It has been feeling like summer around here lately-beautiful weather, swim team practice has begun, backpacks are full of locker clean outs.
Isaac is home and settling in. Always an adjustment after living the dorm life. An adjustment for me grocery shopping wise, that kid can eat! He turned 20 so I shouldn't say 'kid'. I have a 20 year old!
Abbey has exams this week and will be a senior. A senior! It seems crazy. (This is not her exam face, that's quite different looking.) I love this photo of her. Happy, unstressed, young again, without the weight of the teenage world on her shoulders.
Matt has a short summer because freshman start early. He has plans to do nothing...and play some soccer. He came in first in his class in the junior high 5K. I'm so proud of him for trying hard and doing his best.
Andrew loves swim team and his friends-boy that kid is social. He cracks me up too. He is swimming one-armed for now even though he's not officially supposed to. In this photo, he is William McKinley, for his social studies wax museum. He told me TWENTY minutes before the bus came that day, "Mom I have to dress up as William McKinley." Twenty minutes! That's the best we could come up with under pressure.
Patrick is counting the days down. His kindergarten year is almost over, and he gets to play all day with his guys and his cars and his BFF Anderson.
I am counting the days down till this renovation is over, and loud hammers and people who aren't related to me aren't in my house. And that big dirt pile in my backyard is gone! I am imagining nice quiet evenings with a book and a glass of lemonade on my screened in porch, which is setting myself up for failure, because usually evenings don't involve sitting down with books and lemonade and why would that start now? A friend just told me I would love the book The Son, and I am officially making it my summer novel.
Janey loves being outside-she loves her swing and her slide and her walks...her walks take forever and she is not content like Patrick was, to just trek around the block, staying on the sidewalk the entire time. She wants to be the boss of the walks, and venture down driveways, or toe the street line, or stop and carry her scooter, and just sit and look around. I will admit sometimes it takes gallons of patience, not just ounces.
Right now I am loving her toddler days. She makes the funniest faces, and is starting to realize that gets her attention at the dinner table. She still hates the car and 20 minutes is her max. She loves berries, and watermelon and scrambled eggs and spaghetti.
My hands are full. My brain is full. I am often drained at the end of the day. I am still coming to the terms with the feeling of "settling in"-not have that expectation of adding "maybe one more" feels weird. A new phase of my life for sure. I loved loved loved that anticipation. I loved having new babies, I loved the excitement, I loved being pregnant (minus the first trimester). But Janey was a miracle and I am 45 and boy did my body let me know this last time that it met it's maximum capacity for growing little human life and the show much go on. And does it go on!, full throttle every day, so quickly I can't catch up. I did realize in Janey's first year at some point, that if I let the feelings of sadness and mourning the lack of future babies overwhelm me, I wouldn't be able to appreciate the gifts right before me. That's the thing about babies and toddlers and children and teens that I thank God I know-you can't have do overs. Every day is a gift. Every stage is enjoyable, if you take the time to enjoy it.
