Sunday, September 25, 2011

This Sunday, This Fall






I managed to sleep in until 9 this morning. This was accopmplished by steadfastly ignoring K's elbow in my ribs and sleeping through his vaulting out of bed every 24 minutes to start another Caillou and Diego for the kids, who are, perpetually, little larks, no matter if they go to bed at 8 or midnight.

Felt great :)

Weather is wondrous after the long summer.... cool at night, comfortable during the day, and yesterday we moved our kitchen table to the porch to better enjoy it.

Right now, I'm on my third cup of coffee, K's mowing, kids are napping, and a long lazy afternoon stretches ahead. I have to clean the house. That's about it.

Yesterday sucked. Work-wise, family-wise, everything-wise, and so today is especially nice.

Brief portraits of the kids:

Annaliese, turning 4 in January, bright and contrary and so so so much like K. Contrary. Bossy. Pickle-loving. Very bright. Interested in how things work. "Tell me about this," she'll say, and then we are talking about the solar system, the mechanics of cranes. She is also my sunshine girl and my bablinga and she still can't sleep without her soft pink blanket. She is a bit tured of daycare, I think. She wants to be in the real world, with us, all the time. She tells me very night how she doesn't like to sleep, and I say I know, honey, you never have. This girl doesn't want to miss a thing.

I've started keeping the kids with me on Wednesdays, my day off from the store. Sometimes this means we putter and hang out. Last Wednesday it meant we drove a trailer-load full of used equipment to Memphis, sold it, and bought stuff for the store's newly opened Red Apron Cafe. This Wednesday I hope we'll hit the library and the park. I think it's helping with her daycare-fatigue.

And Caspian.

Caspian turned 2 in June, which makes him not even 2.5, and he's awesome. If you can get his paccy out of his mouth, he talks. He's extraordinarily kind for a toddler, sweet to people and animals alike. He starts conversations by asking "Did you have a dream?" On Friday, my longest day work-wise, I came home after dinner to him hugging me around my knees and saying in his serious lisping little voice, "I love you so much." He has a spot in our closet where he likes to hide. He loves his sister and wants to be with her most of the time. He bear-wrestles her, shows me how big he is, just learned to say "Caspian" instead of "Apian." He knows he's two. He is very, very funny, and when we go on walks, he'll stop, cock his head to the side, and say, "I'm gettin' TIRED," then run forward with his funny steadfast straight-backed serious run. He has kissable cheeks and big brown eyes and wherever we go, people smile at the sight of him. He told me he loved the UPS van upon first sight.

Of course, they also fight every five minutes, and find crayons and color on their walls during nap-time, and pee on the carpets, and whine and cry and get on my ever-last nerve. Yesterday, that very crap-day, I told my mom that I just wanted to hide in the closet where no one could talk to me and drink. (I didn't. DON'T WORRY EVERYBODY I'M NOT AN ALCOHOLIC. GOSH.)

I just went to check on them and they are in nothing but pull-ups, lying side-by-side in Annaliese's bed, sleepy-eyed, tattooed all over their stomachs and necks and cheeks with ballpoint pen (WHERE do they find these things???).

I wonder what they'll be like next fall.


Monday, September 19, 2011

tonight,after-dinner-and-bath

one photo....

Our new friend James, special forces, very bad-ass, also a photographer, took this pic fri night and I LIKE IT. which is amazing, since it was at the tail-end of a 13-hour work day and i was pretty darn grumpy and yelling at him for taking my photo at all.

as for pics of the kids, i have none. i am not sure where many things-- bills, wallet, etc-- are, and the camera card is no exception.

but!

fun story: yesterday, sunday, nap-time. kids playing in their room which they do for HOURS on the weekend even though you'd swear they were tired and grumpy before naptime. Suddenly: silence. K and i thought they'd gone to sleep, finally.

He happened to go into the kitchen and there, happy as little horrible clams, he saw our children. OUTSIDE. IN THE CAR.

Caspian was literally on top of the car, in fact, sliding through the sun roof.

I'd left a window open in their room that had a ripped screen, thanks to the other escape artist in the family, Dido the wretched dog.

Otherwise...

Kids are mostly great. Annaliese and I took our first-ever Mama/daughter trip to the Outer Banks, to see Nonni and Eliza, and it was great. She had fun. I had fun. Hopefully my mom and sis did too. And more interestingly, the boys back home had a GREAT TIME. Apparently when Annaliese and I are gone, Caspian doesn't whine, cry, or get over-tired. he talked and ran around with his daddy and they are in mutual love now.

It was awesome not being missed, let me tell you.

Six-year anniversary yesterday. Conclusion? Yep, good idea.

Cheers!

Saturday, September 17, 2011

always...

a bad sign when you FORGET you have a blog.


Sunday, September 04, 2011

Fall, at least today...

It's RAINING, and I can't overstate how lovely that is. The right kind of rain, too-- slow, soaking, steady. I'm cheering it on for a week... that's how much we need it.

The a/c is off, the windows are open, and K and I lay in bed this morning while the kids played happily and quite alone on the porch. We heard snippets. They were happy. We were happy. Everybody in this house loves Sunday.

I have to say, these last few weeks I have been patting myself on the back for having kids 17 months apart. Sure, the first year was.. not fun.... and people looked at me like I was nuts, but hey! I've only had children for 3 years and 8 months and already I'm not the primary playmate-- they're entertaining each other!

Plus they're adorable together. Double trouble.

They are going to be a year apart in school, I think, because of how their birthdays fall. And Caspian's a big kid so already, people have begun to think they're twins. I kind of think of them as twins. I am grateful that they're different genders... it seems to remove some of the competition and comparison, for some reason.

Anyhow.

K's started running and doing push-ups with his buddy, a former Army Ranger. It's been a month of him doing this 1-4 times per week, and I am so PROUD of him. They go at night, after full days of work and kids and everything, and I'm often asleep when he gets home. Just awesome.

Even a little inspiring.

We're ready for fall. We're happy as a family-- no plans for a 3rd, though accidents sure do happen-- and we're making some more time for each other because we've been a little overly busy in the last few years.

K's got the building's apartment finished and rented. The offices overlooking Main Street are ready to be rented. The store is my demanding third child and needs several things, but continues to go as well as can be expected. It's raining. I'm going to take Annaliese on our first-ever girl's trip and go see my Mom and Auntie Eliza at the beach next weekend.

Everything, at this very present moment in time, is great!