Springtime

This is the part where the lines intersect. I knew it was coming.  The part where her stories become something that aren't mine to tell. Where the heartache of watching someone grow up becomes bitterly, painfully real.  Where she comes home from school daily with a report on whether or not it was a good day based on how much she felt made fun of for wanting to splash in a puddle (which makes her gross) or how she eats her lunch. She is achingly sensitive and self-conscious and the pain of adolescence is so hauntingly near that I think of it with tears stinging my eyes sometimes.  She is disoriented by this rocking boat of someone else expecting her to be a certain way and not comprehending how someone wouldn't want to splash in puddles or get dirty or play pretend. 

When I was in 5th grade, they were doing construction on our school, so there was orange plastic fencing all around the playground to keep us away from the construction. There was a girl in my class who would spend every day at recess running up and down that fencing pretending to be the animal she chose that day (usually a horse or a wolf) and making those animal noises at the construction workers. I can still feel the way I'd get a lump in my throat and how my heart would ache and my face would flush hot to know that people viewed her as weird just because they didn't understand. They couldn't pretend and imagine like that anymore. And how on earth can my girl only be 3 years away from that age already??

Spring is bringing so much goodness.  Outside playing and so much more sunshine (even if it's pouring today!) and flowers and blooming trees and feet in the grass and dirty hands and seeds being planted almost every day.  And this.  My new project that feels so tiny and so huge and makes my heart want to burst and is the reason I've been a bit absent from this blog space right now, but it's not forever and I can't wait to share more!  

From Sunday Morning

It's Sunday morning and I can hear them downstairs playing. Talking. Negotiating. Bickering. In my still-half-asleep state, I just listen, cognizant of the fact that it's Sunday morning and I'm in bed still with two kids big enough to go downstairs and play and watch tv together while we get up a little more slowly. It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while it hits me that my kids are almost 5 and almost 7. That my kids aren't babies anymore. That I'm officially that mom looking adoringly at moms with newborns, half wanting to snuggle a newborn right in the crook of my arm and half eternally grateful to be out of that phase of life and in one where I can wake up slowly on Sunday morning with my biggest worry being that someone will spill cereal or milk or sneak a piece of candy before one of us gets downstairs.

I have this strange dichotomy happening internally where one part of me feels like a terrible parent for not picking up on stuff and helping my kids sooner, but another part of me tells me over and over that I know we're good parents and that we're doing the best we can with what we have. It's something my mom says often, especially in relation to parenting. That we all just make the best decisions we can in the moment and that HAS to be enough. 

In the past month one kids has started counseling and we've decided to start speech therapy for the other and hold him back a year from starting kindergarten.  Especially now that we've seen with our first grader what he'll be doing when he gets to kindergarten and we've seen how hard it was on her. But it's feels weird because they're only 22 months apart and they'll be 3 years apart in school. And it'll make him 6.5 when he starts kindergarten and that makes me squirm because it makes us look like "those" parents. But this feels like a much better balance than just throwing him in and and hoping he doesn't struggle. 

I got to visit his preschool class last week and stay the whole time and we also had a teacher conference with his teacher where she confirmed that she's been feeling the same way - that an extra year of preschool in a play-based environment would be really good for him to build more solid skills.  And he will be in an environment with teachers and a director who feel the same as we do as parents about kids needing to play and having too much pressure and how it's all just too much for them right now, so that feels really good.  

When we talked to him about it, because we've already talked about kindergarten starting next year, he was thrilled at the idea of having another year in preschool, so that was a relief.

So, for now: We had a few warm(ish) days in a row and it was AWESOME. Snow is melting. Seeds are started inside and sprouting and more are ordered for outside. The seed germinating testing is fascinating all of us. The first day of spring is officially less than a month away. Taxes are filed.  Big time-suck commitments are almost over.  We're on our last bag of strawberries from the summer, which means it's almost time to pick more. Things are good. 

From the Weekend