Happy December! Or Something?

Hey it's December! And I'm still behind from November so let's take a journey through my phone and see what we have been up to, yes?

{HAAomg sometimes I forget I have a blog. Love, Erin in January.}

Anneliese and I had a lunch date after church. Everyone else was sick and/or crabby, and we wanted ZaxBEE's (that's how we pronounce it, we are just cool like that) and can I just say she is a delightful companion?

I have no idea exactly how this happened, but I walked away for three minutes and walked back... and clearly some toddler achievement has just been unlocked.

I'm not sure what's happening here either, but I'm pretty sure she is posing for her senior year pictures. The awkward, oh how she nails it.

I took Nathan to his school literacy night (and book fair) and he picked out several new things to read: a book of beautiful things people have built from Legos, and a biography about the Wright brothers. Why so opposed to good ol' fiction, bro?

Mark sits down with the girls, any evenings he is home, to watch Daniel. "Watch." I like to joke that Daniel is his unisom. Because... yeah, every time.

I took Ali and Charlotte to the (nicer) grocery store (with the fun carts) and they had a blast driving together. I can't believe Ali is old enough to play like this. Wasn't Charlotte just the baby?

Anneliese got her friend Beatrice a duplicate of her favorite shirt, for a birthday present. Yes, that's a half donut, half rainbow. No, I do not understand it. Yes, it is awesome. Yes, they planned ahead to wear them on the same day. Yes, they delight me.

This is Nathan's DNA bracelet, because of course it is.

Also, NOW that it is December, let's all enjoy some good holiday clothing. With a t-rex on it. Obviously.

We have now reached the "what am I even blogging about?" portion of today's post. The end.

Three Somethings Cheerful (And A Bonus 1990s Mark/Erin Story)

Look, I can be cheerful. Three times, even! Ready?

1.) Anneliese sang in chapel choir again last week. She was as adorable and delighted as the first time.

And what's sweeter than a choir full of four-year-olds anyway?

Anneliese is tall* so in the back row, to the right.

*Side story: one of Mark's first memories of interacting with me was when we were taking some group picture for school (band! fine! it was for band! we were at BAND CAMP okay?) and they told us to stand by height and I hopped up into the back row, because apparently part of my self-image is that I am tall? And apparently I am actually... not that tall? (I feeeeeeel like I am tall.) 

So anyway Mark watched as they moved me down a row and then down another and then apparently it happened again (!) later in the school year and he kept wanting to yell at me (in his best Seinfeld-to-George "you're bald" voice): YOU ARE AVERAGE! But he didn't, because he is Mark, and that is just not a very Mark thing to do. But! He does like to bring up this story every time I mention that I am tall, which is apparently still fairly often. Because I am! I mean, not a giant! But fairly tall! Really! 

2.) Charlotte has a new purple peacoat. In my opinion (as the shopper), it is perfection.

3.) Nathan was telling me some story the other night about something that happened at a Boeing parts factory (I don't even know) and he thought it was the best most hilarious mishap ever, and even though the story was actually suuuuper boring, his perfect smile and giggling about it enchanted me anyway.

lampshade on head?

I'm glad I got a picture though so I never have to get him to tell me that story again though. Yawn.

(Y'all hush, I am a good mom, take a seat and stop clutching your pearls.)

PJs and Pancakes Party

On the afternoon of Anneliese's birthday, we had some friends over for PJs and pancakes, and it was really sweet! I wasn't sure if a Monday afternoon birthday party would fly, but it did! It was easy and cute.

Anneliese requested a strawberry cake, with a rainbow with clouds on top. Done and done.

(It's no masterpiece like last year's rainbow cake - which was definitely the peak of my birthday cake makings - but I did make a damn fine strawberry buttercream, so at least there's that.)

We set up the kitchen for a big breakfast-for-dinner: bacon, eggs, yogurt, and milk in cute bottles (I had to drink a lot of frappucinos to have all those bottles ready for the party) (I'm a selfless mom, what).

And, make-your-own-pancakes! They could choose their "toppings" and whatever kind of pancakes they wanted, and we had several kinds of syrup to choose from. PSA: kids do not choose fruit when you give them the option of sprinkles or chocolate chips instead. #themoreyouknow

We let them decorate their own coffee tumblers, and then I put a packet of hot chocolate in each of them. Activity + party favor = easy win.

Because I'm not much of an organized games kind of mom, they spent most of the party playing outside in the yard on the swingset. I'm not sorry. It was easy, and it's fun, and other people's yards are always more exciting than your own when you're a kid, right? Especially in your PJs.

Then we opened presents and sang and had cake and ice cream.

Totally a delightful party. Happy birthday, sweet Anneliese!

Some Other September Things

Here are some other things we did in September (alternate title: let's take a journey through my phone's camera roll) --

One Friday night when Marky was working, the kids and I made popcorn and turned the lights off and snuggled on the couch and watched a movie together. We had never seen Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. It was delightful.

I snuggled with Ali a lot. Because she is also delightful. She's turned into a super happy baby recently. I'll take it.

We took a lot of pictures at the bus stop. Some days, even in non-yellow shorts.

(Anneliese now has a carpool ride two days a week --
they pick her up from N's bus stop!)

Anneliese learned to brush her own hair and suddenly she's a teenager.

Charlotte did her first round of swim lessons. She can't swim on her own yet but she also didn't poop in her swimsuit at all, so that's a hearty win.

Nathan got a bad case of swimmer's ear (seven years! three kids! our first ear infection!) and we barely slept for several nights and he was generally miserable and in pain but it's over now.

I did some more preschool homework FTLOG.

Another Nathan came for a weekend to visit, he and Mark shucked some corn fresh from Minnesota and grilled dinner and we played with the kids and ran errands and it was all right and normal and good, and then we waved bye til next time.

Anneliese and I painted our toes yellow.

We set up Mark's old phone with Nathan's email so he has a way to text/call us (through google hangouts) and we can leave him home alone for an hour or so when we need to. One night he was home doing his homework and practicing, while I hopped over to church for a few minutes for preschool orientation, and Mark had the girls at dance. This is what texting with a seven-year-old looks like:

Anneliese's cutie friend Beatrice has been with us for a few afternoons, and as always, we love having her around. (Especially when she can pull some cheerfulness out of Anneliese these days.) We decided these two are competing for the best-dressed award at the weekday school.

Charlotte got in the habit of wearing a cape to go poop. Like you do.

Nathan graduated out of his first cello (from this eighth-size to a quarter-size, coming soon). He's very excited but I am mostly sad. His first cello! Aw. I will miss this tiny sweet thing.

The End of This Summer

Well since labor day is over and Nathan started back to school last week and the girls start back to preschool tomorrow, I guess it means summer is over... and I feel complicated about that. I don't know whether to feel relieved that this season is passed (because it kinda sucked), or cry because it isn't what I wanted to be and I don't get to go back to re-do it, time being one-directional and kind of a bummer like that.

I am trying to think less about Mark traveling so much, less about the sad screamy-baby months, less about the best friend goodbye, less about the largely-untouched bucket list of family fun -- and think more about the lovely moments (yes! they were there! swearsies!) and fun trips and and new memories. I'm trying. I am! But I'm having trouble shaking that overall, it wasn't what I wanted it to be, and now it's over.

Blah.

At least we did up our last day of summer in style. And by "in style" I mean in a frenzy. Although you would never know it from this here, right?

Besides Charlotte being halfway out of the picture (even after I tilted the camera to accommodate her), and Ali working on her poetic Thoreau-contemplating-Walden gaze, we look like a completely together and un-frazzled lot, yes? Right? SAY YES.

So anyway our frenzy involved taking an extra friend, Beatrice, for the morning (there was a fifth kid) (of course there was a fifth kid) (she is a friend of Anneliese's and her mom needed to work and she is a dream to have around, and after a few days of Anneliese being weepy, she needed some happy distraction so I have never been gladder to have a fifth kid, actually) and then getting Nathan on the bus and Ali to her first day of MMO (see, that's how the fifth kid thing balances out, you send two others to school).

Also, it should not be called MMO, not only because I'm an aunt, not a mom here (and isn't it all about me?) but because I am not the only non-mom who might want or have a kid in the program, and the language around it is gross, and I will begin my campaign to change it shortly.

Like after some more coffee.  Several weeks's worth.

So Ali went to church and I took the big (big?) (middle?) girls out for coffee treats, which was really fun and cute until Anneliese spilled hers and then even Beatrice couldn't quell the weepies. Sigh.

Starbucks with outdoor seating + September = RECOMMEND.

We regrouped and went back to church to do preschool orientations, which were all fine and easy. Charlotte's teacher is one we already know well (both Nathan and Anneliese also had her, but at different ages). Anneliese's teacher is new to us, but seems like maybe the most on it preschool teacher I have yet to encounter, so I'm pretty thrilled about that match.

Anneliese found her coat hook and she loves it.

She also took posession of a rainbow nametag.

Charlotte danced in the hallway with no one watching, as she is wont to do, and then stopped and got all smiley instead when I wanted her to do more.

Then Beatrice and Anneliese climbed on her, because we are the dream family to have lingering in preschool hallways when teachers are trying to do orientations.

Seriously you want us around. We are delightful. And definitely not loud or anything.

And then we skipped grocery shopping to swim in the pool because y'all, the schedule only had so much room.

Also it was hot as the blazes outside. Is it September? It was like mid-nineties today. I literally sat under a bush by the pool like freaking Jonah, just for a tiny spot of shade. I took a picture but it ain't pretty so you don't get to see it.

And then we went back to church to pick Ali up from Aunt's Morning Out™ because apparently three round-trips in one morning is how much I needed to drive to church today. Oh wait! I also did two more, for children's choir in the afternoon, after Nathan's carpool! Yay! Five round-trips! My life is full of meaning and purpose. Wait, what? Anyway.

Ali did just fine at church this morning and was smiling and happy to see me after lunch and she napped hard after her big morning.

But not before she pooped all over me and then (after I took my shirt off) spit up all over my back and down my jeans so I got to do extra laundry and get an extra shower today! I also got to change not one but TWO sets of poopy underwear, AND wait in a carpool line that was longer and slower than it would have taken the bus to get home. Sigh, again.

MEANING AND PURPOSE.

But actually it was not a bad day, just a frenzy. After a few sad no-Another-Nathan tears, Nathan had a fun first children's choir of the year, and he and Anneliese were giggly and playful all evening, excited for her school tomorrow reading books together and practicing writing. Anneliese wanted to write a letter, so Nathan showed her how to write hi and I love you, and I think the love might have just been a heart shape, but it still totally counts. Also she wanted to dot all her i's with hearts, which I would have (probably patronizingly) discouraged, but Nathan sweetly told her "okay just make them as tiny as you can," which is why he's a better person than I am.

(Queen poopy crabbypants went to bed early. If you pretended not to hear her tantruming upstairs, watching Nathan and Anneliese together was lovely.)

Whoever tells me to *cherish every moment* gets a chair to the face.

Hm  it occurs to me (brace yourself, obvious epiphany coming up) that sometimes real life tedium and lovely tender moments happen all at the same time, and maybe my disappointing summer can be disappointing but also okay too? No happy ending needed. No brilliant closure better-next-year takeaways required. Just letting it be what it was, missing what it wasn't, and now starting the next thing.  I think I will try to be okay with that.

It's Day Camp Week. Also, I'm Tired.

Lest you think everything is sunshine and roses around here (I don't want to use the internet to vent alllll my problems, nor do I want to pretend that my life is always shiny; it's a fine line), it isn't. I'm tired this week. Like, life weary.

The big kids have been in day camps through our parks and rec offerings in Raleigh. (You'd think this might make my week seem easy and low key, but camp has been a neutral force on that front, at best.) Anneliese does an art camp all morning, and Nathan is doing a lego camp in the afternoon, at a different location. Surprisingly the schedule has worked okay, but it is a lot of driving during trafficky times, and a lot of fussy crying lunch hours while I try to feed all three big kids, and get a bottle into the baby, and get us moved from one parks facility to another. I have been packing lunches to eat while we go, but I'm not ashamed to admit we also drove through for chicken nuggets twice already.

Also the dryer is broken (again!) (whole separate problem from before! what are the chances? please file this under Always Something) so add some laundry drying stops at Another Nathan's house during those lunch runs too. (He is out of town but his house/dryer is near one of the camps, so.)

This is the only picture I got of Anneliese's "camp" and it has nothing to do with art, and it isn't even at her camp, but Nathan's. She was walking in with our packed lunch and her sunglasses and said "Guess who I am? I will give you a clue! I am mommy!" (I don't get it, but okay? She looks sweet though so I will take it.)

And this is the only picture I got of Nathan's "camp" week, again having almost nothing to do with lego camp, other than it was taken in his camp room holding a camp toy and proclaiming he had a solution to how we could make a sperm whale cake for his birthday (which is what he has been asking for, and of course I don't know how to do that, is he for real??) -- just make a cake, and put a sperm whale on the cake, and look wouldn't this one be so cool?

Sperm whale toy has now been ordered, and Amazon officially doesn't understand my purchasing patterns. Oh and also, Nathan loved lego camp. Anneliese loved art camp too, despite my being too beside myself to be super aware or memory-making about it all. *sigh*

In heavier news, I saw a man on a motorcycle get hit by a car (he did not survive) and it is heartbreaking and horrible, of course for the family more than me (not about me at all! I know this! I know!) but it still was somewhat traumatizing to witness. AND in an unrelated incident I hit (bumped) another car in a parking lot and I left a note and asked everyone at the rec center playground if it was theirs and it was not, but no one has called which means maybe nothing will come of it? But it feels unsettling, like, did I do the right thing? Should I have called the police to file a report on myself? (There was no mark. It was nothing. But still.) Bah.

(Car-crash type events, incidents, whatever -- they make me stressy. It is a Thing.)

Unrelated to any of this, my mom is trying to plan her Final Arrangements and they are, um... unusual. To the point that she wants to get all of us siblings on board now, which is fine, okay, but it sure makes for an awkward phone conversation when she caught me with a spare moment ("spare" haaaaa) feeding the baby a bottle while the big kids played on the indoor playset at the rec center waiting for Nathan's camp doors to open. Weird! Morbid! The other parents were backing away slowly, I could sense it.

So ALSO, Mark is traveling a lot. His new job is good for him, for experience and title and interesting things to work on, but he works a lot more. Like, a lot more than he used to, and a lot more than I was expecting. And that work includes traveling, not because the job itself involves travel (it doesn't, in theory), but because there are trainings and meetings and blah blah blah I don't know. It seems to be a lot of Special Exception Case trips and extra shifts and going in for storms, etc etc etc, and I guess Special Exception Case things are normal at the beginning of any job. But it has been several months now and I am ready for him to have more than a day or two off every several weeks. He is finally coming home tonight from his third trip to Charlotte this month and I am just done.

(I normally am more supportive than I feel/sound right now. I promise. It's just that my days feel long and they also feel like they never end, because they go all night too, and I'm at my limit of being... needed. I am feeling a panic-level need to be alone. I am counting the hours.)

This might be obvious, but I haven't been sleeping well either. And ugh there is hardly any feeling worse than being wired and exhausted at the same time. While lone-wolfing it for the third week in this month, with four kids, one of whom yells at unpredictable intervals because she's still at that stage of infancy where if she is awake she is fussy, save lots of jiggling and attention which is sometimes fine but sometimes feels overwhelming with three other kids also needing me, which means everyone ends up somewhere between fussy and frustrated. (I know there are worse feelings. Of course there are. Have some perspective, right? But for where I am this week, it is hard for me to remember what those worse feelings might be, because frankly this sucks. Like, grade-A level suuuuuucks.)

Ready for some brightsiding now?

This afternoon Anneliese has her cutie friend Beatrice over to play, and Nathan is still at camp, and both Charlotte and Ali are sleeping quietly upstairs. (People in my house reliably take naps! I do not take this for granted!) I am sitting by the pool now watching their playdate happen; I brought my leader's manual outside so I could start reading through it and planning my small group sessions for my Montreat conference in a few weeks, but it turns out that blog-venting some frustrations a sentence at a time takes less eyeball- and brain-power than that so I'm doing this instead. And if I am honest, watching them swim and laugh and excitedly ask me for jumping pictures is definitely the best moment of my week.

And my time to be alone will come soon. Not soon enough, but it will come. Please come, alone time.