April 3

Life is nice - I got the garage finally cleaned out today (it was still a dusty, straw filled mess from the horrible wind storm we had back in november) and the kids played outside with our little chicky's almost all day. Graham is sleeping so wonderfully.  Funny how  he is now my best little sleeper.  The last two weeks he has slept through the night several times and only woken up once most of the other nights.  Nurses like a good little baby and goes right back to sleep.  Today Clara rode her bike all by herself with the training wheels off! I wanted to just freeze time for a minute!  The barely warm april sun was shining so bright and I was running along side her bike past the smelly blossoming pear trees in front of the ponds and it reminded me so much of the mornings right before Clara was born that I would walk around the neighborhood trying to will my body into labor.  She was so strong and steady and fast.  I really didn't teach her, just sat her on her bike and off she went.  Gray was another story  - which surprised me.  I took his training wheels off first thinking he would do much better, but he's definitely not ready.  Clara was so excited and we brought Brandon out tonight and made him sit on the porch with his eyes close until she was riding past him.  She was so excited she ran right off the sidewalk as soon as he started to watch. 

We've started reading "the lion the witch and the wardrobe" at night and I've forgotten how much I love those books.  I wish I could eat in the way they smell at night.  Dusty and sunny and sweaty and everything and eat up their cheeks and squeeze them so tight that they'll just stick to me because that's where I want them to always be - so close they're just stuck.  Kids are kind of like pretend little things - living in this world but so far removed from so many of the hard realities of it and life consists of playing and learning and eating and sleeping and not much else.  Not saying it's easy - I remember being a kid - it's not easy, but from my perspective it looks pretty enchanting and maybe that's the nice part of being a parent.  It's hard to enjoy things sometimes when you're in the thick of it - even childhood.  But I can look at their little lives and think that almost everything about them is so nice.  I can watch them play and laugh and sing silly little songs and make up stories and just kind of marvel at the happiness of it all.  And it makes me so happy and so grateful for their perspective.  And so happy that they're mine and that I have their little eyes to watch as they see their own lives through them.  Even though it's one heck of a lot of work.  This whole having kids thing I mean - and I have to learn so much and my brain is so tired and sometimes I am down right mean and awful and just really tired.  I hope I get a couple more.  Maybe I'll learn to be nicer...more nice......because I'm sure that having more children would make me less tired and a much more calm, patient, understanding person. definitely.  Or maybe i'm just selfish and want more kids to kiss and tickle at night and to watch play during the day.  Probably that one.  oh well. oh and to smell.  I really like to smell my kids a lot...hmm not sure where that came from or why I'm feeling so willing to share such an odd thing.  Especially their feet. (what?!) I know, it's just this weird habit I have.  Brandon - I hope you're enjoying reading this and thinking, "awsome now everyone (the two people besides you honey who actually read this) know's how odd she is".   I can't help it - especially when they are babies.  Odd but true - I can't change a bum without smelling the changee's feet first.  I just can't.  I figure I have to put it in print though because maybe I'll pass this onto my kids and they should be able to read and figure out that the incredible odd urge they have to smell their stinky children is in fact genetic.  

 "swim or ski? swim or ski? oh what to do?!!"

take this for example - gray put on my ski helmet and his life jacket and walked around for 20 minutes smacking his head on things and falling to the ground in fits of laughter so thrilled that he could hit his head as hard as he wanted and not get hurt.  I can't remember the last time I spent 20 minutes laughing so hard I could hardly breath.  That sounds like a pretty lucky life! And pretty lucky for me as I'm going about doing my "stuff" to be able to listen to that laugh.  (side note - Gray really likes to smell his stinky feet too. Brandon just doesn't get it and tells him to quit smelling them if they are so stinky!)  It's late - I better quit writing or who knows what I might share......