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.