Denial

I used to be a message board whore.  Shocking, I know.  And my favourite involved a large group of women all due the same month.  I am still very close to many of those women, and they have the GALL to suggest that our babies are going to turn FIVE next month.  What the heck??  FIVE????  That's, like . . KINDERGARTEN AGE!

Nonono.  He's much too young to talking about all that.  I mean ... LOOK at him!

They're just talking gibberish.

Derailed

You know how it is.  Everything is going along just peachy keen and all of the sudden you slip right off the tracks.  Not a crash, exactly, but all of your progress comes to a screeching halt and you wonder where in the world you will find the motivation to right yourself and chug away as well as you did previously.

This is where I find myself this week.  Derailed by everything from painful memories and haywire hormones to a husband out of commission.  Then there is the problem of one simple derailment causing further derailments in every other aspect of my life.  Each of those cars IS connected, after all.  So this week, I pretty much wanted to hide away from the world.

But thanks to a brilliant family and stubborn friends who refused to let me cave, I think I'm finally starting to roll out of the station again.

Today was a good day - much purging and organizing in our dungeon basement: Step one of "The Great Room Shuffle of 2012."

And tomorrow promises fun with friends and family at a house I don't have to clean!  What more could I want?

Will Burying my Head in the Sand Make my Butt Look Big?

My 4yo has a girlfriend.  Or "gelfwen" as he calls her.  Seems to me that if you can't SAY "girlfriend" you're entirely too young to HAVE one.

He couldn't have picked a better "gel," even so.  She's a precocious little chatterbox with a great sense of humour and an elfin smile.  What's not to love??  Today she celebrated her fifth birthday, which was a punch-in-the-gut reminder that my own aforementioned littlest man will turn five in April.  Whaaaa?  I just HAD him!  I swear!

And if they're turning five, why that means that next fall . . . . . ::screams at the thought::

While I rush off and bury my head in the sand, here are a few pics of our day:

Ready to par-tay.

This one made me giggle.  I can't imagine what they were looking at.

My biggest little man, who opted out of the preschool birthday party so he could game at a friend's house.  Weird.

Gorgeous sunset this evening, but I wasn't in a very good location to capture it the way I wanted.  I was kind of playing around with the new camera and got this one, no edits.

Mother Nature is Bipolar

So, about that whole snowy "winter has FINALLY arrived!" statement:  lies, all lies.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Snow Dance

When I awoke this morning, my brain told me (rather rudely, I might add) that we had some rain in the near future.  I'm a walking barometer is what I am.  I managed to drug myself up just enough to head to my friend's house and it began to rain on the way over.  Yup.  Knew it.  I wasn't prepared, however, when white stuff started drifting down:

The kids were over the moon, and snow danced on the deck.  Naturally.

Then Chase was driven with the irresistible urge to dig a big pit in my friend's backyard.  (?)  Maybe he figured the snow was a sign of the apocalypse, and that he'd better get started on that zombie plan?

As for what he's wearing . . . . he's MY kid, what can I say?  Doesn't every boy wear pink rain boots with his black ballet skirt?

Even MORE snow fell:

And by this evening:

Yes, winter has FINALLY arrived.

Spring Fling . . . Sorta

Oh how I love a fresh, spring day!!!

Even when it falls in the middle of winter.

::confused::

Runaround

Today has NOT been laid back and restful.  Today we ran:

We ran allllll over town.  Remember those old Family Circus comics when Billy ran all over the neighborhood to get from point "A" to point "B?"  Yeah, it was like that.

It was busy, but not stressful.

I keep thinking about how stress-free in general my life is right now.  How in the world did THAT happen?  A year ago, I stressed over anything and everything.  (Really . . . everything.  I could turn shoelaces into a nightmarish fiasco.)  And now I realize how amazing it is that we have . . well all kinds of things I fear jinxing dare I name them individually.

The new year as well as my birthday makes this my season of self-evaluation.  And as I look over my life right now, I see that it certainly isn't what I strived for once upon a time.  But I do believe it is much better than anything I could have planned for myself.  I am surrounded by love, laughter and stability - what more could I possibly need?  Did I craft my life to be this way?  Was it pure luck?  A little (or lot) of both?

I can't help but wonder what kind of lives my own kids will build for themselves.

Wherever they end up down the timeline, I just hope I am still in their circles of love and laughter.

Birthday Sweet

My smallest little angel snuggling into my new blanket.  This is the kind of birthday I had - sweet and relaxing.  Perfect!

Chapter 2012

One shiny new year.

One shiny new camera.

What more does anybody need?

So we have a fresh page for life, love, and pic-a-day.

Today was a pretty mellow pajama day filled with games, giggles and creativity.

Happy New Year!!

Brekky

Nothing like disappearing for an entire quarter, eh?  We're here.  We're alive.  We're laughing and loving and noogifying and writing faces on our bellies.  Doesn't everybody?

The thought of trying to catch up is daunting.  So I start fresh!  At the very least, I'd like to get back to taking more pics and posting the randomness.

So here is today's:


Chase, 3, tells me "I have work to do!  I need go find mine golden hammer!"  Surely this is the perfect getup for such a quest:

I'm not sure if he had any luck - but I did come across his secret hideout later in the day:

No wonder I can never find an empty laundry basket when I need one.

A Few Reasons Why I Love My Boyz

They're groovy.

Yes, this boy, too.

They're outdoorsy.

They're stylin'.

They know what they like.  And don't like.

(Traumatized by wearing a beanie for the first time this season.)

They're not afraid to stand up for themselves.

"Do I like this?  No, I do not."

They're problem-solvers.

They love their Daddy.

They're ambitious.

They're so perky in the morning.

They share.

They're hard workers.

They pay attention to details.

They're playful.

They're innocent.

They have great imaginations.

(He thought there were actual monsters in the Monster cans.)

They have mad skeellz.

They're full of surprises.

They defy gravity.

(That leg was STRAIGHT up in the air - not leaning on anything.)

True Colours

Can you beat this?  I mean really?

I truly, truly enjoy having another gurly in the house!  I braced myself - thinking the constant reminder of my sister would rip open the wound of her loss day after day.  But I am STUNNED to find the exact opposite to be true.  I feel more HEALED with the reminder.  I feel like a part of my sister has returned to me.  And I LOVE that we talk about her openly and freely - remembering and laughing - as naturally as we talk about the weather, shopping and the insanity of boyz.

And my "newest addition" is such a joy!!  I shall dub her Sprout and she shall be my Sprout and Sprout she shall henceforth be called.  I hope she's as happy here as we're happy to have her here.

So . . .  we're clinging to summer as long as possible.  ::clingclingclinnnnnnnnnng::  We don't begin school until after Labour Day.  But, as happens every year, once the second week of August hits, I start to feel that "back to school excitement" creeping in.  I think about meeting the new teachers - the fresh page of the new year - my "autumn resolutions," etc.  I'm particularly nervous about how I will handle this year because I'm sending off a student to preschool, elementary, middle AND high school.

::ups her meds::

Chase, I'm thinking, will most likely be expelled after a week or so.  See, he's supposed to be a peer MODEL in the reverse mainstreaming program.  He's supposed to TEACH many of the other students by example.  One of the biggest things he's supposed to "model" is that it's a fabulous, fun, woo-frickin-hoo thing to be out of diapers and going to the "big kid" bathroom.  More fun than Chuck E. Cheese!  Alas, however, Chase is ::looks around and whispers:: a panty pooper.  He will.not do the doody in the spelunker no matter WHAT you say or do or try to bribe him with.  I might or might not have resorted to blackmail. I ain't sayin'.  But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Even desperate measures won't work on a poo-potty paranoid preschooler, however.

Perhaps he can charm and distract them all with his purtified painted piggies?

::hopes::