(Pictures. Yesterday I did another photo shoot for a band that Caleb has interests in. That is all.)
I am here.
Just unimaginably tired as of late. Trying to keep the running around to the minimum. Trying to engage the children in helping and having fun when I'm dealing from a deck missing so many cards we're down to faces and twos of clubs. The children started summer vacation today, too soon on the heels of a six-week spring vacation for the move and I am sort of out of sorts for the time being while I figure out what to do. I'm in bureaucratic heck for a bit trying to organize our city membership for the pool. I was hoping to jump the children right into daily swimming lessons.
Honestly, I'm at a loss to know where to begin entertaining them in this fresh new environment, but thankfully they are a bit older as to not need constant entertainment and I was never the kind of mother to fill their dance cards. Instead I always allowed for a lot of imaginative, free time in which to just play. They're going to take turns again each night helping me make dinner. They're going to continue with their chores which are augmented when they are not in school. They're going to unwind and be kids, make God's eyes out of sticks, poke at slugs and pick berries.
They're going to do math, too. A textbook came home from school. Math is not our strong suit. We can draw you anything or write you into a corner but we can't divide fractions and Roman numerals are a fun pastime when confronted with graphics from the Super Bowl only. We'll get there. Every child has something to work on, every grownup too. I'm just eternally grateful they are happy and healthy and adaptable and they are grateful mommy buys them cookies and video games and can pump up a bike tire and start a food fight because some parents don't.
They're going to be kids. There's not enough of that these days.
I want to be a kid. I want to stay up too late, outside in the heat after dark and eat sour gummy bears until I feel sick and read with a flashlight in the tent and turn brown from the sun. I want to count the stars again. I want to grab a hot dog at the beach and call it dinner. I want to rejoice in the fact that I have enough change for the salt & vinegar chips AND the new Archie comic.
That kind of kid. The kind I was when I was Henry's age. He's going to be nine in two weeks and it wasn't until I saw his 'promotion' to senior elementary that I realized my youngest child isn't even in a primary grade anymore, and how strange it feels that they are racing past me on the way to their own lives and I am still stuck here so awkwardly between doing what Satan and Lochlan tell me to do because I will forever be a child to them, and thinking outside the box as a mother, because there are things I want my children to experience, and things I hope they never go through.
I can't live my life through them, and I can't live their lives for them. It's not an easy dance but I will learn the steps I'm sure.
Maybe I'll do some math too. You know, just in case I ever need it. It will come in handy when I gamble. I hear you get further by counting your cards anyway.
