I’ve challenged my 6th graders to a Slice-A-Day during our winter break…I will attempt to keep up with the challenge as well!
It’s also the Celebrate Link Up at ruthayreswrites.com
It’s louder than I wish it were right now. I’m more tired than I’d like to be. I’m trying to motivate the family to go downtown for the New Year’s Eve festivities of ice sculptures and music… but I think they can see right through me to my homebody heart. I’d love to stay here, put on my PJ’s, watch a movie, finish my book… maybe play a game. As I write this, my youngest just came in and said hopefully, “So, we aren’t going to the ice sculpture thing? I don’t think we really should. Should I build one of my new legos? I want to bring my new birthday things up to my room.”
Today was E’s birthday. He shares his day with New Year’s Eve, and I’d rather celebrate him than a ball drop, a champagne toast, or a countdown.
We have celebrated all day. First we looked through pictures of him as a baby and later we had an afternoon with grandparents, cake and gifts.
In line at the restaurant for his birthday breakfast, as I gave a quiet reminder to the boys to chill out, an older woman laughed a friendly laugh. “Enjoy them,” she said. Some parents like to complain about these older grandparent strangers telling them to “enjoy it.”
Not me. I smiled back at her. “I try. I know one day I’ll be sitting in my clean and quiet house…sobbing.”
Her and her husband nodded their heads, “You will.”
I don’t mind these conversations with strangers. I see them. I hear them. I know I will be that grandma one day. Considering my youngest is only 7 and I already lament that I can’t go back in time… I imagine that when I am 60 I will see families with young children and I will want to remind them… “Enjoy it.”
My house is louder than I’d like it to be. Messier too. I clean the counter 800 times a day, and I should vacuum that much as well. There are legos everywhere. My middle son insists on wearing his shoes from the time he wakes up around 6:00, until it’s bedtime. A dishwasher did not magically solve my dish problem. I can’t get laundry done fast enough. I don’t like chores. The bickering just about does me in sometimes… But sometimes you need to focus on the celebration. There are so many things to celebrate.
Today was my baby’s birthday. I’m writing at the dining room table, and he is across the way building a lego. I’d love to be the kind of writer who can put these words down just right. I want you to see him sitting there in his 7 year old glory, reading lego directions. Emptying bags of legos onto a drafting table. (Dropping empty bags onto the carpet.) He’s concentrating, and having fun. This is joy to him: a new lego. His cheeks have lost a little of that baby puff, but they are still as kissable as ever. Every so often, he talks to me a little bit:
“And mommy, I’ll still have things to do tomorrow after I’m done building these! Because I’ll be playing them! It’s just as fun to play. But, if I had a choice, I’d rather build. I love the feeling of “Oh my gosh! I have a lego!”
When he is all grown up, I’ll look at him and remember him as a little boy. I hope I can picture him building a lego, with his still chubby cheeks. I hope I can bottle up the little boy snuggles. He’ll be a man, and I imagine he’ll brush away my motherly sad face as I tell him (once again) that he was just born yesterday.
On a Thought 