Whew!

What a busy week! Sunday evening we had a gathering of Orthodox Christians from many different parishes and jurisdictions at our church. These are typical in most urban areas on Sunday evenings during Lent - they are called pan-Orthodox Vespers. But this year our parish decided to opt out of the Lenten rotation and host it after Pascha when we could be more celebratory and have meat and stuff. It was a lot of fun to see our friends from different parishes that we don't get to see very often. Since BOTH girls had fallen asleep in their carseats when we got there, I got a lot of reading done on my reading group book - The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. It's an interesting book about an immigrant family from India and their experiences (and those of their children). One of the parenting e-mail lists I've belonged to for years just started a branch-off reading list, so it's all online. I think it will be enjoyable. We have a month to read the agreed-upon book, and then a month to discuss it while we are reading the next book. This is our first book.

Let's see - Monday I had a Parent Action Committee meeting at daycare, which meant I had to finish up designing the brochure for the daycare center that I've been working on for a while. At first I designed the whole thing in the Gimp, but then the Deac told me about an open source desktop publishing program called Scribus. So I ended up using the Gimp for photo manipulation and the logo for the front page, then put everything into Scribus, which worked really well! I was able to save it as a .pdf file at the end, which is easier for emailing and printing. I am planning to use Scribus to do the Parish Directory, too - which I REALLY need to find the time to work on soon.

Tuesday I had physical therapy for my foot. It wasn't as helpful as the PT I had last week, but I learned a few more exercises to try to regain some strength in my toes. Then Tuesday afternoon I picked up the girls from daycare early for doctor AND dentist appointments? Am I a bad mom for scheduling them both on the same afternoon? It worked out well, anyway. Maura had her 3-year checkup. She is very healthy and the doctor has no concerns. She was 36.75 inches tall and weighed 33 pounds. According to the CDC growth charts, that puts her at the 95th percentile for weight to length. She's just starting to lengthen out, though, so I expect that to change a bit over the next year. Emmelia did not have a doctor appointment, but needed to get her pre-kindergarten vaccinations. She remembered from her 5-year check-up last fall that we were delaying her shots until this summer. As a result, she's been apprehensive about both the arrival of summer and kindergarten. So we decided to get her vaccinations out of the way. She got a DTaP shot, but since she had a slight reaction to her first MMR shot, we decided to draw blood for a titer instead of giving her the second shot... this she did NOT enjoy but she was brave and did it and was all done. Right? Except the doctor's office called yesterday to inform me that the vial of blood was LOST somewhere between the doctor's office and the lab. I'm heartbroken about making her have to go through that again. Both girls had good cleanings and check-ups at the dentist, and then we met the Deac for dinner and had a lovely evening.

Last night we had Kindergarten Orientation at the elementary school we are hoping Emmelia gets to go to in the fall. We are 6th on the waiting list, which will hopefully give her a spot, even if it's in the afternoon kindergarten section. Emmelia got to meet her potential teacher and look at the classroom, even play with some of the toys. She LOVED it and wanted to start kindergarten right away. It's kind of cruel to make her wait 4 months... and will be worse if she doesn't get into this school! Keep your fingers crossed!

I have been working hard on getting caught up in my certification review class. It's time consuming, but I'm excited about being prepared and passing the exam this summer.

So tonight I'm hoping for a very relaxing evening at home, perhaps an early bedtime for the girls. All these evening activities are taking their toll on all of us!