No News is Good News

I've turned on the computer to blog twice in the last week, but then I just stare at it. Nothing too exciting is happening around here. We're enjoying the few real weeks of summer that we have before we start the back-to-school stuff. We've settled into a routine of wake up, go to the YMCA and work out while the kids play in their Kids Corner, change and go to the pool and have a picnic lunch, come home and relax or nap. Dinner, play outside, showers and bed. Repeat.  It's a comfortable, pleasant routine, even for someone who HATES when things get too monotonous.

Anderson has really become interested in time--not so much what time it is because the numbers don't really mean much to him--but whether it's morning, afternoon, and night.  Marty was kind of explaining it to him one day, showing him where the sun rises, how it's in the center of the sky around mid-day, and where it sets at night.  He paid attention and brings it to our attention all the time.  He'll say things like, "When the sun goes down and it is night, we will go to dinner."  Marty chuckled the other day and said he sounds like a Native American--something like "When the sun is high in the sky and the buffalo roams the fields, we will be ready to hunt." Now every time he says it, I crack up. He's gone all Dances With Wolves on us.

Confession: we don't spend a lot of time at other people's houses. It's not that we are anti-social, it's that we don't get together with people very often. My friends are either past the little kid stage of life and don't exactly want two five-year-olds terrorizing their houses, or they also have little kids and we're all so busy we can never seem to find time to get together.  So, when we spent a lovely day at some friends' house a few weeks ago, they REALLY enjoyed it. They also became super interested in family dynamics. Like who is a mother, who is a wife, etc. etc. Anderson loves to remind me that I'm Marty's wife. Amelia volunteers to be Anderson's wife. Anderson claims he wants his cousin to be his wife. Hilarity ensues with these conversations on the daily. Who knew conversations about incest could be so funny?

Every summer, I have these grandiose plans for all the many things I will get accomplished around the house.  Every summer, around this time, I sink into a great depression because I have yet to accomplish said grandiose plans. This summer? I made NONE. My plans included going to the pool as much as humanly possible and enjoying the kids. And you know what? No depression. On one hand, I could be disappointed in myself and say that it's lazy and slovenly to not accomplish anything. But in reality, I AM accomplishing something. I'm enjoying my summer with my kids without the weight of needing-to-be-doing-something on my shoulders. And bonus? Anything I DO manage to get done is just extra goodness! The kids and I went through every single toy that we own and gave away/threw away all the things that were broken or that we no longer play with.  The result is a much neater room for both of them, as well as less junk just laying around the house! See? Bonus!

Next week the kids will be going with me to work for four hours/day and participating in my school's Camp Kindergarten summer program.  We went today to kind of get them used to it, and they loved it. I think it'll be good for them. It'll be good for all of us.