• Having a house on the market is a very frustrating thing.  Especially when said house is in another city.  Our realtor finally re-worked our numbers for us and we've come down on the price a little bit.  I always felt like we were asking a bit too much for it - so now I'm feeling better about our asking price.  If you all need something extra to pray about, please pray that "that" someone will look at the house and fall in love with it just as we did 4 years ago.  


• Iliya talks nonstop, now.  I mean, when he's awake, his mouth is going.  This is not a bad thing...it just means that by bedtime, my brain is mushy from carrying on so much conversation - even if it is for only a few hours in the evening!  The great thing about him talking so much is that you just never know what he's going to say.  I really need to write stuff down more than I do - but the kiddo just really makes me smile with some of the things he says.  

For instance, tonight, he was telling me that my eyes were black, like Elmo's eyes.  I couldn't figure out what in the world he was telling me - finally, I realized that Elmo's eyes are really just 2 big white circles with black pupils in the middle...and Iliya was making the connection that I also have black circles in the middle of my eyes.  So we talked about pupils and irises...and then he got really close to my left eye and said something I couldn't really understand - "mobbles.  Mobbles, mama!"  After he went around the world, saying something about grandmom and granddad, and nana and papa...and then all but poking me in the eye, I finally had a lightbulb moment.  "OHHHHH," I replied, "You think my eyes look like marbles?"  Yep, that was it.

• Oh yes, today...today I filled out my application for my degree.  I've been slowly working on my M.S. - one class at a time - for almost 5 years, now.  If all goes as planned, I should be graduating in May!  I told my advisor that I was nervous...I've been working on this for so long, now, that I won't believe I'm done till I am walking across that stage.  And then, as much as I enjoy school, I think I am done.


• Just a piece of advice...if - while taking a nap at school - a child starts crying in his sleep, and saying, "NO!  No, mommy.  No, daddy!" just chalk it up to a dream.  If you need to tell an overly tired, overly stressed mother about it, that's fine...but when she makes mention of the fact that sometimes (during times of transition), her child seems to have dreams like that at home...don't laugh and say, "Well, you'd think y'all are doing something to him to make him have dreams like that."  It's not cool, because even if you're joking...it's not nice to joke like that with said mother...especially on a day that was very stressful.

• Speaking of school and difficult transitions....Iliya has had a hard time coming back to school after Christmas break.  Every day, when I drop him off, it has been one of those "pry him off of me so I can leave" kind of days.  It's just par for the course for having our routine interrupted so severely.  But today, he got out of the car without a fight...helped me hang his bag up...and walked up the stairs to the drop-off point (by himself, which is HUGE, because I usually have to carry him!).  And he went in the door and gave me a kiss...and as I drove away, I looked at the windows and saw a smiling face waving "good bye" to me!

• Potty training is going a bit slower than I'd anticipated.  Mostly because my plan of putting Iliya in big boy underwear when we're at home together is just not so good.  I mean, really, I realized this morning that the only day that we have any amount of quality time together is on Saturday.  On Sundays, we have church & nap - not really any good uninterrupted time to "practice" and in the evenings, we come home, play/read for a little while, then I have to cook dinner, bath, and bedtime.  So I'm not rethinking the whole potty training thing...so much as I'm just recalculating what, exactly, I need to do.

• And I believe that's it for now.  I'm sure there's more...but I'll just save it for sometime when it's not 11:30 p.m., and I have to be up at 5:45 a.m.!