Happy New Year & Back to School

We had a lovely serendipitous New Year's Eve and New Year's Day -- we ran into friends Sue and Craig and their daughter Kaya at the South Orange/Maplewood First Night, and they kindly invited Fer and Wendy for a spur of the moment sleepover at their house, which freed us to hang out with our neighbors Dan and Amy and watch New Year's Rockin' Eve! Complete with a glass of wine, yet -- quite the luxury. Then on New Year's Day we met up with the girls and their hosts at dim sum in West Orange, totally yummy, and I spent the afternoon at Liz's relaxing and fending off meltdowns from tired children while Chris went to a local sports bar to watch a football game with Liz's husband Nick. Yesterday was the last day before school started up again today, and the morning and afternoon were great -- the girls went ice skating with a big group of friends in the morning, and then after some chill time back at home we went for a walk on the Reservation with the Cannings. But yesterday evening the anxiety kicked in and it was a pretty fraught bedtime. I decided to proactively sleep in the girls' room with them to head off a 3 a.m. wakeup and stressful back-to-sleep time. It worked, after a fashion. There was lots of tossing and turning especially by little one, which led to somewhat interrupted sleep throughout, but still better than being fully up for more than an hour in the middle of the night. This morning went well, though -- both girls got up and showered and dressed with a great attitude and we all got to where we needed to be on time. Now on to homework (oh dreaded homework) tonight, and we'll see how this evening goes. Hopefully we will avoid some of the stress that we experienced in September and the girls will settle back into our routines. It's hard for all of us to re-enter -- we had such a great vacation. But, as I wrote to a friend this morning, onward into 2012!