Sayonara January...and Good Riddance

January was a month from hell, and hopefully it does not represent what is to come for the rest of the year. But, all I can say is that I'm glad it's over, and every other month of 2007 has to be better than this one!

The most benign reason for my disappointment in the month of January was that we got essentially NO snow. This has been an incredibly mild winter, and although most people think that this is a good thing, I think it's absolutely awful. I am a snow person and I would love FEET and FEET of snow. I don't even mind shoveling, it's good exercise and very therapeutic! Sledding, skiing, snowmen, it's all good for me. To top it off, not only was there no snow, but there were extreme fluctuations in temperature, from the mid-sixties to five below.

I believe the fluctuation in temperatures caused the next major headache for January, and that was that we could not stay healthy or keep our kids healthy. The whole family has been sick for at least four weeks. We're finally getting better, but our kids are still sick. This week it's RSV, that put the little one on a nebulizer every four hours; and four, count 'em, FOUR ear infections. We've tried every antibiotic so far this month. All I can say is thank God for insurance, because we've had a ton of doctor's visits and a ton of prescriptions.

The warm weather was also an underlying cause for the saddest event in January, the death of our little dog. My husband and I got her before we were married and while we were in graduate school. She was a lonely pound pup and by far the cutest one there. She never really lost her puppy looks, and had SUCH a personality. On one of the sixty-degree days in January she was feeling her oats and jumped over the fence in our back yard and got hit by a car. I took her to the ER and they did emergency surgery to stop some internal bleeding, and then I took her to Tufts Veterinary School because they had a better equipped critical care unit. Unfortunately, she must have had a blood clot somewhere that let go and caused her to go into arrest two days later. It broke my heart. She was truly my first child and she was so good with the kids...we have proof:We'll never forget what a great pup she was, and she'll always be in our hearts.

So, heartbroken, we leave January behind and head into February hoping that things look up for us. We can't get our cute little critter back, but the other things we're doing our damnedest to take care of so that we can put the month from hell behind us.