I’m going to publicly hold off on discussion of the house. It bothers my internal balance to keep talking about it. I know that friends and family are interested in what’s going on. Nothing bed has happened recently — I just have been feeling this way for awhile, but didn’t want to just stop without a warning.
Not that there isn’t interesting things going on regardless. Every day the kids amaze me. It’s been so hard to give them quality time when I feel like I have a never-ending to-do list. So Monday when the weather was good, I took them to our “little park” (a Jim definition — there’s little park, big park, and park near the new house). I so wish I had the camera with me. It was golden hour before sunset, and all the leaves were falling. Jim and Colin took turns swinging on the swings, and then Jim “raced” Colin on the horse and car that are side by side. Then we showed Colin the bouncy bridge — he sat on it and made it bounce all by himself. Lastly, I helped Colin crawl up and then slide down some of the slides. We had such a good time, with no rushing to get somewhere else (for a change).
I’ve also been worried about Jim making friends at school. He had a hard time last year, because the only two boys in his class were already friends. Of course, in the last week of school, they invite Jim on a playdate! He’s always takes a long time to warm up to other kids he doesn’t know. And it seems like some of the boys at his new school have a little group from which he’s excluded (obviously, from the interactions I’ve seen). But last week we were waiting for the kids to line up to go into school (kids and family wait outside the school entrance for the teachers), and two other boys came up to Jim and started playing in that young boy way. Jim introduced them to Colin (he can be such a proud big brother!).
And then ever once in a while, Jim really wows us. We’ve been saying our blessing before meals, and he’s very good at reminding us. It’s took me a good couple weeks to learn the whole thing, and I still go slowly sometimes. Anyway, yesterday at lunch, Jim told be he wanted to say it, and he got the whole thing right! And he says that they don’t say it in school, so he’s picked it up from us at meals! He’s done that with some books too — there’s one dinosaur book of short-short stories, and picked up one of them real fast.
And there’s Colin. He’s sick right now, and I’m up watching him sleep here on the couch. He wants to be near me, so Dad and I are taking turns on the couch. When awake, he is crawling everywhere and eating everything. I’ve got some serious ghetto babyproofing going on in the baement to keep him away from lamp cords and the media center. Luckily, he can’t climb up steps (yet!); he can only pull himself up on the bottom one. But babyproofing the new house with gates will be a top priority.
