Images of fall

When it's been a month since my last post it's hard to know where to begin. Our fall has been full and beautiful and overwhelming and hectic. I am trying to capture the good and soak it up to save for those harrowing moments, which may sound dramatic but I can't think of a better way to describe how life seems to have run away with our family. The schedule book is no fuller than it has always been, yet somehow peace alludes our household much of the time so I have been challenged to slow down and assess the situation.

Time passes so slowly and so quickly it's the most bizarre thing. Honestly, I look at four weeks on the calendar and think "well that's not that long," but to look at what happens in a month takes my breath away. To look at my own photos I hardly remember apple picking or pumpkin painting was not a lifetime ago, but only days. And the things I find myself wanting to write about--well, they take time. It's no longer the laundry list of what we did today that occupies my thoughts. The things that take hours of reflection and labyrinthian thought processes to even begin to grasp are what ping-pong through my mind for days or weeks and I don't feel like I have the time or energy or emotional wherewithal to write it down. I am thinking about my kids' budding need to be individuals, about how to talk to them about the very apparent fact that despite how they may be perceived or, perhaps, perceive themselves, they are each very different from their siblings. They need each other, but that is not the same as being each other. For them, I'm not sure the distinction is always so clear, or that even if it is, they know how to behave given that fact. They see differences now that have been around for a while, but now they have moved from simply noting the facts to making some sort of judgement on them: Amelia is not riding a two-wheeler yet, but Gabriel and Abigail are. Most four year olds I know aren't riding two-wheelers yet. But in Amelia's world, all the four years olds ride them except her. And she's aware. Not yet apparently troubled by it, but certainly curious. What must it feel like to be four and begin to notice the world is bigger and broader than you previously realized?

Perhaps it is in the context of the world growing so much bigger (we go to school now! we know songs and stories and people that mommy doesn't know!), or my little ones growing relatively smaller (though they are such big kids now!) that the season of discontent has swooped upon our home. I can't tell you how many people looked at me with knowing looks of nostalgia when I said my kids were turning four. Four! What a lovely age. I wish I could have stopped time when my kids were four. They were so cooperative! They were so obedient! They were old enough to really help and young enough to think helping was fun. All hail the age of four! But I tell you what, I have yet to see the tranquility of four. Sure, my kids are still crazy fun, and I love all sorts of things about their age. They do love to help, and they say sweet and funny things, and they can do things for themselves, and their curiosity is a delight to behold. But there seems to be no end to the whining, the bickering, the back talking, the complaining, the nagging. There are enough waterworks in our house in one day to fill Niagra Falls it seems. We see tears over owies, perceived owies, potential owies, and painless owies. We see tears about which shoes to wear, about tying or untying said shoes, about putting backpacks away when we get home and brushing teeth in the morning. We see tears if I don't sing a song at bedtime and tears if I sing the wrong song. Sometimes we see spontaneous tears with no apparent cause, which are usually explained with a pitiful "I bit my tongue!" or a blubbery "I don't want to be a kid!"

Looking at these pictures, I'd say being a kid is a pretty darn good thing to be. You get to decorate pumpkins and play in leaves and basically play almost all the time! But I know when I was a kid I didn't realize how awesome it was. And Garrett talks about how all he wanted to do was grow up. I hope my kids can learn to enjoy being kids. I hope they don't spend their childhoods looking ahead, ahead, ahead only to miss what's here right now.

Because the fact is, despite it all, life right now is pretty darn good.