After a rather restless night thanks to Christina’s restlessness, the kids were up around 7:00. I got their breakfasts and was awake enough by then that I just stayed up. Carole came out sooner than I expected, so we polished off the oatmeal and we actually had some quality time with the kids before Dave picked them up for Sunday school. We played keep-away with balloons. A good time was had by all, including Christina, since she got to eat and sleep during the hullaballoo.

After the kids left I tracked down the self-defense program I’d had bookmarked years ago: Tim Larkin’s Total-Focus Training. I want to take that class. He’s actually got a class in Dallas October 26, but it’s a Friday, and I can’t bring myself to take a day off of work barely two weeks after I start. So I’ll just have to keep an eye out for next spring.

After that and taking Christina for a while — it would be so great if she’d actually sleep during the day, though today she seemed a little under the weather, so I guess she had an excuse today — I started in on the playroom while Carole did laundry and watched Christina. I spent three to four hours in there, sorting through stuff and getting the bottom of the front closet emptied and the wood shelves stuck in there. It’s so much better now. The stuff I sorted and packed from off my old headboard is still in boxes beneath the headboard, but at least it’s all picked up and ready to take out as soon as we can clear some space somewhere else.

Dave called late in the afternoon to say that the kids wanted to sleep over here, which surprised us. It usually goes the other way, but not so much lately, since we’ve been back from Ohio. Get the feeling they missed us a lot more during our two weeks in Ohio than we realized. Anyway, after they got here I kept cleaning up a bit more, and then I got their dinner ready. I also put in Anchors Aweigh for them to watch. I’d intended to have them watch just the scene with Gene Kelly and Jerry the mouse (you know, from Tom and Jerry), but since they were paying attention to the story, I just let it go for a while. The fact that it had a little kid in it doubtless had something to do with that. Alexander said he wanted to watch more of it tomorrow. Good boy.

After they were in bed (with their new Build-a-Bear animals and their carriers comfortably with them), Carole fixed the Italian meatloaves we’ve come to love so much and we finished watching the Heroes original pilot with the commentary. We both tried to get Christina to sleep, but she was too revved up from the day, I guess. Finally I started in on all this journal updating, and now it’s almost 1:00 a.m. Great thing to do the night before starting a new job. Least with this one I can take a nap before going in.

Oh, first Angelina, and now Alexander seems to have run across some germ; he was complaining about diarrhea tonight. He came out again, I guess around midnight, to go to the bathroom. Carole came out to tell me that some of it wasn’t coming out “too easy,” and Alexander said that someone forgot to give him peas last night. Ha! It’s nice to know such things aren’t necessarily lost on him.

I’m falling asleep at the wheel.