Back of the pack

You know what is sort of hard for me? It was hard last spring to see everybody else's kids get out of school for the summer while mine still had weeks left. Weeks I tell you! I am also finding it hard to watch everybody else's kids start school before mine.

It's odd though. I have this tug of war of opinions inside.  If you had asked me at the beginning of August I'd have told you I can not wait.  Please!  Get them out of the house for a bit! But then the end of summer happened and oh you end of summer you.  You are a game changer.  Family trips and hot sunny days and then another family trip.  My children are so pleasant during this, the lazy days of summer.  So now that I've started to really enjoy our days, tomorrow is meet the teacher.  Then one last vacation hurrah up in Duluth.  Then there's the first day of school on the very same day that grandma and grandpa leave.

Well, we certainly are waving the summer out with a bang!

Being Married

Dan brings me home sour cream and onion chips when he finds extras around work.

He always, and I mean always nicely hangs up his work clothes right as he takes them off, but never remembers about socks.

He will wake up at midnight to check, just one more time, about almost anything that my mind conjures up to worry about.

He knows my quirks, like how when it's hot I still like to sleep with something over my torso and arms, but please you might kill me if you try to cover my feet.

It has me thinking about being married and how it is of course about a flow of abiding love.  It is about a commitment that we have for each other.  It is about all the really deep and huge things in life.

But.

It is also about the million tiny things.  About finding them and being able to laugh at their ridiculousness and love each other for them.

I love my husband's crazy collection of snap shirts. And how even though he's decided that he doesn't like strawberry milk anymore, he will still take a swig from Charlotte's just to be sure.

Oh, and he sleeps just about anywhere.  Man I find that funny.  Last night he said he thinks he shouldn't be as tired as he is.  Sounds crazy to me that he would think that someone doing all he's doing wouldn't be tired.

Percie

I caught my dog licking the wall tonight.

I thought it was odd.  Perhaps she's going crazy.

I've already got to deal with a few peculiarities from her. Now licking walls?

Then on closer inspection I realized she had found where the smallest child had spilled his blue otter pop down the wall.

She was helping me clean!

Good dog.

Happy August The First

I told myself that I was going to post more because, well because I like to have the record, but also my grandma (hi!) likes to read it.  Did you catch that everyone?  My eighty something grandma knows about blogs.  She is also on Facebook.  She and grandpa are also planning a super vacation at the moment.  She also never stops moving.  I want to grow old like my grandma.  She seeks out friends, she works out, she tries new things and keeps up with technology.  So anyway, the point is that if my grandma is going to the effort of learning about blogs I should at least blog so she has something to read.  Hopefully the rest of you like it too.

The hard part is that my topics tend to whirl around the baby is CA-RAZY.  I went back in the archives last night to figure out if I'm over reacting and the other two were like this but I've just blocked it out.  Because you do that as a mom.  You block whole sections out of life.  Like that time that Greg woke up at 5 am for a few months.  I would make him a sippy cup the night before and hand it to him in bed then go back to bed myself because there is absolutely no reason to be up that early.  That I blocked out until a friend asked me what I did during that time because she had a similar problem.  I forgot it even happened!

So I checked.  When Charlotte was this age she was more rascally than I remembered, but we managed to buy a 100+ year old house and remodel it.  I would complain about only having an hour to work on it that day.  An hour!  Ha!

When Greg was this age I drove across the country by myself and spent a month living with different family members while Dan did an away rotation in Utah.  Greg loved his cousins (especially Travis which I'm pretty sure will be a life long type of thing), cars, and trucks.  There was even a time that I had my grandparents (my kids great grandparents) watch them alone while I was feeling sick.  I can read between the lines a little to see that he was a handful at times, like all 16 month olds are.

So maybe I am over reacting, but this kid is yet again nothing like I'm used to.  It humbles me and makes me realize that I have absolutely no reason to be advice giving to anyone.  Every kid is so different.  I guess I'm a different mom too.  Oh but I love them all so very much.  So very very much.