As is appropriate at the beginning of the new year, I have been reflecting and looking forward. And when it comes to our family, I have decided that we have yet to find the new normal after adding Tebow to our lives.

It isn’t like we were completely in sync with one another before he was born, and I know we all knew things would be hairy for a little while afterward, but looking back, I think I can say we never found a groove to keep our family life running smoothly

We have been in a kind of flux for the last few months of 2009. It’s nothing I can really blog about right now, but it has been unsettling and left us with a lot of questions and no real answers. It left me a tad paralyzed, so routines were thrown to the side, papers piled up, and rules were ignored.

To make it even more unsettling (at least to me) the beginning of 2010 doesn’t look like a great time to be laying down new goals or routines.

I realized that the other day when I was trying to think about 2010 goals for our family. Anything I pin down as needing improvement or embellishment will probably have to wait until answers are given, recovery is complete, and our outlook is clearer.

BUT. It’s ok.

Because I can always tell myself (and my family) “We take it one day at a time.”

Day three of 2010 saw us recovering from illness. One room in the house got clean. And that’s ok.

Tomorrow I will set a goal (probably small) for that day. One day at a time. And 2010 has 362 more of them.

The end of our year finds us visiting with family in Ohio.

The end of our year brought a Christmas celebration where Fuller received a tricycle and Tebow enjoyed the paper.

The end of our year allowed us to delight in some snow.

The end of our year has brought us sick little boys who break my heart with their coughing, sniffling, fevers, and (only recently) vomiting.

The end of our year has us remembering the addition of a son and seeing a little boy turn into a big brother.

The end of our year lets us reflect on trips taken, family visited, and sights seen.

The end of our year shows us how blessed we are for the gifts God has given us and the multiple ways in which He has provided.

The end of our year has us looking forward to the next year to see exactly what’s in store for our family.

We took the boys to see Santa at the Choo Choo yesterday. While we don’t “do” Santa at home, we are open to photo ops of all kinds.

Fuller hasn’t grown up with Santa as his provider of gifts. He is well aware there is a Santa story somewhere in the Christmas mix, but it was recently evident to me how there are still some things we should talk about.

When we were leaving our viewing of Annie, Santa was around for kids to see and have a photo op. The line was quickly getting long and I was ready to go back to Mom’s, so I told Fuller we would find Santa somewhere in Chattanooga. My mom made a comment about how Santa is split up during the holidays so you see him in lots of places.

Fuller’s response was to loudly proclaim, “Well, I KNOW Santa is just make believe…”

Fuller was in the midst of crowd of parents and young children. I could have gone through the floor.

While I am happy that our son understands Santa isn’t real, I am NOT in the business of ruining other families’ Christmas practices. So we had to have a quick, hushed conversation about how some kids do think Santa is real and he should just keep quiet for now.

On Saturday Damon took off for the Auburn game with a friend, leaving Fuller, Tebow, and I to find fun here on Saturday. Instead of staying home and making sure Fuller had clean underwear on Monday (he does!) we took off for a gala. The neighborhood elementary school is undergoing change and people are getting heavily involved to make sure the change is for the better. The gala was an effort to show off the school and neighborhood services available to students and the community.

We went because there was free food and a bouncy house. Oh, and to support the school (something I did a lot of last year in the form of cookies and cupcakes). But mainly the free food and bouncy house were what drew us over there.

Since before last week we have been a bit preoccupied to fit in all things necessary into our days. We had playdates to keep, travel to accomplish, travel to recover from, laundry to start, laundry to finish, school work to plan and do, and somewhere in there we had to keep Tebow happy (not always successful in that). I have had many moments in the last two weeks where I had to ask, “Where did the day go? How did I not accomplish anything?” I’d see that we spent most of the day out of the house, and suddenly it would be 4 o’clock before we cracked open a school book.

It is often we push aside the fun stuff in order to get through our itemized to-do lists. But I have to remind myself, just like in the above picture, sometimes it is ok to have desert before lunch. So what if we start school at 4? At this point in our lives school doesn’t take that long, so scheduling morning playdates or museum trips is fine… it all gets done eventually. A few extra dishes in the sink isn’t going to ruin a trip to the playground and this past Saturday letting Fuller loose in a bouncy house instead of doing laundry was worth the sweat and sore feet.

As we work to figure out the rhythm of our days, I think scheduling a few deserts before lunch will help me feel less like I haven’t accomplished anything and more like desert is still something and it was great!

Yes, yes, I think changing diapers is fun. It is fun now that our family has started the switch to cloth diapers!

I know I blogged about it before Tebow made his arrival- I wanted to make the switch from disposables to cloth diapers. For me, it isn’t about being green, it’s about saving the green. I would get a knot in my stomach every time we bought disposable diapers. It just seemed like such a waste.

But making the switch completely was going to take some green that we just didn’t have. Plus, a friend of mine gave me the advice to not worry about cloth diapering (and all the decisions that went with it) until after we got to know our new kid. It totally took some stress off, but finally it came down to it- I didn’t want to keep buying disposables.

So, Damon and I hashed it out and decided to look at some different cloth diapering options. We bought a few, borrowed others, and I decided I really, really like the All-in-ones, one sized cloth diapers.

You might be thinking, what? In fact when I say cloth diaper, this is probably what you see:

And yes, this kind of diapers (known as prefolds), are still used by many cloth diapering parents. But cloth diapering has evolved into some easier and waaaaay cuter methods of cloth diapering. I tried the prefolds and it was ok, but not that easy. The all-in-ones are diaper covers where you stuff a pocket with an absorbent insert, which pulls away wetness, similar to disposables. When dirty, you just remove the diaper and wash it all later (every other day). If they are one sized, it means the diaper can be used from birth to potty training (usually).
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Fuller and I decided to make the two-hour trip down to Huntsville for Chattanooga Futbol Club’s 2nd game of the season against Huntsville’s NPSL team, Rocket City United. Thanks to our trusty GPS, we arrived at John Hunt Park (their city’s soccer complex) with about 30 minutes to spare.

On away trips, I like seeing how CFC measures up to the competition. Here are some impressions of RCU:

• JHP is a pretty nice facility. It was clean, well mowed and easily accessed from the highway. The place definitely has a sports park vibe that’s less “grand” than a stadium, but it really works for family outings.
• RCU’s ticket and parking prices are about double CFC’s. Adult & Youth tickets are $10 & $7 compared to $5 & $3 for us. However, they do cut you a break by setting youth ages at 10 to 17, so families with lots of kids won’t have to break the bank.
• What RCU lacks in graphic design (their logo kinda looks like a kid threw it together in MS Paint), they make up for in site decoration and SWAG. Vinyl player posters lined the walkways, fans received signed souvenir balls, and a local radio station had a remote broadcast setup. Nice.
• Bounce house. Small, but nice.
• Concession prices were VERY reasonable. Drinks were $2 (including a plastic souvenir cup) and candy or regular popcorn were $1. For an additional dollar, they offered popcorn inside a souvenir megaphone. Nice.
• Club members have access to the hospitality tent, which provides hot food and drinks (soft drinks, tea, & coffee; perhaps alcohol too?). Membership has its privileges.
• RCU has a mascot – Rocketman. Unfortunitly, it was NOT William Shatner.

All-in-all, a very well managed program.

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