.
Not the dance caused by children in all of the available bathrooms, the dance caused by changing stages.
Warning- this is the obligatory, "My baby is turning (fill in the blank) post."
Last night I dreamed that I went with the older half of my family to a wedding in Memphis for the weekend leaving my two youngest at a Montessori School in Nashville by mistake. For some reason known only to the Sandman I couldn't leave Memphis but had to wait two days to go pick up my sons and worried the whole time because I couldn't remember their teacher's name and didn't know any phone numbers to call to find out if they were o.k.
Thankfully the boys were sent to a Percy Jackson-esque, "Camp Thunder" and had a really fun weekend; sustaining no sword wounds. This all made perfect dream-sense.
Really?
We don't live in Nashville. My boys don't go to a Montessori School. I don't know a soul in Memphis.
When my oldest sisters went to college I remember feeling that the salad days of our family were over. My younger brother had died years before and I was suddenly an older, only child. Hard to have shenanigans at the dinner table with just yourself when you are used to snorting peas with siblings. My parents shifted into neutral parenting gear; they were tired. It was lonely for a while. A family dance of shifting relationships and roles.
My seventh and youngest baby (here it comes) is turning 8 years old this month. I'm tired and could easily shift into parenting-neutral because I have so many adult children around that love to do things with their younger brothers. It's a real temptation. But.... he still needs me to read to him and snuggle and practice multiplication tables. And most of all, he needs me to be excited about doing all those things for his first time.
This is why I drink coffee. This is also why I love having children; they keep you dancing on your toes and if they don't kill you, they keep you young.
.
Not the dance caused by children in all of the available bathrooms, the dance caused by changing stages.
Warning- this is the obligatory, "My baby is turning (fill in the blank) post."
Last night I dreamed that I went with the older half of my family to a wedding in Memphis for the weekend leaving my two youngest at a Montessori School in Nashville by mistake. For some reason known only to the Sandman I couldn't leave Memphis but had to wait two days to go pick up my sons and worried the whole time because I couldn't remember their teacher's name and didn't know any phone numbers to call to find out if they were o.k.
Thankfully the boys were sent to a Percy Jackson-esque, "Camp Thunder" and had a really fun weekend; sustaining no sword wounds. This all made perfect dream-sense.
Really?
We don't live in Nashville. My boys don't go to a Montessori School. I don't know a soul in Memphis.
When my oldest sisters went to college I remember feeling that the salad days of our family were over. My younger brother had died years before and I was suddenly an older, only child. Hard to have shenanigans at the dinner table with just yourself when you are used to snorting peas with siblings. My parents shifted into neutral parenting gear; they were tired. It was lonely for a while. A family dance of shifting relationships and roles.
My seventh and youngest baby (here it comes) is turning 8 years old this month. I'm tired and could easily shift into parenting-neutral because I have so many adult children around that love to do things with their younger brothers. It's a real temptation. But.... he still needs me to read to him and snuggle and practice multiplication tables. And most of all, he needs me to be excited about doing all those things for his first time.
This is why I drink coffee. This is also why I love having children; they keep you dancing on your toes and if they don't kill you, they keep you young.
.
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