Soaking

More and more often I get the feeling that I should write things down. Maybe it's because time is going at warp speed and I'm desperately trying to hang onto to things just as they are, because I know that soon enough Kade will be back to classes and homework and midterms and finals and we'll have a new little person in our family switching up the dynamic and even though I know that will be wonderful I just want to soak everything up about right now. 

Millie and Jones are at the cutest ages. Well, also the most terrible throw-my-arms-up-in-the-air-shouting-WHY?! ages too, but they're just so darn cute. Jonah is finally coming out of his terrible twos and threes, and although he's had a few fantastic meltdowns and a couple times where potty-training seems to have slipped his mind (???) he's mostly fun to be around now. He's getting to be a really funny kid. We were facetiming Kade's parents a month or so ago (so bad at writing things down) and they were asking him where the Nintendo was and Jonah started saying, "when I'm bad and cry* they (Kade and I) take it away from me, but when I'm good they give it back, and they take it away and give it back and take it away and give it back and take it away..." and Kade and I were giggling about that for a few days afterward.

*He doesn't do this so much anymore but when he first started playing he loved it so much, but was frustrated because he wasn't very good at it yet. So he would stand there playing and bawling at the same time and eventually toss the controller away and say, "Mom you play, I'm not good!" and throw himself on the couch, crying. So the rule was no crying over nintendo or we'd put it back in the closet. Needless to say this happened quite a few times so Jones was telling the truth when he said we took it away and gave it back over and over, haha.

I like this pic because it so accurately captures the average day with these two. Neither of them wear much more than a diaper/underwear while at home - their choice, Jonah's obsessed with his stuffed dogs, Millie is always dragging around a blanket and still drinks from a bottle (I'm trying to break her of this habit, really), and there's always a big pile of something messing up the house. It can be balls, papers, scentsy wax cubes, trains, pillows, etc - on this day it was pens/pencils.  

It's basically the best thing in the world when Jones and Millie get along. It's not all the time, but it's about as often as they fight so I won't complain. They play all kinds of random games, but their favorite is to make giant messes and destroy the house while I'm busy making them food or cleaning up after a different mess they made. And I keep thinking to myself "this part of motherhood definitely wasn't this hard when it was just Jonah" and I don't know if it's because he was the only child so I was able to watch him more closely or if Millie just has more crazy ideas than him.

Kade and I were talking about getting a dozen or so small locking boxes to put all kinds of things in to keep her out of trouble. Her favorite things in the world are markers, crayons and pens - which I've now put out of her reach - but if you were to come to our house you might be lucky enough to see scribblings all over the front and back glass doors, all over our fireplace bench, all over the couch and ottoman, on various walls throughout the house, on Jonah's bed, on her baby doll's face, on her favorite pink rainboots, on the tile in the entryway, all over the carpet on the stairs, on any scrap paper lying around, on our blank envelopes, on a few of our checkbooks, and probably many other places that I've yet to discover. Isn't parenting such an exciting adventure? I don't know how she does it so fast, I swear I try to be a good mom! I took all the markers away and she started with crayons. I put those away and she found the pens, and when I take those away she finds more pens somewhere else or uses a good old classic pencil. She loves coloring! I can't make her stop. I honestly think she stashes pens away in secret places, so she can still draw when I take everything else away. She's sneaky.

She gets Jonah to participate a lot too, and I only know this because sometimes amongst all the scribblings I see some "x's" or "j's" or circles, squares and triangles that are just a little too advanced for an 18 month old. Jones had a problem with coloring on walls for a while there when he was her age, but I don't remember him being quite so quick or sneaky or blatantly ignoring me when I told him to stop. I didn't really appreciate what a good boy Jonah was/is until Emeline came along. She's nuts. NUTS.

Today they peeled a whole bunch of paint off the closet door while I was scrubbing a sad Thanksgiving error burned to the bottom of the oven. My mom should appreciate that - when we were younger she often sent us to a specific corner for time out, and my brother Jackson started picking and peeling the paint off the walls there once, and I think all the rest of us just kind of went with it. Something to pass the time while we waited for our punishment to be over, haha. Luckily for my kids, because of that memory I was able to laugh while telling them to knock it off and get out of there. And luckily for me, underneath the white paint they peeled off was more white paint, so it doesn't look as terrible as it could have.

And do these pictures not make you want to weep? Millie looks more or less the same in these, aside from her legs stretching out significantly - but Jonah looks like a tiny baby in the top pic and a 15 year old in the bottom. How? He's so old! He'll be starting Kindergarten before I know it! Comparing these two photos, taken almost exactly a year apart, just blows me away. It doesn't seem that long ago but look how much they've changed! And when we go next year they'll have to scoot over to make room for a THIRD. How am I this old already? I still feel like any minute my mom is going to come around the corner and tell me to quit texting on my phone and go to bed so I can catch the bus tomorrow because she can't take me to school because she has to take Matt early for basketball so I better not argue with her and go to sleep. Also that my room is a pig's sty. 

Seriously though, a third kid means something. Three kids means you're there. You're an adult now. Three kids means get it together because now you have to set a good example because the oldest is old enough to start remembering things. How terrifying is that?

So that's why I'm going to try a little harder to soak in life as it is right now. It won't last forever, and I have to stop wishing my life away waiting for things - like graduation or buying a house, etc. Because if I'm being honest with myself, life is pretty ok right now. Loans and all.