Breathing In

This week has been so lovely. I'm not sure what it is(though I have a strong feeling it's closely related to how independent both of the boys are now) but this past week has been positively joyful. Aaron and I had a couple of really fun dates over the weekend, Core Fusion continues to rock my world(which I promise to actually post about soon), I burst out of my cooking rut and have covered myself in squash and chocolate glory(cookie recipe is almost perfect), and today I put up Christmas lights in the kitchen. I put tacks up all around the perimeter and strung white lights up around the entire kitchen, during which Matteas nearly had a heart attack he was trembling with so much joy. After Jack came home from school and saw the lights, he noticed how pretty the reflection was from the kitchen light fixture. I love that he notices things like that, and that he has a mom who cherishes his observations. Adding to the loveliness is the fact that it's time for flannel. I learned very quickly that Aaron is kind of a violent sleeper. No matter how carefully I made the bed, we'd wake up every morning with the flat sheet squished down at the bottom of the bed, on the floor, tangled around Aaron's legs, or even(one time) in the closet. I'm not sure what exactly about a flat sheet offends Aaron so, but they don't get along. It makes buying sheet sets feel a little wasteful since we'd only ever use half of them, but I found a way to restore all our cast-off flat sheets to a place of honor. I took the flat sheet from two different flannel sets and sewed them into a duvet, and now we pretty much have the coziest bed ever. Which is nice, because right now I feel like I pretty much have the coziest life ever. I'm attributing my current joy binge to several things: the weather(Aaron and I both love rain), good food, independent boys, regular exercise, good sleep, and having time for hobbies. A few moms at our church had babies recently, and while I'm sure the new additions are bringing their families a lot of love I can't help but appreciate that I'm getting a break right now. I know I've written a lot about how hard the first year with Jack was, and just as it was starting to get easier I found out I got to do it all over again. Thankfully it wasn't quite the same. Jack is an amazing kid now, but he was a very challenging baby. Everyone kept telling me that things would change, that they'd get better, that the next baby would be different. They were right. But what I also know is, the really great place I feel like I'm in right now will change too. Someday I'll be pregnant again, someday I'll have a newborn and a postpartum body and not enough sleep and I'll remember this lovely week in November and it will give me hope. I honestly never imagined married life as being quite this good. I loved Aaron and I wanted to be with him, and back when I was single I was even pretty sure I wanted to have babies with him, but man it was hard. Especially the way we did it, having a dysfunctional relationship and then fast-tracking our wedding so we could be married all of four weeks before having a baby. It all worked out, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it if you're in a position to plan that sort of thing. I did a lot of grieving the first year of our marriage. I grieved for the "perfect" wedding day I would never have, for the brilliant career I would never pursue, for the chance to announce my first pregnancy with joy instead of fear, for the pre-pregnancy body that seemed impossible to get back no matter how many miles I ran. It felt like I was a stranger in my own life; nothing was familiar or comforting. I'm not sure what I would have done without my sister Briana. I spent every single day of that first summer at her house, numb with sleep deprivation, crazy with hormones, waiting for my body and my life to feel normal. She fed me, caffeinated me, sat patiently with me whenever I periodically burst into tears for no obvious reason. She understood. She knew where I was, and she knew I would come out of it. Now I know it too. I also know how important it is to get a chance to catch my breath, to have enough of my needs met that I feel like I have something to give others, to have the capacity to notice and appreciate the way the light fixture reflects the Christmas lights. When Aaron came home tonight I was just starting dinner. The boys heard his truck pull in the driveway and they screeched for joy and ran to find hiding places(they hide from him every night in painfully obvious places). Matteas got impatient and decided to meet Aaron in the entryway, holding his hands up over his head in welcome. Aaron reached out his hands for Matteas to hold, and they did a little dance by the front door. When Matteas had sufficiently expressed his satisfaction about his father's homecoming, the dance ended and Aaron carried him up the stairs. There were hugs and kisses all around, then Aaron opened some wine and put a glass by my cutting board. He put on some Louis Armstrong and took the boys into the living room while I made dinner, during which I wore a ridiculously cute apron(thank you Rachel). I don't always wear an apron when I cook, but tonight I did because I'd been wearing a white sweater all day, the soft low-necked kind I used to fantasize about wearing on dates with Aaron. I never actually wore my fantasy sweater on a date with Aaron because 1) we dated in the summer and 2) I was pregnant by fall and too concerned with how I was going to salvage my life to think about things like sweaters. The upside to having a sucky dating history is that now I get to date my husband and I know how much to appreciate it. Our dates are based on a relationship we already have, not trying to impress each other. He will tell me if I have something stuck in my teeth, he will encourage me to order dessert, he will kiss me goodnight for certain and he will like me best. We want more babies, someday. Someday when I feel like my body is strong enough and the boys are old enough and my heart is full enough and I'm ready for that great, big, long exhale of pregnancy and labor and infancy, for the great need to move energy out. But for now, I'm so enjoying the space to breathe in.

Chasing the Light

Matteas feels the need to investigate every smallest puddle he sees, just in case there are "fishies" in it.

We got out in the sunshine yesterday right before the crazy storm hit. Every Fall I remind myself that anytime there's sun we need to drop whatever we're doing and get out in it because you never know what the weather will do tomorrow; yesterday reinforced that resolution beautifully. I thought I could feel the temperature dropping as we walked, but decided it must be my imagination.

It wasn't. Twenty minutes after we came inside it started raining, which quickly turned into hail the size of marbles. Lots of it. Jack actually expressed concern about the roof cracking. I promised him it wouldn't, lit some candles and put on the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. I know it's early, but I feel like I never get enough of it and it was so cozy with the crazy hail. Jack is outside right now searching for the biggest chunks of hail and eating them. Matteas was with him for about fifteen minutes, but after sitting in a puddle he decided Mama's lap was a much better place to be. Jack's hands are finally big enough to wear mittens and gloves comfortably, but poor Matteas looked like an awkward snowman when I tried to stuff his hands into his puffy blue pillows with thumbs. I'm thinking of trying to make him a tiny pair of gloves out of some warm stretchy fabric; they wouldn't be waterproof but I feel like they'd be better than nothing. Anyone know where I can get gloves that would actually fit a tiny pair of toddler hands?

I Don't Usually Do This

Decorate, that is. It's strictly a seasonal thing for me and while I don't usually like stuff cluttering up my mantle, I get it all dressed up for Fall and Christmas.

From the garden...

...to the kitchen...

...to the table, all in the same morning. I have to say, growing and roasting your own pumpkin and then making pie with it makes it taste a thousand times better. The pumpkin tastes light, creamy and nutty, with none of that metalic canned flavor. I've made lots of pies from canned pumpkin and will probably make lots more of them when my own pumpkins are gone, but for me this pie sets the bar for what pumpkin pie should be. The smell of roasting pumpkin is pretty amazing; warm, buttery and rich. As opposed to the smell of a freshly-opened can o' pumpkin, which has sometimes prompted Aaron to ask if the baby has a dirty diaper. Somehow, both of our boys have a love of pumpkin pie. I cannot remember liking it as a child and it doesn't really strike me as a kid type of dessert, but they put this stuff away like nobody's business. When we make our own and I know exactly what's in it, I even let them have it for breakfast. I'd do it just for the flavor factor, but I also love what growing our own food has taught the boys about being good stewards. They are legitimately concerned about how we treat what we usually think of as our lowliest commodity, or something we wipe off of our feet and clean off of our hands before we eat: dirt. It's important stuff. The saying goes "You are what you eat," but it's actually a little further back than that: you are what your food ate. In the case of fruits and vegetables, that means the dirt. It's kind of funny to think about keeping dirt "clean," but I've thought about it a lot since having kids. For one thing, they eat a lot of it directly. Straight, no chaser. Okay maybe some rocks. But since we've started to do so much gardening, the quality of our dirt is a big deal to me. I don't want crap in there because eventually I'm going to feed what comes out of there to my kids. I think if everyone grew their own food, even just one or two vegetables, it would radically change the way we think about pollution.

Don't Blink

I love, love this picture of Matteas. It is so iconic of his personality; a blond, joyful comet of energy blurring past. I think that no matter how old he gets or how he changes, I will always remember him this way.

Jack models his new glasses. Right after we got these we found out we needed to change his prescription, so he will be modeling more new glasses soon.

In these days of fleeting sunshine and active boys, I find I have to remind myself to hold still, take a breath and let it all sink in. I don't want to forget. I want to remember what the boys were like this summer, all the things we did and all the ways we grew. Pictures help. So does writing. I've taken to keeping a wipe-off board up on the fridge so that when one of them says or does something funny I can write it down immediately. When the board gets full I transfer what I wrote into a journal I keep for them, then wipe the board off and start again. For right now, as in right this very minute, we are going to head outside and pick our very first ripe sugar pie pumpkin. We will roast it and make a pumpkin pie with it to welcome Fall, to bid farewell to Summer, and to savor a little bit of the magic we made as we leave behind one season and head into the next.