Fridays With Anneliese

After weeks of little Anneliese being weepy, and trying to make time for just our sweet middlest by herself, we have kind of worked ourselves into a nice Friday routine with her. (It's the only morning of the week when Charlotte and Nathan are both at school, but she isn't.)

We bring Nathan to his track club before school, and then drop Charlotte off at church, and then we go to Starbucks for a coffee and a cookie. We talk about whatever she wants to, and she tells me about her friends and her favorite colors and asks questions I could never fully explain to a four-year-old ("what is money? why can't we see it? is it like God, like it's there but we can't see it? why can I hear my heart beating when I am trying to sleep? maybe some day can we find a new swing for the swingset but like one that has rainbows on it?") but it's a good time to be with her and listen, and we both love it.

If Mark is off work, we leave Ali home napping and go do something with just us. One week we got no-good-reason pedicures together, which was awesome and sweet.

Or, when Ali is with us, Anneliese is glad to have time with me at home. She colors or paints, glues things she finds around the house to paper, and calls it an art project. (Please no one tell me we are trashy if my children think that beer bottle caps are "treasures.")

She still wants to color pictures for people, and write letters too, even though all her letters say the same thing, exactly, the only thing she knows how to write: Hi I love you Love Anneliese.

(It's also what I write on a note in her lunch box every day, because it's the only thing I'm sure she can read. Hi Anneliese, I love you! Love Mommy. And she keeps them all in a little sandwich baggie in her room, even though they're all basically the same, because she is just the best.)

Most Friday mornings she also FaceTimes with Another Nathan in Minnesota, not that she has a whole lot to say, but she likes to see him and giggle and tell him about nothing,

Some weeks she will go on outings with Mark, whatever errands he has that he's glad for her "help" with, or to get things at Costco and eat pizza there together. She loves some special time with him too.

She, like all of us. sometimes needs one on one love, that is only about her. And especially in what seems to be a hard season for her, we want to give extra of that, and more extra, and more.

Also she's just really fun and sweet to hang out with.