Time Keeps on Slipping…

Good gracious but it’s been a long time since I’ve updated! It’s almost completely inexcusable. I think I might just be going through blogging withdrawals.  I miss it.  I miss the little community of bloggers I follow, too.  Seriously, if it wasn’t for Twitter, I’d have no idea what was going on right now, lol.

So my friends, what’s new, what’s happening?   How’s life?

I’m beginning to understand, more now than ever before, that life is really freaking complicated sometimes.  Occasionally it’s necessary to just sit back and let everything go and just know, deep down, that in the end, life is actually pretty damn simple.  We’re born, we eat, we struggle, we live, we die.  There’s a comfort of sorts in that simplicity.  If only it was recognizable in day to day life, eh?

My kids are all at these stages of different growth where their age differences are suddenly standing out in sharp relief to each other.  As frustrating as it can be in random moments, it’s really fun to watch.  I know I’ve said it a million times but I never get tired of doing so: I just love watching them.  I do.  I love how intensely different their personalities are, how obviously they are their own, unique people.

Take my oldest, for example.  Morgan just turned seven (where does that time go?) and she’s reading!  I mean, she’s reading very well!  I’m so impressed with her determination to conquer and master new skills- even when it’s accompanied by a whole lot of complaining.  She’s quite bright (sometimes entirely too much so, I might add) and she can be very snarky but she’s also got a budding sense of responsibility already and she loves and cares for her siblings in ways that make me smile.  Also, while I may be somewhat biased, she’s gorgeous.  I mean yeah, she’s got that awkward thing going on right now: She’s got a mouth full of half adult teeth and half little kid teeth, complete with an adorable gap in between her two front teeth!  She has a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose that are just picture perfect.  She still has stick-out ears that I, personally, think are charming but she’s rather sensitive about them as people comment on them a lot.  Her eyes are still enchanting, though their color has totally changed.  She still has half a brown left eye but instead of being a grey-ish blue color, they are now quite green hazel.  With a pert nose, pretty mouth, my little girl is a looker.  :)  She loves to “teach” or help other people learn to do new things and she’s quite curious about just about everything.  I love her intelligent questions and she’s continuously surprising me with the connections she makes.

Abigail’s personality seems to  grow in depth by the day.  She’s still as energetic and passionate as ever but the softer parts of her personality come to light more often these days.  I’m still completely flabbergasted by how quickly she can go from angelic and happy to shrieking with rage and back to perfectly complacent again.  Abigail reminds me of the ocean: her moods are complicated, unpredictable and breathtaking.

Her nurturing personality is really coming out in spades lately.  While she can be as temperamental and nasty as any other 4 year old, she has a sweetness about her that is completely entrancing.  She very seriously takes care of her “babies” (a whole host of baby dolls, stuffed animals and, hilariously, her little brother and the animals in the house).  She takes these duties very seriously and her imagination is constantly going at top speed.  It’s almost like she lives very strongly in her own little world.  I have a suspicion that she is going to be an avid reader.  She is always talking to her babies, and then pretending in a different little voice that they are talking back to her.  She steals Ethan’s diapers and clothes, bottles and blankets, so that she may better care for her “littles”.  She “cooks” for them and puts them down for naps, kisses their booboos and makes sure they are cuddled and kissed and disciplined, all day every day.  She absolutely adores her big sister and gets very personally offended whenever Morgan really just needs a little space.  She’s very firm with me when she thinks Ethan needs or wants something (Mommy!  Ethan’s CRYING!!!  as if I can’t HEAR him).  She has discovered her own little friends around here and never misses an opportunity to tell them how much she loves them.  Well, that is when she’s not shrieking at them for some reason (holy hell 4 year olds are loud.  I thought it was just my kid but NOPE.  It seems every child between the ages of 3 and 7 on this block does everything at about “screaming” volume).  I’m very much looking forward to when she starts school.  Not so much because of the “peace and quiet” factor (though there is a little bit of that, too) but because as her awareness expands, it will be interesting to watch her discover more about herself and see how it affects the way she thinks, the choices she makes and how she interacts with her peers.

Of course, there is also my Little Man, my Ethan.  He’s at that stage where he’s got something new going on every day.  Recently, he decided that climbing up and down the stairs via the use of his knees and coming down backwards is for sissies.  Upright and one at time, facing the correct direction, is the only way he’ll do the stairs, now.   Right this second he is coming down stairs hollering about some slight one of his sisters did to him.  I am just absolutely loving his new-found verbiage.  Ethan has come into talking much more slowly than either one of his sisters, beings as he just turned two and still does not speak in sentences recognizably.  I don’t feel that he’s delayed at all, though: Morgan was speaking in full blown, complex sentences at 2years old and that was a bit ahead of the curve.  Abigail was a bit more average in her ability, speaking in full sentences at 2yrs old: except her enunciation was so poor that actually understanding what she was saying was challenging for us and nearly impossible for anyone that didn’t listen to her babble all day.  Ethan’s enunciation isn’t all that great but it’s generally understandable and while he doesn’t speak in sentences, exactly, he is very good at making himself understood.  I feel that sentences are right around the corner as he often babbles nonsense words in an attempt to make a “sentence”, particularly when he’s complaining about something or asking for something.  I just  love his hair, too, all wild and curly and soft; it’s like a halo of innocence that crowns his head.

My son is a nudist, though.  He is definitely interested in  clothes and really gets into getting “dressed” and “undressed”.  By this I mean that he likes to wear shirts like skirts and take them on and off throughout the day.  He’s almost 100% out of diapers: during the day he only wears them if I have to go out somewhere or I want to send him outside.  As long as he’s not wearing a diaper, he uses the potty on his own, without being reminded or making mistakes.  He is SO good at it and it’s entirely coming from his own motivation.  Have I mentioned how much I love the driving principles behind EC?  Even though I did not fully EC him, I used the principles as I know them as I really don’t know any other way to “potty train” a child.  It works!  All I did was leave a potty out and let him run around naked.  Whenever I saw him start to pee, I’d point at his little penis and tell him “Ah AH! Don’t pee on the floor…pee in the potty!” and I’d redirect my pointing towards his little potty.  After a couple of day of that, he started using the potty by himself and then bringing it to me to show me he’d caught a pee.  He still does this and it’s SO cute.  He can also climb on and off the big potty on his own and doesn’t even like an insert.  I just love watching children figure things out on their own.  It’s really amazing how complex their little minds are and how uniquely they will approach a given situation and solve whatever puzzles are inherent in it.  but this brings us back to my son’s general nudist preferences.  He has a terrible time getting pants and undies or pull-ups OFF while still managing to pee in a potty.  As such, he prefers to run about without any on and really, if I have a choice between cleaning up dirty baby bum or having a naked little gelfling running about, I am GOING to become very comfortable with my son’s little bits waving about in the breeze, mmmkay?  Right now my little man is running about with only socks on.  He absolutely loves socks and shoes and he’s usually wearing something of that nature on his feet and rarely do the shoes he pics belong to him.  He especially loves Abigail’s new sparkly, silvery, light-up shoes.  Nothing like a naked little streaker running about in BLING shoes.

I started this entry a month ago.  A MONTH.  Suffice to say it’s been a very busy summer!  Changes have come, gone and come again and while the evolution of our family, our lives and my inner spirit has been immense, positive and challenging, it hasn’t meshed well with my internet life, lol.