decorate After Thanksgiving but, like you, the pandemic changed things for me! There is something really nice having the Christmas tree up and reading by the glow of the lights in the evenings. <3
A massage sounds wonderful. It's something I have never really treated myself to, much less during the pandemic, but I think I would enjoy it (and it would probably relax me quite a bit).
I always love the pictures of the kids. They seems so sweet together :)
A high of my week just happened.
One of Christopher's coworkers just stopped by with a gift for me to hide under the tree for him. He said that Christopher made such a difference for him at work in the past while, with his outlook, and that it has really helped his mental health, and that he was almost about to cry. He said it meant so much to him, and so to surprise Christopher on Christmas morning with the extra gift. This really touched my heart, knowing that not only has Christopher helped me with my mental health over the past couple of years but that he is making a difference for people at work too. I hid the gift at the back of the tree, and I think he will be very surprised on Christmas morning.
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