We were going to go over to the Boneskes’ to celebrate the new year tonight, but when Milly woke up her eye was so covered with crusted-up gunk that she couldn’t even open them, so we took her to the pediatrician.  They said it wasn’t pink eye and gave us some eye drops for her, but we figured it would be best for her if she could just rest and take it easy at home.  Nick and Eli came over though, and Amanda and I played board games with Nick into the wee hours of the night.  Yes, exciting, I know.  Hey, we enjoyed it.

Let’s back up and discuss the rest of the day.

Milly’s appointment for the doctor was at 11:00, which was well past her usual nap time.  She was fussy off and on, but considering that we were there until around 12:00 without her having even a wink of a nap, I think she did pretty well.  While we never were able to get all the crud off her eyelashes, it didn’t build back up after she did eventually take a nap.  She seems to be doing better.

When we got back from the pediatrician, I was going to put Milly down for a nap while Amanda ran to the store.  Instead, Milly wanted to stay outside and ride in her wagon.  I got Bruce (Harvey was on loan to Mary, one of our neighbors and a co-worker of Amanda’s, who wanted to use him to tire her dog, Lola, out) and put him in the wagon to ride along.  They both seemed to enjoy it.

I worked on the designs for my new idea a bit.  I finally decided to just work on a good content layout and then see what headers would work well with that.  The content area turned out very nice, if I do say so myself.  It felt like sort of a breakthrough.

We watched a lot of Veggie Tales today.  We put in one video with a few of the Silly Songs for Milly, and Eli also later watched it.  The credits featured remixed versions of all the songs, which just about had me cracking up.  When Nick was putting Eli down to sleep for the night later Amanda was dancing to it, which was pretty entertaining in a few ways.

Milly finally went down for her nap at 2:25 and stayed down until 6:00.  Amanda said something about it being a long time, but considering that she usually takes two naps, I didn’t really think much of it.

While Milly was napping Amanda and I played a game of Dominion, which Amanda and I both thought I was going to win, though I did not.  I also helped Amanda make some white chili by chopping up the chicken during Milly’s nap.  I would have chopped up the onion too, but since I’m smart I suggested we use the blender on a low setting to do it, and that worked great.

Nick and Eli got here around 7:00 and ate dinner with us.  When we went to put Milly down we gave her her second dose of eye drops.  I held her and Amanda applied the drops, but after we did that Milly was really angry with Amanda.  She wouldn’t let Amanda touch her and even moved her hand away from her.  Amanda had been upset at how upset Milly had been the first time we put in the drops, so she was really upset this time.  I told her I’d do the drops from now on.

Milly was really sweet just a few minutes later though.  We were saying prayers when she suddenly just pulled me in (or pulled herself more towards me, as I was holding her) and gave me a good hug.  Then she pulled Amanda over to us and hugged us both.  I got a little choked up, honestly.  She’s not usually much of a snuggler, and the purposeful way in which she did it was just so sweet.

After the kids were both put to bed, Amanda, Nick and I played games the rest of the night, turning the TV on at five ’til midnight to watch the ball drop and commemorate the new year.  Amanda and I had a midnight kiss, and since Nick was all by himself we both gave him one at the same time (on the side of her head, which wasn’t nearly as weird as I know it sounds from reading it).

As far as the games went, we played our inaugural game of San Juan, which is sort of a spin-off of Puerto Rico.  It’s a version of it that it completely done with cards.  It’s a bit simpler too, and we enjoyed it.  Amanda won that one.

After that we played a game of Dominion, which Nick won.  That was what we were playing at midnight, so Nick signed the box with both dates and a “Happy New Year!”  I remarked that 15 years from now Milly and Eli would be playing Dominion and see that we were playing it on New Year’s Eve and they’d talk about what losers we are, but Eli would say that his mom must be cooler than the rest of us because she was obviously off doing something much cooler than playing board games.  (Working on New Year’s Eve isn’t cooler than board games though, Eli.)

I had said earlier that since we had three games to play it would be cool if each of us won one game, so that sort of put the pressure on me to win our game of Carcassonne.  I did not (but Amanda did).  However, I did win the second game of it that we played, so that counted for something.

Nick and Eli took off after a little bit and Amanda went to bed.  I was jonesing to play some Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, so I did that for about an hour before heading to bed myself.

Zach Dotsey