What's been shakin'?

Getting ready for the big Christmas festivities. Finished up shopping, delivered little things to my favorite neighbors, made some cookies, bought myself some new bras and underwear (Merry Christmas, darling. I love you.), got a haircut that my husband doesn't like so much, but I'm happy with, am obsessing over a Time-Life music collection, 10 soul CDs from the 50s,60s, and 70s. It is amazing and I want it.
Then I want to plan a fabulous soul dance party complete with good food, lots of friends, absent children and alcohol.
HA!
Not for another 4 months or so for any alcohol. Ah, the life of a midwife...always putting off those all-night soul parties. Sigh.

And now a word or two about sex...
I had an interesting conversation this week with a friend who is the same age as me. We've both had babies and nursed them around the same time. We both finished up with the nursing around the same time, but then she got pregnant again and did it all over. Thankfully, I didn't. Well now she's done nursing that one too, and we both admitted we think there is really something to that mid-30s Women Get Their Libidos at Full Force theory/myth. I've always enjoyed sex, especially before the children came along. We got through the co-sleeping for years and nursing for years and now that my hormones are all mine once again, my libido is huge! And what's even better is that, unlike my young 20s, I feel very happy in my skin (even though there's a little more of it and it has some stretch marks). This means I can enjoy sex with my whole being, not just sporadically between thoughts of what my butt looks like from that angle, or what the time is for fear I'll only get 4 hours of sleep before work in the morning (ahh, young 20s sex).
During the co-sleeping/nursing years, we had big leaky boobs, extra pounds I worried about and those anxious we-have-no-money-to-pay-our-bills thoughts during sex.

Now, I feel like a 16 year old boy. Who cares about what I look like?! Who cares if meals have to be very, very creative because buying groceries might make things a little *too* tight this week?
I'm really digging this! I feel like this is a nice little bonus streak between pregnancy/nursing and menopause.
Let's just hope I don't get pregnant with all these reckless hormones shooting about.

But then, dear husband has been working 12-16 hours a day this week, and 6 days a week for months. Sigh. I've finally hit my stride and the man is either gone or too tired to do much more than eat dinner and go to bed. If I had a cute pool boy around, I don't know what evil I'd be contemplating.
If I had a cute pool boy around, I would not be living in Michigan in the winter.

Besides raging (good) hormones, life is good. Getting over a cold, all of snow has melted but it's fah-reezing (12 degrees) today with high winds.

S got her ears pierced yesterday. Quite a rite of passage! She's so pleased. We had a lot of talks before this occurred about what it means to her to get her ears pierced, if she was mature enough to take care of them, etc. She's so happy, but bummed that she won't be able to show her school friends for 2 weeks.

Off now to prepare for tomorrow's C. eve party that will be here with my side of the family. Hopefully the impending babies will not take me away from the family at the important times, but if they do, then prayers that the births all go well.

Happy holidays!