Smelling the Roses

Although I try to stay away from posts that summarize my day, today feels emblematic of a life stage, so I feel the need to at least pause. It's hard to believe that I've been working part time for over two years. The time feels now as though it has flown by. Ain't that always the way.

While we await Teddy's magnet school application for kindergarten in September, I'm taking stock of the fact that the routine that took rather a long while to settle into will evaporate before I know it. In a matter of months, I won't have my two days a week with my little guy anymore. He's changed so much in two years, and he synthesizes ideas and events in a more advanced way every day. Lately, he's just been so sweet and funny and helpful. We have our moments obviously, but the marvelous aspects of Teddy's personality help me pause and realize that we're sharing a wonderful and unique and irreplaceable part of his life right now.

Even though I can recognize that, I worry that I'm not getting all that I can out of these fleeting days. Being a grownup makes me feel like there's so much that I have to do. This isn't just a state of mind, of course; I went part time so that evenings and weekends weren't full of tasks to accomplish. I do need to get things done during the day. But I don't want to look back at this period and just feel like I only spent my off days dragging my cute companion around on errands.

Don't have much of a conclusion here. Just a commitment to try to make the most out of Teddy's (and my) developmental stage.

The Many Faces of Ted

It's always a challenge to get a Christmas card photo of all four of us that works. Of all of us, Teddy looked good in the most pictures out of this year's attempts. He also went through the biggest variety of expressions. These crops are all in the sequence in which they were originally shot. That's how fast his face and mood change.

Teddy's Tongue Noise

Teddy makes this little noise kind of often. Sometimes he just makes the noise by itself; other times he makes it at the end of words and talks that way for a while like some pint-size Mushmouth. I managed to record it so that we'll be able to remember it. These special little things tend to disappear from the repertoire all of a sudden.