Sigh

I'm going to get this out tonight solely so that I will have a post for February and not have another month with no posts!

Here are all of the things that have happened since the last post:
My mom left (and it was every bit as exhausting as expected without her here).
I had my follow up appointment and was declared to be healing well, but was officially kept on medical leave until Jan 1 because of the extent of the surgery.
Chris's parents and two of his sisters came to town.
Friends from Tech came to visit (just long enough to have dinner but it was great to see them).
Chris's birthday
Christmas Eve
Christmas
The day after Christmas the four of us (along with Chris's parents) got into two cars and drove to Tucson, Arizona to see Chris's grandparents. We came back on the second and Chris's parents came back the following weekend. It was a great trip - the boys travelled well and we also got to see Chris's other sister. It got below freezing while we were there which we found surprising, but we got some nice pictures of cacti and snow.
I went back to work.
Jacob had his checkup. You have never seen anyone more excited to have his blood pressure checked than Jacob.
Chris's parents left for Ireland.
My birthday
Chris started classes in what will hopefully be the last semester of his Masters program.
I got a MRSA infection (long after anyone thought there was a risk of that). Luckily we caught it quickly and 10 days of antibiotics knocked it out.
We watched the 49ers in the Super Bowl.
We bought plane tickets for the boys and I to visit Atlanta at the end of March while Chris finishes up his thesis.
Jacob missed his school Valentine's party because he got a stomach bug - which he kindly shared with everyone else.
We were all better in time to go to a birthday party for one of Jacob's friends. You haven't seen chaos until you've seen a 4 year old's birthday party at a bowling alley. Fun, but very loud.
I got the flu (which, sadly, I passed on to Chris). The boys and I got flu shots, Chris did not. Apparently it didn't matter this year.
I signed up for a 5K in May that is at night with glow sticks.

Somewhere in there, we went hiking with the boys. We were in a park with trails for mountain biking and horseback riding in addition to hiking so each trail intersection was marked accordingly. Jacob was very excited about the signs, having recently learned what a circle with a line through it means. We came to a sign that had a picture of a bike with an X over it, a picture of a dog with an X over it, a picture of someone on horseback and a picture of a person with a hiking stick. Jacob, with all of his enthusiasm, ran up to the sign and said "This one says no bikes...no horsies by themselves..." I'll be honest, I don't know what he said after that. But I will admit that the picture of the dog did look a lot like a horse.

Also, I realized that I never really talked about Alex and the fact that his language exploded about the time of my surgery. Not coincidentally, that was the same time he moved to the twos class at school. But really it was quite amazing and really, now that I think about it, not that different from when he started walking one day. I mean, he had been saying words and even putting a couple words together but suddenly he started saying things like "No mommy I don't want that one, I want that other one over there". And while I still need to do some interpretation he usually speaks clearly enough for other people to understand. Though it does help if you have some context. Ever the train lover, one of his favorite things to talk about is locomotives...which I love to hear him to say because it comes out "mocomolives". He has taken to proclaiming to anyone who will listen that he is two and that Jacob is four and to charming strangers whenever he has the opportunity.