Summer!

Today was everything I love about summer as a mom, and only a little about what drives me crazy about summer as a mom. Jabberwock went to daycare for a couple of hours this morning so that Monkey and I could have some time to be a duo. We sat on the porch swing and read books together, fingerpainted on the front sidewalk, and then we actually followed through on my little plan to go to a gathering called Mothersong, a group of moms, dads, and kiddos who get together and sing fun songs, dance with Playsilks, play instruments, etc.

I am such an introvert that stepping into the completely unfamiliar like this is WAY outside of my comfort zone. I did not really know one thing that I could expect when walking into the room, except that people were going to be singing. I'm not a singer, really. I think my voice is actually okay, and I can stay on key, but my range is seriously like one octave. So any time the song goes up or down significantly, Elissa moves into stealth mode whispersong. But Monkey really likes music, likes to sing in this beautiful little croon, and likes to dance all the time. So we braved it. For the first forty-five minutes or so, Monkey sat on my lap all snuggled up, looking with awe and amazement at all of the kids dancing and shaking their maracas. Very uncharacteristically, he didn't even tap a toe until he decided to nurse a little bit; that seemed to fill him up with confidence and energy, and his little legs were bouncing so much it was difficult to keep him on my lap. Pretty soon he was investigating the room, and he even got a little rough with a couple of kids, pushing one down and snatching a couple of toys. Yeah, you thought this new kid was just a little introvert like his mama, but whoops! Looks like he's a little spitfire!

Jabber even got a chance to do his own fingerpainting and get his own one-on-one time with me, since Monkey fell asleep in the van, and we left him sleeping with the door open, right next to where we were painting.

Later on, went for a short walk with the kiddos, played some more catch in the backyard, even had a massive wrestling match with all four of us, and nobody got hurt. I'm like a Playful Parenting genius.

When we have a schedule, some creative plans, and I don't actually try to get a single thing done for myself or my house, being a stay-at-home-for-the-summer-mom works out okay for me. But I mean that part about not doing a single thing for me or the home. My house looks like an enormous puppy went through it and tugged and shook and knocked things over. At least I don't think there's any poop or pee to be discovered. Now that's something.

On the writing front, I am proud to say that yesterday I wrote a thousand words (pretty good ones, I think) on the short story I'm going to try to get published somewhere, somehow. I tried to work on my agent list, but something malfunctioned on my computer and I couldn't access any of my documents for a long enough time and through two restarts so that when it finally came up again I began to build my own computer over at the Dell website for a bit. I haven't ordered it yet, but then this evening all of a sudden the left mouse button on the laptop stopped working, and I went back over to my wish list and started adding things. We shall see.

I'll leave you this evening with one last image. A couple of evenings ago, the whole family was upstairs, and we noticed that we had lost the baby momentarily. We checked around the upstairs and came to the conclusion that he must have gone back downstairs. Here's what we found. I'm sure he was just getting one for Mama and Dad, right?