Life has been crazy in a good way lately. It’s a welcome change.
Sure 3 children is still crazy, and we barely have a minute to sit down, but it’s been manageable and fun. We’ve been doing more things and sometimes I can’t believe how different it is from 6 months ago. Six months ago going to church or on a playdate might have been our only activity of a weekend, and now it’s not even our only activity of a day!
I realize that we’ve been in a drought, so maybe I shouldn’t talk about how much I’ve loved the weather lately, but I’ve really loved the weather lately. June was full of sunshine pretty much every single day, and it was amazing.
While we haven’t made much progress on a lot of things on our interior to do list, we’ve managed to make some real improvements to the outside of our house this year. We’ve completed a lot of maintenance stuff that needed to happen - cleaning the gutters, getting the septic pumped, even pressure washing the fence and front porch. But more than that, we’re completing a lot of big projects we’ve been dreaming about for a while. Our shed, while not here yet, has been purchased and the land is prepped, so we’re counting the days. We’ve also finally got our side patio completed, which means we have our gazebo up(!), and it gives us some shade and rain protection on that side of the house. I am fully in love.
Every once in a while, E picks up a new phrase. Sometimes it’s obvious he got it from us, but sometimes it seems random. We assume it comes from daycare, but we never know for sure. Lately his phrase has been “walk away.” It’s equally hilarious and insulting. It usually comes when he’s doing something on his own and we’re trying to help. Like when he decides he wants to feed the baby by shoving food in his mouth, and we try to intervene, he’ll look at me and say “No, Mama. Walk away.” Somehow it’s cuter than if he just told us to go away, and it’s equally as funny when he tells the baby to do it too. We should probably try to encourage him to use different language… but we’re enjoying it for now.
Here's what I believe about toddlers, at least two year old toddlers. They don't know how to misbehave, or how to do things to annoy you on purpose. They only know there are things that will get your attention, and things that won't.
And if they're doing something to get your attention, it's because they need you and don't know how to say so.
I’m not sure when it happened, but probably sometime during that newborn induced amnesia period. But suddenly I have a full blown kid who can do things, and my tiny toddler is gone!
E shocks me daily with all of the things he can do. He’s gone from kind of humming along when we sing to sort of making sounds similar to what we’re saying, to being able to sing “Twinkle Twinkle” all by himself. He doesn’t crawl up the stairs anymore, but walks while holding the wall (he’d hold the railing, but he’s still too short haha). He’ll bring us a bottle of sunscreen and ask us if we can go outside and play.
For someone who has been preparing for Christmas for months, this holiday snuck up on me. I decorated some of the house, but most of the decorations are still in bins downstairs. I totally forgot to send E to daycare in his Halloween shirt until today (last year I think he wore shirts for 2 weeks before the holiday).
Our yard is a mess. It's not quite as bad as it was when we moved in, but that's largely due to the fact we're not currently in a drought - not anything we've done. There are large patches of dirt, and the green that is growing is weeds, not grass.
However, a lot time ago we decided it wasn't our priority. I was going to put some analogy here that my boss used on me yesterday about not tying the laces of the shoe before taking it off or something, but it made way more sense when he said it, than me trying to remember it now. Anyway the point is, our whole property needs work, and that work will only dig up the lawn more. So I've decided we'll live with a non yard for a few years while we get everything else done first.
Or Spring. Pretty much anything as long as there's no snow on the ground.
The weather was super nice this weekend, so I suggested that we pull out our newly acquired outdoor furniture. It's not a lot at this point, and will likely be upgraded over the years (especially if we rebuild our deck at some point), but for now it's enough to get us outside.