My Friend, Sugar

Reader be warned. This is going to get rambly.

Sometimes I can't find the words.

And it drives me absolutely insane.

You may say that judging by the length of this post - it looks like I found words-o-plenty. Which I did, but what I mean is that sometimes I feel like I can't find the right words.

Usually when I'm feeling all discombobulated, making a list helps. If we're leaving for a weekend trip - I have a list of everything we need to pack. Having a birthday party - a list of everything that needs to be done and bought. Approaching changing seasons - a list of all the clothes I need to buy for the girls. But this time - making a list just won't cut it.

Let me explain.

Jody at Nitty.Gritty frequently blogs about finding the joy in your life, taking note of happy moments as they occur and enjoying the little things. I greatly admire her and her outlook on life, so I'm always thinking a lot about what she says, and trying to take joy in the small moments in our life and the lives of our little girls, while they're still little.

Maybe I've just encountered so many of them lately that I can't wrap my mind around all of it. So many times over the weekend I was whacked upside the head with a whole lot of... lucky. Josie and Evie are blowing me away every single day with their... well, just their collective being. They are so happy. And funny. And smart. And beautiful. Of course, I've always known this - but I am really focusing on appreciating it. Now that I'm appreciating it... it's the expressing it that I'm having problems with.

Who knows. Maybe how well I'm able to express it just depends on what time of the month it is. If you know what I mean. And if you don't - don't sweat it. I'm not going to explain. Sorry - tmi.

Wow. A bit better, I am feeling. Cathartic, this blogging is.

So. How 'bout a weekend wrap-up and a few highlights to really drive home my point. Wait - did I have one? Not so much? Oh, well. Guess time will tell.

If you haven't noticed, my Friday-updates play like a broken record. Which I absolutely love, because we get to spend them with people we absolutely love, the Gronaus. This time around, we played at the Dayton's Bluff Rec Center open-gym time for toddlers / pre-schoolers. Apparently, there are a number of these open gyms around our area, we're just finally getting in on them. And they are fabulous. A whole gymnasium open for little ones to run and jump and play and make a mess in for 2 hours. Genius.

Friday afternoon we packed up the girls and took them to Grandma Di and Grandpa Mike's house. For the night. I know. Can you believe it? A whole night to ourselves to enjoy the wedding reception for our friends, Dave and Dana, who got married in Wyoming in August. Um, a good time was had. Perhaps a little too good, but I digress. But what a treat not to have to rise and shine at the crack of 6:30 with the girls and their crazy demands for attention and food and whatnot.

Saturday we picked up the girls around 10:30 am, then went to a housewarming party for another friend, Katy, up in Hugo later that afternoon. Our stay was cut a bit short as Eve got a heckuva tummy ache and started to scream. Nothing gets a party started like a screaming toddler, so we un-gracefully made our exit. And she continued to scream the entire way home. The kind of scream that says she's in pain and kills every cell in your heart because you don't really know what's wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it. I don't know if something she ate rubbed her the wrong way, or if she had too much fruit, or what - but her poor little belly was hard as a rock, and we were finally able to get a couple of good burps out of her, and she seemed to be better. And proceeded to sleep well - which was a blessing, considering that I was braced for a rough night.

Sunday we went to St. Jerome's Fall Festival. Holy cow - I can't even begin to believe that a whole year has passed since the last one... I can remember last year's with crazy clarity. I've usually got a pretty darn good memory for details - even with "mommy-brain," but the amount of things I remember from last year is kinda weird. Like where we parked, and the people sitting in front of us, what the girls were wearing, and walking through the school holding Josie's hand and baby-Evie in her carrier on my front... it's weird.

And here we were, doing it all over again a year later. The weather couldn't have been more perfect, Evie fell asleep on Pat half-way through the outdoor polka mass, and we just plain had a good time (here, I'm tempted to say despite the polka mass... but I won't :):):).) Josie got to ride a pony, Sugar, which I'm pretty sure is the same pony she rode last year. We had some lunch, played some games, and Jo went in the "bouncy" 3 times (and got scared at the top of the slide the last time, so Pat had to climb in and go get her to alleviate the back-up of impatient kids impatiently waiting their turns.) Eve is still a little too little to enjoy most of the activities, but she loves being outside and was happy wheeling around in the stroller, with the occasional stop to let her roam around to eat rocks and shove pine cones up her nose and threaten the Jesus statue in front of the cake-walk. Who could ask for anything more!? It was way past nap-time, so we told Jo it was time to leave. Her poor little tired self didn't agree - and she cried the whole way to the van. "It's not time to go hoooooommmme!"

Oh - cute Josie story. Last night she was reading books with Daddy before bed. Big surprise. They came out of the bedroom to make the last potty stop of the night - and something caught my attention in the doorway out of the corner of my eye, so I look, and there's Josie, standing in the doorway, with her booty sticking out, shaking her butt at me. When I looked, she smirked and bolted into the bathroom. Of course, she thought she was quite funny, so repeated the performance on the way back to her room. Didn't say a word, just shook her butt and continued on her way. That kid cracks me up.

Cute Evie story - due to the um, crabby, disposition of our cat, Baxter, our girls never have "meowed" a sweet little kitten mew when you ask them what sound a kitty makes. It's more of a growling, agitated, angry meow-sound. So Eve loves that crazy cat, regardless of his crusty nature. If he dares to walk in the same room as her, she screams excitedly, and runs to belly-flop on top of him and love him up. Which, as you can guess, he does not take too kindly to. He'll "meow" at her - and now she has started to throw one right back at him. Which only perturbs him even more. And I think slightly baffles him - as he thinks he's being tough and scary, and most kids would probably agree and high-tail it for safety. Poor Eve doesn't have anyone to compare him to, so she thinks it's perfectly normal behavior.

And. Thanks to everyone for your kindness and good thoughts for Ben and Grandma Ashton. It sounds like things are going well for Ben, and they didn't find any more cancer in his body. I wish, so wish, that I had equally good news for Grandma Ashton. I don't know all of the details, but it sounds like she has a couple of tough decisions to make regarding continuing the antibiotics or continuing dialysis. Hopefully they can get the infection under control and things will turn around.

And I'm done. For now.