The way we were

Before we owned real estate with plummeting valuesBefore we slept an average of five fitful hours/night Before we ever knew the meaning of the words IRS Audit Before we ate cold snacks for 75% of our meals Before we considered a "date night" a free lunch at the school cafeteria with only one of our children pilfering food off our trays Before we worked multiple jobs Before we moved across states Before grocery shopping on a Saturday night was the weekend m.o. Before sleeping in past 8 a.m. was pure decadence Before "vacations" entailed spending a week at our parents' houses Before we bandied about names like Ferber and Princess Presto and Chuck the Truck Before we really knew what it was to be stretched to the ends of our resources and sanity, meaning before we really knew what it was to pray and to love...

...this is what we looked like:

For realios.

And to think.

The goodtimes hadn't even begun.

2 years 9 months

Dear Little Man, You are learning and doing new things every day. Big deal. You're a kid. That's your job. Newslflash: your mother still thinks this is Summiting Everest amazing.

Especially because she is learning so much from you along the way...

You're teaching me how it is to play hard. To fight for the right to play. To beg, "Just one more minute, Mama," with your index finger pointed upward. I'm super bad at play. I'm cerebral. I need more play in my life.

You teach me to not be so self-preserving. You see a stack of blocks and you bulldoze them. You're not afraid. You don't even think about the feeling of seeing everything topple. You rejoice in it. Because it's fun. I need to be less preserving of everything around me. Dust to dust and all that.

You are the sneaky pete of our household. Sometimes I catch you, out of my peripheral, slithering up to your sister's lair wherein dollbabies and ponies await your exploration. I love your secret play, love overhearing you give character voices to the unicorns that are normally off-limits. And then you go back to the train table and shunt some trains like it ain't no thang.

You've been needing a LOT of discipline lately. Some creative countermanding of your cuteness has been in order. At times, you get put out on the porch. That's right. The rest of my directives and penalties were not proving effective. So, to the porch you go. To cool off. To have a sitdown with Daddy. To ponder. To pry your way back in. You are teaching me resolve. I am getting a preview of your future as our strong-willed son who is equally aware of his powers of adorableness.

Keep Calm and Teach On, my Little Man!

xoxo Mama

Bring on 'da anti-Funk

This week, this job of teaching has been unusually easy for me. I never say that. Usually I get through a class and have pit stains under my shirt because diagramming sentences is apparently an aerobic activity. But this was a rare week. I didn't have much prep because I had already taught these concepts before. I just came to class, I taught the things, and the students smiled. Or they slept. Let's be real, plenty of them slept. It's that last full week before spring break. They need to sleep during the day, not sleep at night, and then they need to go on spring break. When they come back, their bodies will be here but their brains will never fully come back from spring break. It's a natural rule of the order of the academic year.

And who can blame them? The brains. They would rather live in Jamaica, don't you think? :)

I exaggerate. I teach such bright people. I was just grateful that this week had been without the usual helping of drama or pocket full of stressies. Oosh. All so bad for my complexion.

*** This is not to say that I wasn't in a bit of a tired funk this afternoon when I was coming up the driveway, carrying my boring piece of credit card mail. I said a prayer, the length of a mere three heartbeats, God, can you just turn me inside out? I hate feeling funky like this.

And then two little sunbursts met me halfway. The girl was running clumsily and I realized that it was because she had lost one of her shoes but it didn't stop her. The boy was racing after her and he realized that what his big sister was doing looked like fun, clever idea this one-shoe running, so I watched as he paused and kicked off one shoe, all the while smiling, and then my heart swelled as two half-shoeless sunbursts crashed right into me, blessing my heart and answering my prayer in three heartbeats.