Happy Weekend

Lately, Monday through Thursday have been finding ways to wind me so tight that by the time Friday morning rolls around I very much resemble Cameron Frye skipping school to drive Ferris Bueller around in a Ferrari – unfortunately imagining my Acura as a Ferrari doesn’t make my day any easier.  During the week, I can’t always read to James or swing with James or take his big blue alligator and crawl around the house pretending to “get” James.   In fact, tonight I caught myself, just before I poured cheerios into the spaghetti sauce, because I thought it was a fabulous idea to cook dinner and feed James simultaneously...It was not.  So much for the June Cleaver Award. 

Oh but then there’s the weekend.  Two solid days of freedom—

freedom from keeping score

freedom from juggling that weekday routine

freedom from my increasingly annoying alarm clock

freedom from far too often stretching myself far too thin

freedom from pulling every ounce of knowledge related to medicine from my brain then freely handing it over to doctors, pharmacists, and professors so that they may judge its accuracy and completeness. 

But most of all my weekends offer freedom from being a grown up.

Weekends -- the days when I am free to give full attention to James and only James – his imagination, his bouncing, his get-up-and-go, his insight into a world that I unintentionally overlook nearly every other day of the week.  And in doing this, I become a kid as well.  (okay, not a kid entirely but as close as a girl with a Type-A personality can get). 

We travel...

                                                      ...in wagons.

We climb...

...over and on top of puppies (and Max).

We ride dinosaurs...

...singing & smiling dinos only.

We make wishes in fountains.

We watch fish swim by.

We play with trains.

(both on and off the tracks)

We pretend to mow the grass...

then take a break...

then determine there's an easier way to operate a push mower.

We pretend that the abacus is the coolest roller coaster EVER!

We go grocery shopping.

 We climb yellow, green and purple mountains.

 We play in the garden.

 We consider eating flowers...

but I suggest otherwise.

 So we continue to explore all the different colors and textures.

I see my weekends as a time for all the times there just wasn’t time – when the day didn’t work out and I found myself in a tizzy the rest of the week just attempting to keep up or sometimes even trying to catch up. 

 Weekends are for throwing pennies in fountains, for reading goodnight moon a gazillion times, for finger painting, for finding shapes in clouds, for silly songs and even sillier dancing, for playing outdoors without noticing the heat, and for putting all of last week’s anxiety behind you. 

And although each Monday morning hits me like a bus, knocking me into the middle of next week, literally, (okay, not literally but that's the excuse I'm using to explain such a lapse in time since my last post) I don't mind it so much any more because at the end of the that long grueling week there's
The Weekend!

 Ready for the Weekend!!







When Life Gives You Lemons--Pucker Up!

Lately James has been learning, and reaching and finding delight in things that I never thought one could ever take pleasure in.  Such as rising with the Sun---ALWAYS rising with the Sun.  It’s like the dawn is a long lost friend that he can’t wait to reunite with and no matter what time he finally falls asleep, he’ll never let that morning sunrise pass without saying Hello. 

And because our James is such a companionable soul he chooses to share the love he has found with the dawn.  So every morning it’s James, and Mommy and Daddy all snuggled together watching the day arrive full force.  With any luck, Eddie and I experience the occasion with eyes half closed and the occasional little foot in our face.  But not our James, he’s always sitting up, eyes wide open, rocking and bouncing all at once until finally Sunlight fills the entire window and it’s time for the day to begin—ready or not. 

I wish I could approach each day with the enthusiasm James does.  I also wish I could find fascination in the smallest of things the way he does.  He isn’t bothered by what other people think or how they react, just how he feels.  James just does his own thing, whatever he finds fascinating at that moment and explores his little heart out until he’s had his fill.  I see James encounter these opportunities daily; yet rarely do I have the camera ready.  Even with the camera, I’m usually still in need of help to shoot the picture without James tumbling head first into a ravine or someone other than mommy there to save the day in case disaster strikes. 

Saturday the rare moment happened in which James found something new and was spellbound, I held my camera and there were backups on hand to prevent a catastrophe from occurring. 

We were sitting at the table when James spotted a lemon then reached for it.  To prevent him from pulling over a glass full of sweet tea trying to get his hands on his new found fascination, I just gave it to him not thinking of the consequences that would soon ensue.  It was a lemon for God’s sake…who in the world would ever take pleasure in “discovering” a lemon—just the thought of it puts my taste buds into a tail spin.  But James, our wake up smiling at the Sun, ready to stumble over his next leap forward James, took that lemon...

Bit right into it...

And Puckered Up!

Then went back for more!

Snip Snip...And Just Like That!

The second those first little curls fell into Eddie’s lap, there it was.  James spun around in that chair clinging to his daddy and just like that my little baby looked like, well—a little boy.    

I’m not sure when it happened but somewhere between Easter and Labor Day our James began to resemble Billy Ray Cyrus.  Yes, “Don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart”, business in the front, party in the back Billy Ray—but a way cuter version. 

 It was time to make THE CUT, I knew it was time, Eddie knew it was time, EVERYBODY knew it was time.  All I had to do was say the word, but I couldn’t do it. 

My mom tells a story of me as a little girl—maybe 2 or 3.  At that time, Dorothy Hamill was one of the world’s top figure skaters.   Her hair style was also popular.  It was called “the wedge” and my mom apparently wanted her little one to sport the same look as the world famous figure skater.  So, when we arrived at the hair salon, my mom told the hair dresser that she wanted “the wedge.”  That was it, no description of what her version of “the wedge” was, no pictures, not even a mention of Dorothy Hamill.  Every woman out there shoul know that was NOT a good idea.  She never says much about the haircut process itself—just the uncontrollable crying she had afterward.  It was awful—my Grandma describes my new do as, “an adult head on a 3-year-old body.”    And her little girl was going to have to endure this unfortunate new look until it grew long enough to fix. For it to be such a horrific look, mom reassures me that I wasn’t bothered in the least.  I was 3, I didn’t care what my hair looked like, but in my mom’s eyes she had ruined my hair...and my life.  I didn’t want to repeat this regrettable incident with my own child so I avoided the conversion totally. 

 I finally gave in a couple of weeks ago.   I noticed James leaning his head over to the right and rubbing his ear back and forth on his shoulder.  James’ hair had gotten so long that it was tickling his neck.  I gave Eddie the okay to make an appointment. 

Thursday evening we all piled in the car and off we went.  I held my breath the entire time—sharp objects near your child’s head can do that to a mom I guess.  I had no idea what to expect.  Would James be traumatized?  Would he squirm at just the right moment and cause the stylist to cut off way more than she meant too?  Different scenarios and how I would react played out in my mind the whole way there.  Funny enough they all ended up with me saying to Eddie, “I told you so!” 

At the end of the day, I still wasn’t sure why I protested so much in the beginning. Maybe because it was just one more thing reiterating that my little baby will soon be…I guess is… a little boy.  The hair cut wasn’t really the evolutionary experience I thought I would be.   However, before giving James a bath Friday night I cleverly invited my sister in to “help” while Eddie finished up some yard work.  She didn’t know it but I wanted her there just in case I melted down when I went to lather up his hair with shampoo.  Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me at all. 

James is growing up but he hasn’t grown up. 

He still has those big round eyes that gaze so inquisitively at the world going on around him. 

 His little boy hands still instinctively clinch around my finger when I tuck him in at night. 

Yep, he’s changing by the minute these days, but I would have it another other way!