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Fall Weekend

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Our new cat is howling and pacing and I’m assuming there are kittens coming, but to distract myself from that let’s recap our weekend! I have a ton of posts in draft trying to explain how we’re feeling lately and what life is like, but I’m having a hard time putting them together. So instead let’s do something easy.

Last weekend we decided to join every other person in New England and go apple picking. Seriously, on my morning team meeting Monday, everyone was eating apple something. My boss had just finished an apple muffin and was talking about dropping an apple pie off at his son’s house, a coworker was debating apple pancakes for breakfast, and I was telling them all about the apple coffee cake and apple chips we’d just made.

I Think Summer's Over

It could also be April right now, so I’m not completely sure, but I think summer is kind of over. As odd as it was for a summer, and as many things I feel like I missed out on, it still was pretty good?

We went to our favorite farm/petting zoo twice, which is probably about average for us. We spent a ton of time outside, and used our yard more than we ever have. We’re also closer to our neighbors than before, since everyone is home all the time, and we seem to catch each other for chats more often.

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A Baby Toddler Update

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These days all blur together and disappear so quickly that I’m worried I’m going to forget everything about them. Besides the fact that my brain doesn’t seem to be working right now, I feel like I haven’t written anything down in a while. So bear with me as I try to put together some semblance of an update on not so baby G.

Currently G is napping, but I just heard “leh-low!” over the baby monitor. I can’t tell if he’s dreaming about his favorite color, or he just woke up and decided to start naming things he loves.

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Chasing That Feeling

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I am riding a high.

The type of high that can only be achieved by checking something off your list. Something that’s been on the for way too long and has been hanging over your head for too long. It’s one of those things that you end up thinking about multiple times a day, worry about before you go to bed, and just want it taken care of. It’s times like these that I often wish we weren’t the adults here, and someone else would just come along and do it for us.

But when it’s done? Boy it feels so good.

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Still Summer

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Sometimes I forget it’s summer. I simultaneously think it’s still March and can’t believe it’s not September yet. Time is an odd thing now.

Of course it doesn’t always feel like summer, either. I’m certainly not doing or experiencing the things that usually mark summer for me. Even silly ones - commuting in the heat in long pants and arriving in the office all sweaty is a thing of the past. No longer am I getting into a hot car and burning my hands on the steering wheel and finding my water too hot to drink. I’m barely getting into the car at all.

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The Daycare Debate

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We’ve definitely encountered our fair share of parenting problems that we didn’t expect, and didn’t have answers for. Currently we’re ignoring two splinters in E’s palm, mostly because we don’t know what to do about them. They aren’t really bothering him, and despite trying, we can’t get them out. He definitely doesn’t want us to try again. We’ve tried a few ideas we’ve found online, but none of them worked. So right now we’re ignoring it. Hoping they’ll either come out on our own, or become an obvious enough problem we’ll need to get professional help.

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Toddler Speak

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I’m not sure why, but G seems so much older at this age than his brother did. Sure he’s bigger, but I also think his vocabulary is huge. He’s definitely speaking way more than E ever was at this age, and I think more than most kids his age. However, he’s still very much speaking as a toddler. In other words, every time he opens his mouth, it’s the best thing ever.

Every morning, he comes into my “offie” to say good morning and play with whatever he can get his hands on. He’ll often try to convince me to let him play with whatevers on my desk, by holding out his hands and asking me if he can hold it. “Hone? Hone?” If he’s rewarded with something, he’ll clutch it in his arms and ask “myes?” to confirm that it is his.

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A Beach Trip

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We’re trying.

I’ve never really been a water or beach person, but occasionally I find it nice. A lounge chair and a book here, standing in the water up to my waist there. I don’t love it like I see other people love it, but I can enjoy it from time to time. Tom is, of course, the swimmer. Better than all of us, he’s so good at it, you can’t help but expect some of it to rub off on our children.

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Road Trip

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We recently took a long trip in our car (more on that later) and it was the longest that G has ever been in the car in his entire life. I was worried it might not go well, of course. When you’re that young it’s easy to not be hyperbolic when you say something is the worst thing you’ve ever experienced. It literally could be. And it would be easy to see how being trapped in a car for a long period of time, when it had never happened before, being one of those times.

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Day 119

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At some point do I just stop counting? Is life so changed that it will never return to the “before" so there’s no point in counting how many days it’s been?

Or is it pointless because some things might get back to something that looks a little bit like normal, while others never will? Our daycare is actually open right now, so does that negate my count, since I started counting days since daycare closed? Or does the fact that we haven’t sent them back to daycare yet mean I keep counting?

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Let's Watch Some Videos

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I had some time recently and made some summary videos of our last few months. I don’t do this often enough - especially because it doesn’t take that long, and I’m always excited to have the memory. I definitely have a picture problem, but at least I have a process of deleting ones that aren’t great and I try to organize the ones I keep. Videos, however, just sit in a folder. They take up so much space, and there are a lot that should probably be deleted, but it would be a full time job managing all of these. And there’s only more and more every day I do nothing.

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Trying to be Normal

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It’s not easy in this new world. Everything stresses me out or makes me anxious. I’m constantly on edge and judging everyone I can see. I judge them for not wearing a mask, or not wearing it correctly, for getting too close to me or someone else, for touching something - it all stresses me out.

But at the same time, it’s hard to hide at home forever. It’s summer, which means it’s easy to get outside, and we all know that’s safer than being inside. And since I believe we’re going to be fighting this virus for a while, we might as well take advantage of being outside while we can. Otherwise I’m going to regret it when winter hits.

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Goodbye Sun

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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.

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18 Months

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Somehow we’re halfway through 1. It’s unimaginable, because just a few days ago was your first birthday, and then we all went into quarantine and suddenly it’s today and the calendar says six months have gone by. At the same time when I think about the fact that you weren’t walking when daycare closed and we all started this home quarantine, that seems forever ago. You running around is the best thing ever. It’s a half gallop, half fall as you move slightly sideways with your belly out and arms pumping.

As we hit one and a half, you’ve picked up a few new tricks, grew some more teeth, and have a slightly better vocabulary. It’s hard to count all your words, because you have a lot that you’ll use randomly, but not often enough for me to remember unless I happen to write them down at the time. There’s a lot of context that comes with your words too. If you’re saying “bee” and looking out the window, you literally want to see a bee. But if you’re walking around saying the same thing with your arms up in the air, you’re looking for some specific object, as in “Where could it be?”

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Picture Fun

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One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten about parenting so far, is not to compare them. They’re going to be different. This close in age, they’re going to be as different as they can be in most ways. That’s just the way it works.

And so far, that’s pretty accurate. It seems like we have on introvert, who pulls into himself when he’s in stressful or new situations. He requires a lot of down time, and is a pretty strict rule follower. We also have one that seems like an extrovert who expresses himself outwardly, thrives on loud and busy situations and wants to be around people. Oh, and he thinks mischief is the best.

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Lately

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There are some things that haven’t changed too much due to our home quarantine. We still get up at the same time, play with the kids all day, and in between manage to clean the house and mow the lawn. Some things might be harder, so we just don’t do them, or are putting them off. Dentist appointments, mattress shopping, haircuts. But then there are other things. Things that are much harder now, but cannot be put off. Things like blood draws for the kids. We have actually put it off as long as we could, but it was finally time to get it done.

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Not the Post I Wanted to Write

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Here’s the thing about life.

Just because you’re dealing with something tough, doesn’t mean that nothing else bad will happen. Just because the world is going through a crisis, doesn’t mean that another one can’t dump right on top of it and demand what’s left of your attention.

And just because it’s your son’s third birthday, doesn’t mean that your cat won’t die.