I’m sure this is probably a common theme in the life of parents with small children, but DAMN you guys, daily life is so busy, and I keep thinking it will slow down but it never does. I’m slowly (very, very slowly) realizing that I simply have to figure out how to manage my life while BEING busy, because the kids are growing up and the years are flying by whether I take the time to notice and appreciate the moments around me or not. I haven’t written updates about my fam in quite awhile, so I figured it was time to at least put a few words on the screen. I so miss being able to read back over my blog updates about our lives, but it’s one of the many things I haven’t figured out how to consistently work into my daily routine any more. At any rate, a quick post is better than nothing, so here goes!

Stella

You guys, Stella will be FIVE in December. Just 11 weeks from today, I’ll have a 5 year old in my house. How is that even possible? She has grown up so incredibly much this past year – it blows me away to read old posts about her and realize how much she has changed.

Stella is a girly girl through and through. She loves her dolls and putting makeup on her dolls (she figured out how to use sidewalk chalk to look like eye shadow and blush and lipstick), and she often comes home from her Nana’s house with mascara and lip gloss on. *sigh* In some ways this drives me nuts, and we have a lot of conversations about being beautiful even without makeup, but really, if she wants to play around with nail polish and lip gloss when she’s playing dress-up at home, so be it. In these photos of us that I snapped a couple of weeks ago, I had curled my hair for the dinner party we were going to, and she had begged to have her hair done just like mine, so she had curls and a bobby pin holding her bangs back, just like me. <3

Stella also LOVES school. This is her second year of pre-k, and she was begging to go back the entire last month of summer break. Her classroom has 3 and 4 year olds (aka, kids who weren’t 5 by September 1st for the kindergarten cut off), so she’s one of the oldest kids in the class this year. It’s been so fun to watch her be such a great caretaker and leader with her new classmates, and every single day she comes home and surprises me with her new knowledge. Lately she’s been singing things instead of speaking (ex. “I am going to brush my teeth with my new purple toothbrush” was sung to me instead of said to me this morning), which I find insanely adorable, and I’m oddly proud at her increasing ability to stay on key. Maybe she’ll follow in my family’s musical footsteps someday.

Overall, she is truly a total joy to be around at this point in time. When she’s tired she can get quite teary at the drop of a hat, but overall, joy and excitement about life is what her days consist of lately. She loves learning and people, and though she can be shy with new people, once she has warmed up to you, she will talk your ear off with long, complicated stories about her life. She is still my little rule follower, and I honestly trust her to be safe and take care of herself and the kids around her in most any situation. It’s sort of fascinating to see how differently I’m currently parenting my children, even when I try not to. Their personalities definitely have a lot to do with it. Ha!

Harvey

Oh man, Harvey is an adorable terror right now. He is 2 years 8 months old, and his entire world can be AMAZING and then HORRIBLE in the blink of an eye…or at least he thinks so. 😉 We are deep in the land of sweet cuddles and shouts of I LOVE YOU MAMA, but then he’ll get frustrated with something and OH how the pinching and biting and tantrums drive me insane. That being said, I’m actually really happy to have my solo day a week back with him while Stella is at school, because I feel like it really helps the two of us to ‘get’ each other better when we have those days alone together. I definitely have way more patience with him than his father does, but I think it’s just because I spend so much more time alone with him (because I have 4 day work weeks). I can just see his mind constantly working through BIG ideas and BIG emotions, so although I snap and yell more often than I’d like to admit, I spend a lot of time cuddling him close and singing softly to help him calm down and work through the meltdowns.

Harv is a stereotypical boy, just as his sister is the stereotypical girly girl. He is full of bumps and bruises all the time, and he has zero fear when it comes to athletic feats. At the same time, he loves to do anything his “sistah” does, so they spend an incredible amount of time dressed up together in princess outfits playing school or whatever else Stella wants to do. 🙂 They bicker and pick at each other half the time, and the other half of the time they are the best of friends. If I put him to bed first, he almost always cries and says, “but Mama, I want my sistah to sweep wif me!” We really are blessed to have kids who love each other so much. <3

Overall, Harvey spends most of his days running from point A to B, joyfully exclaiming about whatever it is that has piqued his interest. His vocabulary is (finally) taking off, and it’s adorable to listen to him lately because he is throwing so many adverbs into his sentences. “ACTUALLY Mama, I wanted the green cup, not the blue one.” He’s also mimicking my husband a lot lately, so he’ll drop his voice really low (like seriously, really low, I NEED to get a video of it because it’s so hysterical), and say things like “Jos, I need you to ____ right now!” Hahahaha. What a turd. I generally ignore him while trying not to laugh when he tries to pull that. 😉 Even though he can drive me absolutely bonkers with his 2-year-old-ness lately, he also cracks me up with his infectious joy for life, and it’s generally pretty darn fun to be his Mom.

Charlie

Man oh man, Charlie. He has been my husband for 8 years and partner for 11.5 years. Sometimes I feel like we know so much about each other, and yet I feel like every season just brings new changes and challenges for us. Sometimes we are up, and sometimes we are down, but I suppose that’s just the reality of marriage, right? Last March was bad. Really bad. That was the darkest time in our years together. Then things were better for the most part over the summer. I think the Hawaii trip in April helped us both to get some distance and perspective from each other. Add to that the fact that we both thrive on daylight and warm weather, and though it was a busy summer, it was a fun one. The kids are getting old enough that we could more easily do family activities together, and we both really enjoyed that. Right now we are in a weird place where we are working through some very real relationship issues that are mostly my fault, and at the same time we are trying to stay strong together, because we are facing some possible big changes in the near future regarding our livelihoods, and we really need to be able to do this together, you know?

Honestly, I’m so proud of him and the man he has become. Even though we don’t always understand each other and our needs, he is an amazing person who works incredibly hard and who loves his family with all his heart, and I’m glad I get to be a part of that at the end of the day. I really hope we can figure out a way to be partners in life without all of the drastic ups and downs, but that’s another post for another day I suppose. 😉

So there ya go… a quick update about the family. I’m sorry I’ve been so absent from this space and from your comment sections. I follow some of you on Facebook or Instagram, but it’s just not the same as reading about your lives, and I miss you all. This weekend a old blog friend and her family is visiting, and it will be great to get some ‘real life’ updates from an old ALI friend. I hope to catch up with you all in some way or form soon. xoxo