It feels like we have been so busy, all five of us, that's been hard to keep up with the blog! Where to start? Well, we've had three different plumbers at the house over the last couple of weeks to try to address our low water pressure. We've gotten terrible news (you'll have to replace the entire service from house to water main at the street, there goes your tax refund!) and then great news (nah, replace just this one little pipe inside the house!) and then bad news (worse than before) but then finally the plumbers got the city water dept to come look at the connection between the main and our house and it was determined that it was the city's problem and it would be fixed on the city's dime! This morning we've had the road blocked off so dump trucks and excavators and other various trucks and equipment as well as five or ten city workers can work on the water, and when I just turned on the kitchen faucet, WHOA! Hold on to your hats, we have some water pressure. Which is fantastic. Also not being able to clean or do laundry today means nothing to do during nap except catching up on emails and doing a blog post. So I am hoping this is the end of our water troubles!

Having all the plumbers et al in the house so many times has meant it's been hard to keep up with the daily laundry, cleaning and cooking that I do and catch up with when I'm home, so it's felt a little more overwhelming than usual these last few weeks trying to keep up. On top of it all I feel like I'm drowning in work, when I'm there, which is not often, and next week I'm taking two days off to spend time with my friend Claire who is visiting for the week. So I might--gasp!--have to go into the office this weekend to spend a little time on my cases.

But it's not just Mama Lovebo who has been feeling busy these days. Theo and Beckett are getting into the winter recreation spirit, with weekly skiing trips and lessons with Daddy starting last week, and weekly ice skating lessons starting tomorrow. They also had a fun birthday party last weekend and one each this weekend and next to look forward to, plus a playdate with their friend Walter tomorrow, so managing their schedules is becoming interesting as well.

Reed is continuing to plow through life, eating and grinning through it all. He loves to feed himself so he seems to choose any type of table food that he can grab and jam in his mouth over any type of "baby" food, if given a choice. He ate about a quarter cup of bean and corn chili a few weeks ago, ate lots of penne with red sauce a couple nights ago, and enjoyed a couple of pieces of pork, green beans, and roasted butternut squash last night. He is waking up at night around 4am and then around 6 or 6:30 but it seems like his schedule is shifting a little bit lately. He may be getting ready to take a longer midday nap instead of a morning and an afternoon nap, which I think the boys switched to around a year.

In other news, we're actively investigating kindergarten options for the boys. We have attended an open house for the Syracuse Latin School, a rigorous, application-based school that just started three years ago. Many of our friends and neighbors have kids who attend, and they are universally happy with the experience. It requires an IQ test and then classroom observations as well as consideration of unknown other factors but I think we'll apply and see what happens. There's also a science charter school that we know much less about but seems to have some good programs, so we'll probably apply for that as well since it's just a lottery. It's anxiety-producing to think we already have to be concerned with school options and we're only in kindergarten! But it's also exciting that there are options and that we could find a school that suits the boys.

So that's our family update! One of these days we'll capture some pictures of skiing, skating or playing in the snow and put them up here!