Summer Blessings

I know I haven’t written on my blog since, oh I don’t know, the Bush years, but believe me, I’m just saving my Shalom here. Nothing makes mommy grouchier than interrupted concentration. Like the “preschool is out and we can now leech every last drop of your humanity all day” variety. It is really much easier to abandon any personal accomplishment and surrender myself to the cause.

Which brings me to why I’m writing this post. Well, first it’s my birthday and the hubs mercifully gave me my laptop and car keys in trade for the children (I love that man). Time to myself is just logistics, however, because I have a deeper motive. My “cause,” my inspiration, my muses, are blooming like fresh summer roses and I don’t want to forget a single moment.

See, I’m crying here. Even through these days of interminable sameness, there is a violent need to hold on. First, is the growing. Growing documented daily by Toby in astonished hand-to-forehead comparisons. “Everyone!” he shouted this morning outside The Snooty Pig. “I am taller than this bench!”

“You are!” I said tearfully, plopping equal parts joy and grief in my motherhood repository. The doorknob! The fire hydrant! Mommy’s bed! He checks them off like a to-do list of vertical ascent.

Charlie too is sprouting with rosy-cheeked zeal. Every day he compiles a new stream of babble into an articulate sentence. A sentence! Sometimes my expectations are so behind I almost miss it. His sparkling brown eyes flicker intensely as he repeats “Wha Poby Dooeen?” in a consecutive stream until I smack my hand to my temple and get it.

“What is Toby doing? Of course! Let’s go find out!” I take his dimpled little hand into mine and we yell “Poby! Poby, where are you?” until we hear Toby laughing behind the curtains.

Some afternoons I sit down during their rest with my good intentions, ready to clink out another piece of my cyber memoir. Charlie opens his door and hollers “hello?” down the hall infinity times. Toby bursts from his room for a mid-nap poop. I just shrug my shoulders and sigh. There is nothing lost in a house full of life, this house, with two warm babies tucked under my arms, leaning on my chest as I stroke their beautiful heads.

God is so good to me.