A happy day

 I just love birthdays!

There's something so special about my birthday for me. It's the one day a year I feel complete license to do with the day what I want to do with it. If I don't finish my household chores I have no problem with that. I love it. Each minute is a gift--what will I open next?

Today was wonderful, complete with roses from the love of my life and special homemade gifts (medium: legos) from my favorite little people. The photo below is Abigail and Amelia showing off their special birthday presents for me--a song (being played on Abigail's toy cell phone), a flower creation by Abigail and Amelia's plate of lego cookies (they were sugar and chocolate chip--the best I've ever had!). I got to go running today and window shop with the little people in downtown Naperville. I got my yearly free Starbucks birthday drink (gotta love that free Venti indulgence!) and enjoyed dinner at Red Robin with three crazy rowdy kids and one crazy handsome husband.

Truly, it was a wonderful day. And to top it all off, our apartment in New York is finally getting some traction on the market with three showings in the past week and a half, and three offers! We're not in the clear yet--there are negotiations to come and we well know that with a coop sale, there are lots of opportunities for things to go slowly or wrong. But at least we have interest, and praise God for that.

Gotta say, having a birthday in February isn't so bad. It's the height of winter blues when everyone is ready for the sun to shine, and every year I get my own little day of sunshine built right in. Not such a bad gig. Happy Monday everyone!

Reflections

I love this photo. I had to come up with a blog title around it just so I had a reason to post it. I took it last weekend while I was in Colorado with my brothers and dad, celebrating Dad's 70th birthday and getting away from it all. The candles say it all. I mean, when do I have time to light candles like that? Enjoy a hearth bathed in candlelight while my brother stokes the wood fire and we cozy up under blankets in a cabin in the mountains and wax nostalgic about... politics? Well, I can't say anyone was particularly nostalgic about politics, but politics is what my family gets passionate about, so the topic did come up. Anyway, it was a wonderful trip in a stunning setting and a fantastic chance to connect with the first three most important men in my life. My brothers and dad and I have not had a getaway just the four of us since I was about 13 years old, so it seemed about time to make it happen. I'm glad we did.

Garrett, as always, did a fabulous job with the little people while I was gone. Never one to sit around and "do nothing" when Mommy leaves town, they indeed kept busy with nature walks, visits with friends, trips to the museum and the kids' first banana split experience. No wonder they love daddy time! I heard that Amelia launched a protest when she heard I was coming home, though she seemed to change her tune once I walked in the door. Tuesday morning I awoke to two little giggling girls on either side of me in bed, neither of them appearing disappointed that I had reappeared in our home during the night. And Gabriel so far this week has reiterated, again, that it would really be best if I could go wherever he goes and he could go wherever I go because he just wants to snuggle with me all the time and it's not fair that he can't. It would be a lie to say I mind him feeling this way, as long as it remains a phase. Honestly, snuggling is pretty darn awesome. In fact I asked Amelia tonight what's her favorite thing to do in the whole world and she said snuggling and reading books together, just me and her. I have a feeling she might say something slightly different if, say, Garrett were to ask her the same question (the phrase "just me and you" can sometimes mean several different "you's"), but all this to say that snuggling is a favorite in this household and it was fun to come home to that.

I remember lamenting a while back that age four was still pretty much the same hard as age three, which was to say that it was perhaps the hardest age we've been through, in my personal and completely subjective opinion. I don't want to put my foot in my mouth here, but I have to wonder if perhaps four and a half has taken us to a new plane. I'm not making any official declarations here, but I do feel a bit less frazzled in recent memory. Just as busy, but less like I'm running in a hamster wheel, forever moving but never getting anywhere. Life is good right now. Busy and good, and gosh can those kids give good hugs. That always helps. As does slowly improving weather, fresh air, and a healthy dose of remembering that today's the day I have, so I might as well enjoy it while it's here. Happy almost-end-of-February! Sunshine is on the way.

Little paper hearts

The kids' teachers sent home a note to parents last week requesting that for Valentine's Day we send our kids with valentines for each child and teacher in the class. This morning we hand crafted our little love notes around the kitchen table, blowing through approximately six glue sticks in the process (I'm sure they were all almost depleted before our project started, right?). Abigail's, Amelia's and Gabriel's diligence was admirable and their perseverance (it takes a long time to glue together 18 valentines each!) impressive.

Valentine's Day has never been marked with a big star on my calendar. I enjoy the day, certainly have nothing against they day; I just have never thought very much about it at all. And while I believe it's true that setting aside one day a year to tell those you love that you love them is a bit preposterous, if we relegate signs of affection only to that assigned date, I am rather enjoying this year taking advantage of a cause of celebration and remembrance. Because isn't remembering and taking a moment to be grateful for the love we have experienced in the past and experience even now a way of honoring the fact of love in itself?

With no memory, there is no learning. With no frame of reference from the past, there is no moving forward into something new and uncharted--in that scenario, everything is uncharted. We may have the excitement of anticipation, but we have no richness of the things that have been and the way they have shaped us. I will choose to remember. I will choose to take note and to make a valentine, to celebrate what has come before and blossomed into what is here before me now.

I am excited to take my kids to school on Tuesday and watch them file into their classroom with little paper hearts in hand. They are just growing, just beginning to learn of how to love, and to share that love, and to remember in the form of a love note and say "I love you," "I know you," "I appreciate you."What a beautiful thing to learn and relearn year after year after year.

Happy Valentine's Day.

My little reader

Abigail and I have resumed her reading lessons. It started a few weeks ago when she expressed renewed interest in trying it out and we've progressed to making it a mostly regular thing again. I've found her enthusiasm pretty consistent, though when her eagerness wanes I can easily revive it when I tell her that when she can read I'll be able to write her special notes, just for her. That, and shortening the lessons when they are hard, has been a winning combo to get my spunky little learner excited about reading, and today was so exciting! I think she turned a corner. We've been working on reading words "the fast way," i.e. looking at a word and saying the word without sounding it out letter by letter first. Today was the first day Abigail was supposed to read a story the fast way the first time, and this is what my scholar read:

a fish in the rain

a girl met a man in the rain. that man got wet. that girl got wet.

the man said, "this is not fun."

the girl said, "this is fun."

the man said, "I have wet feet. so I will go home. I hate rain."

the girl said, "we can get fish." so she got a fish and gave it to the man.

Does anyone else out there think that this is just awesome?! My little girl is reading! (Everything is in lowercase--except for the article "I"--because we haven't gotten to talking about capitals versus lowercase yet.) These are some hard words, too. Try sounding out the word "girl" or "to" or "the" phonetically and you'll see just how tricky some words can be, even though seasoned readers don't think twice about them. I was a little nervous when I saw that today was reading the fast way from the get-go. Usually we read through the story one time by sounding out each word before we get to the fast stuff, but Abigail tackled it with such vigor I was just in awe of my little brainiac. What fun!