Lately–

I was trying to tame one of our garage kitties today–after I rescued her from the Jaws of Death (Belle, the giddy yellow Lab, who thinks said kitty is a toy) and she bit me. My finger is so swollen I can hardly type with it.

The next time though, she let me pick her right up and snuggled right into me. I wish I weren’t allergic!

Cadrian is adorable lately. He’ll shake his head viciously when offered something he doesn’t want.He loves to eat–and also thinks it’s fun to toss food off his chair. He’ll walk/run away giggling and look back at you with a mischievous grin, inviting a chase. He’s almost figured out how to run, but when he does, he usually is like a little ping-pong ball, ricocheting off anything in his path until he completely loses his balance. He’ll “blow” whenever he sees anything resembling a candle–and when he blows, his cheeks puff out, and he lets the air out of the corner of his mouth, Popeye-esque. He’s finally stopped throwing a screaming marathon when I turn him down when he asks to nurse, by signing milk and saying “Nssss.” He still asks fairly frequently, hoping I’ll forget we are only nursing at bedtime and naptimes, but goes about his busy business when denied. Now if I can just figure out how to cut out the nursings at sleeptimes. He’s sleeping through the night, although the change back to standard time really messed us up. When he starts waking in the morning, I escape to the guest room so I can go back to sleep and don’t have to nurse him. That was our last nursing to cut out with the girls, so we are trying to cut it out first. We have about 6 weeks before our cruise when we’ll be gone for 10 days; I’d like to have him weaned by the end of November (I don’t really want to wean, but he can’t come with us…Insert sad face which is also glad to have a vacation with husband here)

Brielle is adorable lately. She is also stubborn and compassionate. She’s often attention seeking and as wild and untamed as she is cuddly snuggly. I’ve been thinking lately, if I just start off the day with a spanking, the very first time she disobeys, we’d be better off and have far more fun together! She’s still so sneaking in how she disobeys though, it’s hard for me to realize it sometimes in the craziness. She doesn’t get all defiant to me, she just kind of… wanders in the general direction of obedience and then… wanders off. She loves to sing and dance. She loves all things Sound of Music, especially So Long Farewell. She likes to play Mama, and has me be the baby. She snuggles me and talks to me in this teeny tiny syrupy voice. She is doing STELLAR at quiet time–and by that I mean, she has made HUGE strides to fulfilling expectation. She stays in her room for about an hour before she starts coming out to find me, and find out if quiet time is over (even though she knows what 3:00 looks like and can see for herself) or to ask me any number of inane questions. She rarely makes a mess in her room of Herculean proportions. This is amazing for her, considering she has not napped regularly for about 18 months and quiet time has been a daily battle with her. She talks non-stop and says everything that comes into her head as she thinks of it. She’s wonderfully exhausting.

Aviana is adorable lately. She is serious and pensive, full of grandiose ideas and plans. She talks constantly, telling you every painstaking detail of her thoughts. She loves to listen to her books on CD and will ask me to extend quiet time so she can listen longer. She is learning so much, and remembers so much. I am seeing a new level of silly now that she is five, an almost annoying kind of silly, that I can’t quite put my finger on. She wants to be able to read right this second and doesn’t want to do the hard work of sounding out the words. She gets over the top frustrated if she doesn’t understand something right away. She is loving and snuggly and loves one on one time. She most of the time tries to be a sweet little helper, and it’s amazing how much she can do.

Kevin is working 7-8:30 or so, and is finally able to combine. This week has been nice weather and he is getting record yields for both corn and soybeans which is incredibly rewarding since this year has also been incredibly frustrating. He essentially has built a new grain drying system from scratch, which is just genius. GENIUS. The long days are hard on me and exhausting for him. It’s hard on the kids too, but at least he sees them for a while in the morning and we take him lunch in the field and can spend a few minutes with him. We are mentoring a pre-marital couple in our first Marriage Mentoring assignment, and after two meetings, I think I can safely say it’s going well. Of course, the day of our first meeting with them, the day my grandma died, we had a huge fight. Ironic.

I am feeling mostly tense. I feel like I’m in charge of a lot, and don’t really feel equipped for it. Memories of Grandma pop up at odd times, like when I’m cleaning the stove, and I start to cry. I feel like I’ve committed to too much by leading our MOMS group, volunteering twice a month in the nursery, doing Marriage Mentoring and then the rest of my life, full of dinners, diapers, and daily decontaminating tidying up, not to mention maintaining friendships, creative pursuits and my debatable sanity. I haven’t downloaded pictures from my cameras for a few weeks, and usually, I dump my cards nearly every day. I can’t even begin think about planning for our vacation and the holidays. I have almost all the Christmas shopping done, but I still have to wrap everything and make some of the food for when we’re gone (my parents are staying here for the duration, but they aren’t used to eating on a schedule) and get our Thanksgiving (in lieu of Christmas) cards finished, picture made, letter written, envelopes addressed and mailed and… not to mention find subs for my church commitments. I sure hope this cruise will be worth it, because right now, it just looks like a lot of work.