Chasing Rainbows

It has rained here every day now for the last 15 days.

You must be thinking "Oh great, another blog entry to complain about the weather." But au contraire, mon frere, I am delighted that it is raining because rain is not snow. It could be worse. It could be SO MUCH worse.

Still, incessant rain does sometimes leave one feeling pent up and restless, particularly if one has three small children under four to entertain. 

What to do in such a situation?

You pretty quickly figure out that it is useless to curse the weather. 

Blast you, sun! Show yourself!

You can steal a few moments between showers to play outside.

Covered in mud at the Brogans house

Or you can chase down the light.

 

That's the maddening thing about storms. You know there is always light somewhere, it's just hidden from your view. Or it's just barely out of reach.

You know that if you wait long enough, good things will eventually come to you. Nothing bad lasts forever, and the sun always returns.  But I've found that you can get to the good parts faster if you work, if you throw yourself into the pursuit with passion and vigor and effort. 
 

And in the process of pursuit, I think you sometimes come to love the struggle. And the bad stuff? Sometimes even those things become dear to you.

Last night, Tim and I loaded the kids and the dogs into the car and we pursued the light and in the process we found out that actually really love shades of grey.


 

So while I will definitely be thrilled when the sun comes back...and I'm assuming that it will...for now, I am kind of loving the clouds.

And I know I'm venturing deep into "Put this on an old fashioned postcard and post it to Pinterest" territory here, but without rain, we wouldn't have any rainbows. And last night, I realized that I love chasing rainbows with my family.

 In the words of my daughter "That was a berry cool addbenture, Mom." I agree, Ads. I agree.

Picture Post

 In which the heroes do the same things. Differently.

 Addie slides.

Always with great trepidation.

 Graydon slides.

Always with great glee.

Addie builds.

Ads is becoming quite the builder. The only problem is that her structures tend to be slightly top heavy.

Graydon builds. 

G favors a slightly more free form style.

Graydon has a flower.

Like Ferdinand, Graydon likes to sit quietly and smell the flowers.

Adelaide has a flower. 

Her "lily" as she insists on calling tulips. "Lilies" are "my very best favorite, Mom."

Addie enjoys celebrating her flowers through dance.

And praise and worship

I asked her to smell her flower for a picture. So she did. With her whole heart. Pretty sure she sucked pollen into her brain.

 Addie runs with her friend.

Ads and C-lo

 Graydon runs "with" a friend (?)

Running "with" Sydney.

You Know, Just Your Basic May

My sister (Des) was famous (in our family) for starting nearly every sentence (for a time) with the phrase, "You know, just your basic..."

So I now borrow her phrase to describe our May so far. Because, really, it's been pretty normal. Just your basic May.

We're doing all the things one does in May.

Grilling out. 

Sixteen inches of snow. In May.

Enjoying the new spring greenery.

Sixteen inches.

Playing on the slide. 

Did I mention that it's May?

 When one is trapped spends any amount of time indoors with small children due to freakishly inclement weather and a refusal to put snow tires on in May for any reason you find yourself stretching out normal activities and doing things at odd times. You find yourself thinking "Surely it's time to start the evening routine. Oh wait, it's only 10 AM." 

Still, you're ready for a bubble bath? Why not? 

Addie is not a fan of a mere bath. She only wants to take a 'nice warm cozy bath".

Graydon is my splasher. Unsurprising.

Wet little kiddie eyelashes are the best.

Dress up? Yes. Let's do this. All of us.

You would expect Sydney and Addie to enjoy tutus, right?

Bet you didn't expect that Graydon would also love some tutu time. 

But he does enjoy a good game of Ring Around the Rosies in a nice skirt.

And why not?

What else do we really have to do?

Tutu cute, if you ask me.  Love this punkin.

Love this sweet little muffin too.

And also this one. Sweet outfit, Ads.

Want to stick your head through a cat door? Absolutely, kids. Absolutely.

Good clean fun.

Graydon kept trying to either a) shove her out of the cat door

or b) pull her through it by her hair

Lots of movies have been watched whilst consuming highly processed snacks. Listen, don't judge unless you too have been snow bootin' it in May.

Chilling. Literally chilling.

 Fortunately, the snow has finally all melted. Not without first flooding our basement, but hey...the good news is that this single snowfall was so wet that it solved the drought in SE MN. So a wet basement floor is not too high a price to pay for a nice high water table.

And, much like denizens of the Arctic Circle, now that we are becoming reacquainted with that glowing orb some call the "Sun", we are ready to celebrate. And we may never spend a daylight hour inside until snow once again forces us indoors. So, I'm thinking we've got until at least September, and I plan to make the most of it. 

We're more than ready to turn over our soil and grow some stuff around here. Bye bye Old Man Winter. Don't hurry back!

The Sick Locker

Sick, and yet still cute. Only kids can manage this. This was after a fever broke during nap.

"Man plans. God laughs." ---Yiddish Proverb

Touché , Jewish folk...touché. 

I did indeed have large plans for blogging and life-ing but we got a visit from our old foe, RSV, and we have been shut inside the sick locker ever since. 

I hate the sick locker. We use the word "hate" a lot in our culture...you know, we hate Ke$ha, we hate idiots that write condescending articles about moms with iPhones, we hate the word "moist"...or maybe only I say I hate those things? However, I actually really do HATE being in isolation with sick kids. 

And I am not talking about a runny nose and a slight cough. That's what I like to refer to as "winter" and since it lasts an ungodly amount of time here you just learn to buy the industrial size of Boogie Wipes and move on with life as usual. 

I just told him that Puxatawney Phil was a false prophet and that winter would last sixteen more weeks.

 I might have mentioned a time or ten that winter decided to stick around.  This is from my friend Catherine's FB profile, and it's too good not to share.

Even the natives have dropped their usual scoffing at the soft "cake eaters" in moderate climes and are now restlessly eyeing the forecast

 An extension of winter means an extension of "winter illness" season. So two weeks ago, Addie went to bed perfectly happy and then woke up at midnight choking and unable to breathe properly due to a nasty attack of croup. An ER visit for an emergency nebulizer and some steroids fixed her right up, but she was quite unwell for several days after that with persistent fevers and a nasty cough and a general malaise which she explained as "Mom, I'm getting really slow."

Asking to go to bed at 7 PM one night.

 During a follow up visit to family practice, they mentioned that her croup might have been caused by RSV, which actually relieved me. Because you know, Graydon already had that as an infant so I thought he'd sail right past it.

Stupidly, I forgot that Addie also already had RSV, which is why Graydon got it as a three week old.

As soon as Addie started to recover, G man went down and he did not fare so well. Addie is robust. She gets sick very rarely and when she does get sick, she doesn't stay down for long. I'm not going to get into the whole saga, because he's fine now, but it took us a few doctor's visits and worried nights and a set of chest x rays and some antibiotics and a home inhaler to get over it.  And that's the short version.

We  had the humidifiers on blast in the kids rooms.

Frankly, it really sucked. It's hard to see your kids suffering, even when you have confidence that all will be well in the end. But when your kids are that ill, you can't see anyone, you can't go anywhere, and you can't really DO anything to take their minds off of how bad they feel.  There were a great many sleepless nights especially when Graydon was sick. I slept upright with Graydon on the couch for several nights with the humidifier beside us and I had a lot of uneasy dreams about being on a lifeboat in the ocean. All of which makes sense when you consider that I usually woke up to find water beaded up on the couch and our blankets. 

Poor little G man was not feeling so super at this point.

Long story short, it was tiring and scary at times, but I think we are now healthy and caught up on sleep. We have been released from the isolation of the sick locker and it's amazing. Just being able to run errands during the day feels like a privilege. And you know what? It IS a privilege. Too often I forget that for a lot of people, the sick locker has to become a way of life.

Resting together

So I am newly grateful for health and wellness and energy and rest. 

And, as an added bonus, the weather has been really nice the past few days. Granted, it is supposed to be quite chilly again for the forecastable future, but we do have flowers springing up in our yard.

Spring is about to break out of the sick locker too, and not a moment too soon. I think everyone is ready to welcome a new season.  

Well. We're Back.

Fair warning: I'm going to complain here first. And then I'll move on. It's called "venting" and I heard about it on Oprah. I think that means it's healthy.


1) It snowed here last week. It didn't stick, but STILL.

2) HIGHS are in the 30s this week.

3) It's April. Just a reminder. I'm talking to you, GOD.

4) We are all afflicted by winter icks: nasty colds, some sort of allergies, something that involves streaming noses and bad tempers.

5) The snow still piled up on the ground is nasty sludgy gray. To match the sky. And there are a lot of things wrong in those sentences.


We're back. In winter. (Sidenote: I realize Hell is traditionally thought of as hot, but I'm going with cold. My Hell is cold.)

I am yo-yoing between elation and despair at being back. And while despair has temporarily taken over the driver's seat, there is some elation present sometimes. Just not when I look at Weatherspark and see that the high Thursday is 35. The good news is that it will be nearly 60 today. And also pouring down rain.

OK, moving on.

So yes, it is lovely to be back in our house. I forgot a lot of things very quickly. How the light looks streaming across our kitchen table. How nice it is to have a fully stocked kitchen. How cold the toilet seat is on my rear end.

It is honestly kind of surreal coming back here. We left, for a decent period of time, and now we're back to the exact same life, but as slightly different people who happen to be more freckled tanner and more fit and more relaxed than we were when we left.  It's a good feeling, mostly, but a little disconcerting at times. I sort of understand how the Pevensie kids felt after they came back through the Wardrobe in the The Lion, the Witch, and (the aforementioned) the Wardrobe. Kind of like ..."Hey people, there is this amazing place where husbands are home for dinner, and your nose hairs don't freeze when you walk outside, and the trees talk not far from here."

Our Internet has been down canceled by my hubs before we left in a fit of pique and then forgotten about until we returned and it has taken some time to get that sorted out. And I cannot ...truly cannot...blog on my Kindle or the Ipad. I say way too much for hunt and peck. That way lies insanity and carpal tunnel.

But we are now back online and mostly unpacked and mostly done with rapturous greetings of old friends and now mostly ready to start blogging again. My readers ..the tens of you....mostly composed of grandparents and sisters...have been clamoring for more. And my last post boldly proclaimed my intention to write twice a week. Just in time for me to pack up and ship out and live in transit and yeah, that wasn't all that well timed.

But here we are. We're back, for better or worse, for colder or warmer, and for the next year and three months. Time to layer up, sack up, and do this thing right. 

Goodbye, Jacksonville

I wasn't really anticipating getting IN the water, but they had other plans.

 I wish I had the time and wit to write a really profound post on our time in Jacksonville, but I seem to be short on both at the moment. There's packing, and crazy kids (chaos does that), and a dog with a "hot spot" aka a leg oozing matter, and just generally trying to close up shop here. And no matter how early I start, it will inevitably devolve into semi-frantic stuffing odds and ends into one last box.

Therefore, suffice it to say that I'm sad to be leaving. Everything about this place speaks to my heart in a way that's hard for me to articulate. I love the slightly-more-water-than-land ness of this place, and the warmth (oh my lawd, the WARMTH), and incredible, vivid, lush abundance of life here.

There are big things weighing me down right now, like no more watching my littles cavort in the waves (whether or not they are supposed to get wet) and ponder the immensity of the ocean. I will miss this more than I can say.




And probably no more runs with Mel and Cora and that's sad as heck to me. We finished our Couch to 5K program, and while I appreciate the ability to plod/run a few miles now, I appreciate getting to know Melissa better even more. She is such a generous and bright spirit and such a good friend. And while we are moving to same town, it won't be the same, because there's work and moving away and oh poop, everything changes, and that's great, but sometimes change is sad and great all at once.

And there are some little things grieving me too. No more "diamonds on the soles of our shoes" or feet.




And no more immense trees shawled in Spanish moss.

This tree is what I look at while I'm at the gas station. I love it, don't ask me why.

Before I start sobbing, I'm going to change tactics and stop posting pictures of my favorite things. OK, topic change starting right about...NOW! (For you, Des and Jordan). 

The good news is that moving back to Rochester will certainly hold some good things for us. Like watching Graydon and Addie continue to grow as people and as friends.

And seeing our other friends again, and our house, and having a yard for our dogs, and, oh lots of things. All the good "it's our place" things. 

As sad as I am to be going, I'm so glad that we had this time here in Jacksonville to stretch out and just enjoy life for a few months. We made new friends, explored new places, and fell just a little bit more in love with our family and our country.

Thanks for the memories, Jax.

Is This Possible?

I only have four posts written in 2013. FOUR. That means I'm averaging about one a month. Golly goodness (yes I just wrote those words and you would too if you had a three year old that had recently chosen G.D.I. as her favorite angry phrase), I wish I blogged more. THERE ARE PRECIOUS THINGS GOING UNRECORDED. That essentially means they didn't happen. Or something like that.

I've got Addie's three year post in the works. And also Graydon's one year post. They are only three months overdue. I figure I've got a whole year, so it's cool.

OK, I guess I can't throw out a gem like Addie swearing and not explain it. You are all thinking it's Tim's fault because he is a notorious swear-er and I am so tempted to let you think that, but it's actually my fault. It was a long day, and there was sickness, and rain (the nerve!), and headaches, and endless tears, and a first attempt a dinner which burned b/c of the chaos, and then during the second attempt a dog who shall remain  nameless (Indy) barfed on the floor and out came a despairing swear phrase which obviously really resonated with Ads.

And now she repeats it every time she gets mad. "Addie, go to time out, we do not hit Brother" and here it comes, a muttered and perfectly inflected "God dash it". Except the uncensored version.

Be ye not so stupid as to swear in front of your parrot child. I cannot wait to send her to her Christian preschool in April with this action.

Anyway, I didn't come to this post intending to confess one of my parenting failures, though really, it's always good for the soul and the ego to relate one's cringe inducing moments.

I came here to set myself up for future guilt and failure by announcing my intention to blog twice a week. It's a modest goal but one I feel sure will I will fall short of at times. However, for the same reason that I run with a partner (thank you, Melissa, you cannot move to CA or my future rotund figure is on your conscience), I figure a public commitment might help me move from theory to action.

We shall see, I suppose. If I don't sound incredibly hopeful...well, I actually am quite hopeful. It's a way of talking down expectations in order to minimize my possible humiliation. Like the way I sandbag UNC's chances before a big game, but then spend the game howling at the refs and imploring the heavens and performing arcane good luck rituals to influence the outcome of the game.

I'd love to write more, but I've got to unearth my lucky underoos and orient my living room in the proper gametime feng shui. It's ACC tourney time and UNC plays tonight.

You think I'm joking.