High: November in DC is the absolute best and this year might have been the prettiest it has ever looked.
Low: Amazon announced this area as their new HQ2 so I have been utterly despondent that we will now officially never be able to buy a home and live here long-term.
High: We hosted our 8th annual Donut Extravaganza and it was delicious! So was Thanksgiving! And all the fall treats! And Christmas cookies!
Low: Whyyyyy is the baby weight not budging at all? Insert confused face emoji.
High: Etta started sleeping through the night in the beginning of November at 5.5 months, just like Henry.
Low: For a couple weeks, she went back and forth almost every other day between sleeping 11-12 hours without a peep… and waking up at 5 am with NO INTEREST IN SLEEPING. Not so great.
High: We are now officially in the blissful sleep land of scheduled and long naps, and lengthy and quiet nights. HOORAY.
High: I love our apartment at the holidays. Fires! Mantle for garlands! Picture window for trees! Our little place is so cozy and we loved getting everything set up before December even rolled around.
Low: I have struggled a lot with parenting in our space lately. The days are dark, and Etta wakes from her nap at 4, so by the time I have nursed and we are ready to head out- it is dark and cold. Thus, we’ve been inside a lot more and it just doesn’t bring out the best in my son or myself. The space, the lack of storage, the fact that every cabinet has to be packed just so due to space or things fall on me and they never are so things are always falling, the feeling that Christmas will bring more things to suffocate me — there have been some days of parenting from a place of space-focused frustration and I hate that.
High: My kids delight me daily, minute by minute and hour by hour.
Low: My kids try my patience, daily, minute by minute and hour by hour. The emotions of a two year old are not for the faint of heart and parenting at this age of “I can do everything MYSELF” is maybe more tiring than when I have to actually do everything myself.
Low: We have been slammed with one kid sickness after another this fall as the kids are in childcare, and both Henry and Etta came down with miserable awful colds last week.
High: I woke up to hear Henry coughing and crying a couple nights ago and I went in to offer some more water and cough syrup, only to be informed that he just needed “mommy snuggles in the chair.” Sick kids are the worst, but having my increasingly big and independent boy want to sleep on my chest for an hour? the best.
High: The semester is over! Christmas break is here! The academic calendar never stops being awesome!
Low: I had a lot of professional and publishing goals that just didn’t get met this fall. The adjustment to two kids was tougher than I anticipated and there just were as many hours of work time as I needed.
High: But all the same, I don’t regret how we spent our days as I look back on this fall. I worked during naptimes and my days at the office, but when I was home and my kids were awake? I focused on them. We played and explored and cooked and laughed and read and about that- I have no regrets. Articles didn’t get submitted, this blog was largely neglected, and my home was frequently less clean than I would like. But my family was loved well, and that is the best thing I can say.
The Art in Life 
They’re so cute! And I am juuuust a tiny bit jealous of your sleep situation! I have been having a hell of a time getting Sam to sleep at ALL, let alone through the night. He wakes up the second I put him down and has completely stopped falling asleep in the swing and Rock n Play on his own 😦 This kid looks at my attempts to put him on a routine or schedule and pretty much laughs in my face.
Henry looks so awesome on that scooter! I feel like Maeve would love something like that too. She’s got the energy of a thousand suns, so I totally get how hard the indoor time is. We’ve been doing a lot of jumping (either on our bed or their little trampoline, which was a great investment!), bean bag tosses, stuffing stuff into bags she carries around… basically anything gross motor I can think of that doesn’t destroy the house!