they get it all.

I am just going to go ahead and start writing to you like it's okay that I haven't posted anything here in almost three weeks. I am also going to refrain from apologizing, because, well, it's my blog, and I can do what I want to do.

Our life continues on. The days are a mixture of screaming and cuddling, puking and crying, eating and napping. I get to the end of my day, and it's like, oh-my-goodness-what-did-I-do-today. Parented. Cleaned. Cooked. Obsessed over E's approaching birthday party or that Josiah didn't poop, again. What I didn't realize about his parenting thing is that it's not just my body that I can't call my own anymore. It's not just my life. It's my mind, too.

And more than anything else, what always strikes me about this mommy thing, is that I live in it. I'm chin-deep in being a parent. When I worked or went to school, it was a big part of my life, sure, but then I could leave for a bit. Say, "excuse me," and go to a movie or something. But with kids, it's absolutely everything, especially because I stay home. This current season is almost mind-numbing in its all-encompassing reality. Two boys. TWO. Who was crazy enough to put me in charge of two human beings?

First game of Catch

Elias has been able to throw for awhile now, but not necessarily to anyone. He and Dada finally had their first, honest-to-goodness, game of Catch.

If you couldn't tell, he got a bit distracted by the camera... He's turning into such a ham. "CHEEEESE!"

Summertime play

There is nothing Elias likes to do more than to go outside. Walks, water play, throwing rocks... He loves it all. Sometimes I'll walk into a room to see him just standing at the window, looking out. If we are going out at all, we have to wait until we are totally ready to go before putting our shoes on, because once he sees them, it's all, "Bye-bye? Bye-bye? Bye-bye!!"

Anyway, I've been trying to get outside with him in the mornings while Josiah takes his good nap. We stick to the backyard, with his water table and the hose. He loves it.

A glimpse of our cloth diapers

We love BumGenius diapers. We use the Elemental ones for Elias and sometimes Josiah. Before Elias was born though, and before we had very many BG AIO's, I bought a load of prefold diapers to use with a cover. They work great, are super absorbent, and are crazy cheap (about $2.50 a diaper).

But they look like this (without the cover on):

I mean, really. They look like something an Appalachian baby might wear.

Birth announcement outtakes

This Josiah of ours-- he is so funny. We had such a hard time getting a good picture for his birth announcement... In fact, Jeremy doesn't think we got even one good one, but I have a few I think may work. 

He really is a beautiful baby. He just can't get it together for the camera ;-) 

my hands

I just read a post from a friend who also has a blog about her family, and she wrote about her hands. She wrote about how, at her age, she's starting to see her mother's, and her aunts', hands in her own hands. And she loves that legacy.

It's funny that she wrote about it, because I've been seeing my hands recently too. Maybe there's something about the age of thirty, that the girlishness finally wears off of our hands.

My hands were always very soft and pretty. I loved the look of my hands. I got compliments on them too. In particular, one guy friend of mine said once that they were perfect. And I agreed with him, without pride. I just knew they were pretty, and I enjoyed that.

My hands don't look like that anymore. It started in my mid-twenties, working at coffeehouses. There's so much work with one's hands in that environment. They lost a little of their plumpness. And now, as my 31st birthday approaches, they bear little resemblance to those pretty girlish hands of my adolescence. The skin has thinned and they show their veins. They have had too much sun, especially my left hand, from constantly having my hand out of the car window in that California sun in my youth. My knuckles seem bigger, and sometimes the joints ache.

Funnily enough, I don't really mind. Yes, I enjoyed having pretty hands. But now I appreciate what those hands can do. Those hands can soothe two screaming babies at the same time. Those hands make breakfast, lunch, and dinner for my boys. Those hands planted seeds in a garden for the first time this year, and those same hands pulled out the full grown plants for dinner. These hands took me through graduate school and the hundreds of thousands of words that were typed in it. These hands are workhorses.

I was a lazy child, folks. Goodness, I was so lazy. These hands remind me that I gladly gave up the laziness and selfishness of youth for family and hard work.

Not yet "grown"

I have recently been surprised by how much I'm like a toddler, by watching Elias. No, I'm not saying that I see my own actions/ideas/personality in Elias, I'm seeing my own behavior in a toddler.

I started researching the Montessori method about a month ago, to implement here in our home instead of a preschool. And one of the books said that toddlers cannot yet reason. It is around three years of age when children can begin to reason-- and therefore make constructive decisions about their behavior. Up to that point it's basically our job as parents (so far as discipline goes) to reason for them. I know he that should not go outside when it's around a hundred degrees, so I reason for him, and then I set the parameters of his behavior, i.e., we stay inside. He doesn't have to understand, and truly, he cannot, why he must stay inside, but it's not his job to know why. He just has to obey, tantrums or not. And we say, "Trust us, Elias;" that this is the way it has to be. It's for his own good.

I've realized that I have acted, and even continue to act, like a toddler with God. My circumstances look a certain way, because He has ordered events and circumstances to be that way for my good. He does not reason with me, because I cannot understand His reasoning, and so I throw a fit. I sulk. I cry. I beg Him to change His mind. I don't understand that because it's so hot outside, that I could get sick. That it wouldn't be good for me. That I wouldn't have fun anyway, even though I think I would!

This is the hard part with adults and toddlers. We think we understand what would be best. We don't.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, 

neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD."

(Isaiah 55.8)