I'm not the only one who's been busy this afternoon. Adam updated Emma's site as well.

Note: Sorry for all the bitching and moaning of late. Finally, I'm on the mend. Certainly not back to 100 percent, but Adam said last night, "It's the first night I've gone to bed fairly certain you'd be alive in the morning." So, getting better.
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We told Emma that after Hanukkah, we'd have to go through her toys and find some stuff to give to people who need them more than we do. (We usually do a post-gift-occasion cleaning out of old stuff anyway, but Michael Rosen's Our Eight Nights of Hanukkah gave us the idea of presenting it to her as tzedakah.) Today, she picked, on her own, toys to send to a baby on the way, and I went through the toybox, digging through the piles of fast-food toys, abandoned jacks and foam letters. Mostly, I just put pieces back where they go. I did make a huge give-away pile, including a few toys she did play with occasionally. I also consigned the tent we got her last Hanukkah (which was occupying a huge corner of our den) to the closet and rearranged things a little.

Suddenly, it looks like grown-ups live here! She still has a toybox in the den and toys too big for it piled here and there. But they no longer dominate the room. It's a very nice change of pace. We finally shoved her high chair in the backyard shed a few weeks ago, so the kitchen looks all adult, too. (She'd been sitting in "big" chairs for a year or more when we ate out or at friends' houses, but she still liked the high chair at home. She fit in it just fine, and there's a lot of conveinence to having a tray to catch spills. But boy, did losing it free up some room.) With the new faucet Adam gave me for Hanukkah and installed himself, I couldn't be happier with my home right now. (Just ignore those dust bunnies. I do.)

One thing we will have to find a place for is ALL THE DOLLS Emma got for the holiday. Five. Five separate people gave her dolls. Two "babies," one small soft doll, one "big girl" doll and one young Sleeping Beauty. (Yes, "Huh?" is an appropriate reaction.) Adam's going to put up a shelf in her room to hold them all. But all my girly-girl fears were unfounded, at least so far. She's hardly paid them any attention at all. Does make me wonder if friends and family want to nudge her that way, though ...

She does love the dollhouse, and after watching her send the baby sailing out a window and making a lamp dance around the room, I'm not worried about any gender effect it might have. She's having a great time with pretend play.

I'm still very glad our gifts to her were unisex, though. To the gift, they could've been given to a boy or girl -- a LeapPad, a U.S. map puzzle (which she's already getting good at, and it's 50 pieces), a stamp set, some books, and some kick-ass gears that she's been coveting at Jack's house for a year or more. And it does make me oddly glad to see her reach for them instead of the dolls. The only one that's grabbed her attention for very long is the young Beauty, and then only to pretend to eat the ice-cream sundaes that came as accessories (no, I don't know why. It's weird).

All in all (and it's easier to say this when I can breathe a little easier), it was a good holiday. And despite the massive piles of gifts she opened, my house looks less cluttered than before. Yay.

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Note2: Em's Library Basket -- in the sidebar -- is chock full of new books. Take a look.

A new post is up at DotMoms.

I promise, it doesn't mention snot or coughing or illness once. Go check it out. And tell me what you call your 'gina (or other parts).

Giving up Christmas when I converted never bothered me. At least, not much. Adam and I had been celebrating a seriously scaled-down version since we got married, just stockings on either side of the mantel with the menorah in the middle. I never wanted to have a tree or anything, it just didn't seem respectful of him. While in conversion class, we stopped completely, and obviously haven't celebrated it since.

Hanukkah is a great holiday. It's much more low key, in theory is less commercial (though our stack of presents ended up rivaling any under a tree) and is all about food, family and faith. But that's not why I didn't mind giving up Christmas.

Christmas sucked when I was growing up. Always. There was always a car broken down, Mom would fight with some guy, the presents were always cheap and crappy. I never got what I wanted, even though my wishes were pretty low. There was one Christmas, very cold for Oklahoma, with sleet and snow. The car we had didn't have a heater, so we drove to Grandma's house with a candle on the dash, trying to provide some warmth. Stopping every few miles to pour water on the windshield and quickly scrape before it froze again.

I could list the myraid examples of bad Yules -- the drunk uncle fighting with everyone, someone passed out in my bed before noon -- but I think you get the picture.

This year, though, it's feeling a lot like Christmas. Don't get me wrong, the gifts have been wonderful (more about this when I'm feeling better), spending time with Bryan and Jenn is great, Emma learning the blessing as we light the candles warms my heart. (She says "shammos," the candle you light the others with, in the sweetest way.) We're establishing good traditions with her, and I love that.

But I couldn't feel any worse physically. I'm getting very little joy out of the holiday or spending loads of time with her. We gave in today and canceled the Phoenix trip, after days of agonizing and hours last night of trying to find a way for Adam to go and take Emma with him. My flight was nontransferable, he couldn't use it OR the credit for it once we canceled. The flight he was on (he was supposed to go for two days, which we planned late, so he was flying separately from Emma and I) was overbooked. We couldn't find anything for less than $1,000+ roundtrip, and since he didn't feel comfortable leaving me for more than a day or two, that just wasn't feasible. We couldn't make it work.

And I feel horrible about it, on top of all the crap my body is going through. His family, particularly his mom, has been looking forward to seeing us for months. It was going to be a wonderful time. But there's no way I could've handled the flight -- and thanks to those of you who commented and sent emails of concern. You were right.

So this Hanukkah feels like Christmas. My house is a pit. People are upset, disappointed and worried. We don't even have any food here, because we were planning to be out of town. I'm either clutching my chest in pain or struggling to take a breath. Happy damn holidays.

Sigh. It's turned into pneumonia. And somehow knowing that makes me feel worse, if that's possible. The diagnosis confirms what I've been thinking -- I haven't been this sick in years. The pain in my chest is astounding, so much so that my raw and speechless throat just seems a mild bother. I do worry, though, that after a few nights of Adam doing all the reading and singing to Emma, she won't want me to when I'm well. Silly, I know. But more than anything else, it kills me to not be able to read to her.

I'm trying, mostly unsuccessfully, not to feel sorry for myself. And not to think about Thursday, when Emma and I have to fly to Dallas, change planes in massive DFW, where I always end up with the gates farthest apart, and then fly on to Phoenix by ourselves. I was worried about doing it alone under the best of circumstances, now I don't even know if I could make the walk alone. And it's not like I can dose up on codeine and then be capable of taking care of her. Hanukkah isn't the fun it should be. This break isn't much of one. All I want to do is sleep, because that's the only time I don't notice that all of my simple functions -- breathing and swallowing, in particular -- cause me pain. Poor me.

The bright spot in all this is Bryan and Jen. They've been amazing. Taking complete care of Emma, including Jen taking Em to the boys' soccer game so I could have the house to myself, and even cooking tonight's Hanukkah feast (and what incredible latkes they were). I feel like the worst hostess ever, but they don't seem to mind.

There's never been any doubt that marrying Adam was the best decision of my life. But it's not just because of the man he is, though that would of course be enough. His family is just icing on the cake. But oh, what icing.

Bryan and I email back and forth, all day, every day. Emma has talked every day for the last six months, since we last saw them, about Uncle Bryan and Aunt Jenny. They moved to Oklahoma when Emma was five months old and were a near-daily presence in her life until this May. Bryan finished his MBA, and they moved home to Phoenix for a brief spell before a fall in Chicago so Jen could go to the French Pastry School.

I could go on and on about how much they mean to us. About how Bryan is the brother I always wished Jesse could be, about how much they make us laugh, about how much we hate that they're no longer 20 minutes away. About how when folks complain about their brothers and sisters-in-law, we have nothing to say. We couldn't have picked a better pair if we'd had the whole world to choose from. It's not that "well, they're family" view that a lot of folks have about their siblings. They're our good, good friends, and we're lucky to have them.

The last few days have been hell, and I've got a few more of those kind ahead of me. But Jen and Bryan have made them easier on me. We'll see you in Phoenix, soon. And I hope to be better and buy everyone a few rounds!

I woke this morning with my head a tiny bit clearer, my chest a teeny bit lighter and my voice missing. The ache is rapidly returning to my chest, though, so I guess it's back to the medicine cabinet for me. Not being able to talk -- unless you're 2 inches a way, you can't hear my labored whisper -- should prove interesting with Emma.

I haven't been this sick in a long, long time. My voice is all but gone (and by tomorrow, I'm sure it will be). It feels like my throat is just one raw, open sore. The pressure inside my head and in my ears is astounding. And that's nothing compared to the feeling in my chest -- it's alternately like a fat, not-so-jolly man is sitting on me and like a cannonball has taken up residence in there, just hanging out. I can't take a deep breath to save my life, and the smallest efforts, like taking a shower, leave me panting and holding onto a wall.

There couldn't be a worse possible time for me to be sick. Big props to Adam, Bryan and Jen (my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, who we haven't seen in months, have the misfortune to be visiting for a few days) for taking most of the Emma duty. But every time I crawl out of bed from a 4+ hour nap, Emma asks again, "Are you still sick?" "Are you feeling better now?" It's hard. Adam's afraid I don't like the Hanukkah gifts I've opened so far (and I do, they rock), because in my codeine-induced haze, it's hard for me to muster up any emotion. Emma wants me to dance around while the tiny radio in her dollhouse plays, and after one spin, I'm ready to collapse. She nearly cried the other day, because I had to tell her for the umpteenth time she can't crawl on my back right now. She just doesn't get what's going on.

I feel cheated that it's hit me at this time of year, right when everything should be cheery and fun. Instead, I'm wishing tomorrow were a workday so I could send Emma to day care and not feel bad about spending the day with the covers over my head. I've been looking forward to this break for months. It's not fair.

We fly to Phoenix in a few days to see Adam's mom. With any luck, I'll be better by then. And if not, I can hand Emma off and just go to the guest room and die, assuming I can make it through the plane trip with an excited preschooler. I can already picture she and I hoofing it through DFW, me pushing the stroller, car seat strapped on my back, diaper bag dangling from one arm, backpack full of toys from the other. Panting.