A Big Update

Hello m'friends!  Thought I'd do a quick update.

I have so much, really, that I could say, but Cade's about to walk in the door from school, and Mila is sneaking M&M's on the new carpet when she should be eating them in her high chair, and I'm feeling rather distracted.  I just sat down and tried to catch up on a few blogs that I haven't read since before all the holiday madness.  Thought I should do a quick recap of what's been happening with us:

Christmas was awesome - it really is an even funner holiday filled with more joy when you have it so spend with your own kids.  I love the innocence and excitement and joy that sometimes adults don't let you see on Christmas, but on kids, it's transparent on their faces.  Does that make sense?  Anyway, we all definitely had a great holiday.  Brandon got a whole new wardrobe, which he needed because now that he is in a managment position at work, he wanted to class things up a little.  And by "class," I mean "slim straight" jeans instead of "bootcut."  He still refuses to wear skinny jeans, but I am working on it!  ;)  He also got a hella huge TV.  And I mean that literally; I have quite honestly never seen a TV so big!  It's 73", and to give you some perspective, I'm 5'11", and only 71" tall!  So the TV is longer than me!  But it's fun.  :)

Cade got lots of presents and even a tramp that we're going to set up in the spring.  He also got a dog which we had to promptly find a new home for after a week, because I had a severe allergic reaction that made me swell and hive up and has had me glued to my neb and a massive dose of steroids.  :(  So that was no fun.  But...he still had a great Christmas.

Mila was still rather clueless about it all, but seemed to have fun opening her presents and just basking in the excitement of the day.  She is freaking OBSESSED with candy and won't EVER stop talking about it.  It's seriously embarrassing - I promise I feed her healthy crap too!  At the end of this month she'll be 18 months.  Can't believe how fast time has flown by!

I am loving living here and we are very happy and well adjusted at the new place.  I have found two amazing friends that I'm still kind of baffled I was even able to find!  K and L live next door to me and right across the street, and we have become fast friends and confidants.  This is basically my first time making "normal" friends that I didn't meet in treatment, so I've had my share of challenges and insecurities, but I am having so much FUN and am just loving getting to know them and be their friend.  I feel like God gave me a little blessing that I was able to find them.  When we first moved here, the loneliness I felt was so crushing.  But I don't feel that way at all anymore.  And it's great.  :)

I'm also still hangin in there with treatment stuff.  Still have quite a bit of weight to gain but have already gained a significant chunk and am sort of just plugging along.  I've definitely had my share of hurdles to get past medically that have interfered with weight gain...a stomach infection, horrible diarrhea, crippling anxiety, and barely functioning lungs have kind of made things tough, but for the most part I feel pretty past all that and am starting to balance out a little.  I am so invested in going to therapy and dietary and group and making it work and stick this time.  Things are tough but I ultimately feel good with what's happening and with the direction my life is going in right now.

Been dealing with some horrible sleep stuff...I don't know if I mentioned earlier, but the past several months have been pretty bad, because I've been trying to deal with lucid dreams.  They've gotten so bad that a lot of the time I am unsure if things have really happened, or if I just dreamed they happened.  In the morning when I wake up I have to check my phone and text messages/emails/etc to see if I can find any evidence of something happening, or if it was something I only dreamed.  It sounds nutty, I know.  But my memory is kind of horrible right now and the anxiety + lucid dreams are making me so crazy that I'm kind of losing touch with reality.  :/  My tx suggested writing in a journal every few hours (super quickly) about the things that have just happened, so that I can return back and read it to stay grounded, and that is helping.  I'm also going to get into a psychiatrist to help with the anxiety/sleep thing because I just cannot function like this.

I dyed my hair RED!  And I LOVE it.  Proper picture to come soon; mostly I am not posting one today because Blogger still wants me to pay to post photos and that's just ridiuclous.  :/  I've wanted to dye it for years and have never dared...and so finally, I just decided to get over it and do it.  And it's so great - you can definitely tell I dyed it, but it's not so overly done that it's terribly overwhelming.  It's subtle.  And such a fun change!

Okay, that's all I guess - just a rudimentary and rather boring update.  Maybe next time I'll try to think of something more scintillating!  I hope 2013 has treated you all well so far!  And also - if you haven't seen "Les Mis" yet, get your butts out the door to see it!  That movie is making me a little more human, a little less robot - I NEVER cry in movies, but I was unabashedly sobbing during this movie - a total life changer.  So amazing!

Okay, random, I'll stop now, bye!