Jack's happy place

Jack's happy place is on a swing. He could swing for hours.




While we generally don't push him for hours, we do push him until his fat cheeks feel like squishy ice cubes. I love fat baby cheeks in cold weather.

Today, we hung out at the park despite near-freezing temps. We even had a pumpkin muffin picnic on a rock (not pictured: ben's and my steaming hot beverages that we used to keep the freak warm). Harry loves to bring a trick-or-treat pumpkin full of sidewalk chalk to the park to draw cut little preschooler graffiti all over rocks and jungle gyms. I should have taken a picture of the way he writes his name-- the letters are sort of in proximity to each other, but the order is totally random.

Harry perfected the art of climbing a jungle gym in winter gear at preschool last year (kids are hearty in this state-- they go outside at school twice a day as long as it isn't 20 below. Um. I stop taking the kids outside when it's 20 above.)



We had another lovely, quiet day. In keeping with the theme of finding happiness in ordinary moments, we have also tried to simplify our lives, spending fewer material resources and more time with each other. So far, everyday has been a blessing, as cheesy as that can possibly sound.

Wish List

Today at breakfast (which I attended after sleeping an extra hour by myself after the kids joined us at 6:20, and Ben rolled out of bed, gathered his quilt, and took them downstairs to watch a movie for awhile-- best.husband.ever.), we went around the table and everyone said what they'd like to do to make their Saturday perfect.

Jack: go to his favorite park and play. We can bundle up and do that.

Me: go to the gym. Check- the childcare room opens at 8, and there's a fantastic library book and an elliptical machine screaming my name

Harry: watch the iCarly/jack Black special that was on Nick last night on demand while he eats lunch. No problem, little buddy.

Ben: make a nice dinner-- we're thinking a roast and then we'll make the leftovers into italian beef sandwiches later in the week. Yum.

How nice that we can make all of our wishes come true and we didn't even need Harry Potter's magic wand.

(Whenever Harry plays Harry Potter, Jack says that he's Jack Potter and calls me Mommy Potter, which totally cracks me up.)

Brotherly love

It used to be that Harry and Jack were always fighting. Seriously, if they were in the same room with each other for 2 minutes, they;d be screaming, hitting and biting. I was spending half my day telling them to knock it off, and it was making us all tense. Lately, though, they have been-- wait for it-- getting along with each other.
Here they are the other day playing in their room. They were happy the whole time I put the laundry away, and I even had time to lie on my bed and look at the internet until I was discovered. Even then, they weren't fighting-- they just wanted me to read to them which I did because I'd be a pretty huge asshole if I didn't, right?

Today, we found a Playmobil race car set that must have been forgotten after the toy fest that was Harry's 4th birthday. It was in the box and everything. After I assembled it for them, they played together for almost an hour-- and they only stopped playing because they wanted lunch, not because someone was bleeding or something terrible like that (which has been why they've usually stopped playing). When we opened the package, harry even said, "Oh good! There's 2 cars inside so we can both have one." So nice (and weird).

They still fight-- don't get me wrong. The minute I turn on the shower and step inside and unwrap a fizzy aromatic lavender shower capsule, in fact, they fight. I'm so happy for the moments when they play together, though. It makes my job a heck of a lot easier.

Bedtime

Lately, I have been working a bit more, and I don't always make it home for bedtime, which means I sometimes miss out on our family picture.

At the beginning of the year, we tried to find interesting locations to snap our daily family shot, and I was really good about getting everyone together before Ben went to work. Then we hit a period in the middle when we forgot to take pictures, and I stopped posting them everyday, preferring instead to save up 3 or 4 and post them all at once and fudge the post dates to make it look like I have been posting faithfully all along. The last couple of months, we have been pretty lazy about the whole process, jumping on our bed nearly every night when the kids are fresh from the tub. Even though our pictures aren't as interesting as they were at the beginning of the year, they have finally become part of our routine.

If Ben or I forgets, Harry or Jack will remind us. Harry likes to pretend to pout or cry in the pictures for some reason (and Ben always tells him that when he's older, he'll look back and think he had a very sad childhood which usually makes me laugh), and Jack has been screaming "Happy Halloween" in the camera's flash for month. The picture has become a part of our night time ritual, like pre-bath playtime and laundry folding/putting away, like splashing in the bath with whatever odd assortment of action figures they choose to bring in, like snuggling with a towel-wrapped Jack while Harry slithers through the suds until every drop of bubbly water is sucked down the drain, like feeding the guppies who live on Ben's dresser, like brushing teeth and listening, drowsy, to library book after library book.

10 seconds together while the camera beeps and flashes its red light. Then a click and pop of light and we spring off the bed, scattering as one to look at our picture, see if anyone's face is obscured or if anyone looks to terrible for posterity. Then a chorus of goodnights and I love yous and two little boys who go to sleep two different ways.

When I come home long after the boys are in bed, I know Ben will have a picture waiting for me to post. The other night, he also had this:

Sorry for the dramz

You guys are awesome. The emails, the phone calls, the FB messages, the wonderful supportive comments. Thank you.

We are okay. Like really, truly okay. This Bad Thing is not a matter of life and death at all, and I am sorry I have been so glum. It's Bad, and I can't really talk about it on here, and I am sad and need to vent, and this blog has always been the place where I vent. So. The dramz. That's why.

But I have so much to be thankful for. Beautiful kids. A wonderful husband. A house I am learning to love again. A job I adore. A storage room full of Chrismukkah presents. Leftover Halloween candy my kids have forgotten about that contains FULL SIZE TWIX BARS AND KIT KATS still-- silly kids.

And these

It's Girl Scout Ccokie season-- I can eat as much as I want and not feel bad because I won't have these babies for another year!

So, to recap: Thanks for the support. We're okay. I might continue to write depressing things because I am a little blue, but we're fine. And we have cookies.

Put on a happy face

Today I am grateful for a job I love so much that I am happy to get to campus when the sky looks like this

In my bag, I have a Pyrex dish that contains a packet of instant oatmeal already moistened. I will throw it in the microwave when I check my mail on the way to my office, will dump my heavy load of books and peripherals on the floor by my desk and go back to the mailroom to retrieve my cereal, store my lunch in the fridge. I even brought milk to mix in when my oatmeal's cooked, a strawberry cereal bar to eat on the side. I will breakfast alone at the table in the corner of my office, my laptop open, knowing that I get my best work done in these stolen moments before the hall is filled with people and after they've all gone home.


Walking up the large cement steps to my building this morning, I saw dark sky toward the lake, but the rising sun slowly kissed the side of the business school in front of me, turning the bricks pink as it moved through the sky that dared to blue itself I think maybe just for me, for us, for my husband patiently gathering our preschoolers and their things, for my four-year-old who surprised us by spelling "Bill" at the breakfast table, for my two year-old who woke up with red cheeks and lightening-strike hair on the left side of his head, for our little family bouncing in rough waters and hoping we don't capsize, thinking we won't, guessing we might, wishing we'll float.

Making his list

I am almost 23,000 words into my novel and will likely not finish.

It is not like me to quit things in the middle, and I feel very unsettled about it. I used to thrive on deadlines, even self-imposed ones. That's what grad school is all about, really.

Ever since The Bad Thing That I Can't Blog About happened, though, I have no ambition for a frivolous project, have to drag myself through even the most practical ones. My daily must-do list swells, and at night, I can barely keep up with the plot of a TV show, much less remember details of a dream world I created under slightly different circumstances.

I took this picture of Ben and Harry yesterday.

Ben was faithfully taking dictation for Harry's Chrismukkh wish list that we promised to mail to Santa but really just stuffed in our kitchen mail/junk basket so we could take it with when we shop. He started the list by thanking Santa for all the candy-- so much that it spilled from his stocking all over the floor, a detail that's stuck with him all year- and telling him that he appreciated the train table. he said that he and Jack have been sort of good this year and that they have tried to be really good which cracked us both up because that's just about right. It was an adorable moment, one that made Ben and me lock eyes and take stock of the little things we're thankful for. Especially the little 40 pound thing in front of us and the 30 pound thing snoring upstairs. THEN HE ASKED FOR EVERY TOY THAT HAS EVER BEEN ON TV, which wasn't as cute.