Draft written by Shannon, posted by her mom, Gretchen.

I haven’t posted Emmie’s 19 month letter yet (lately the only thing that gets posted to this poor blog), and she’s almost 20 months. Oops.

We’ve been sick. Sicky sick sick. This has been a terrible year for illness, and we’ve been pretty lucky to so far have avoided some of the worst of the stuff that’s been going around. We’ve had friends with flu, pneumonia, norovirus, you name it, so to get away (so far) with just a couple bad ear infections and this dreadful cold… well, I still feel lucky even if I’ve been hacking up a lung for over a week now.

But I’m feeling more human now, just as poor Peter is succumbing, which is a very good thing, since there are approximately 1,242 loads of laundry that need washingdryingfolding, messes that need tidying, food that needs cooking, and all the other myriad little chores that build up when one can’t muster the energy to do more than the minimum necessary to keep