No "These Moments" This week

So I started what was supposed to be a new tradition last Friday of posting a picture of my family in a very ordinary, everyday situation that still reminded me in some way of how lucky and blessed I am. But this week, I have no "This Moment" to share, and that sucks. This tradition isn't off to a fantastic start, huh? I think this week, my new tradition fell to the furthest back burner because this week has kind of sucked, and been really busy, and honestly I have felt completely drained, exhausted and on the verge of getting sick. Today I had a migraine that literally made me say out loud "I would rather give birth to Jackson all over again, all 19 hours of natural labor, than have this fucking headache" and I meant it. If a genie had popped out of the mattress and offered to grant that wish, I would have gladly accepted faster than he could say "Alla-Ka-Zam!" I bought a huge ass bottle of Excedrin Migraine and a big ass dark chocolate bar, and I am happy to report my boo boo is all better now.

My moment this week, while I don't (sadly) have a picture of it, is laying in bed tonight recovering from my headache, with Jackson curled next to me. He reaches over with his soft, pillowy baby hand, and gently, lovingly starts stroking my cheek and my arm, and nuzzles into my neck. He was so loving and sweet, and amazingly emotionally intelligent for a 2 year old boy! I lay there praying, praying, BEGGING God, to please please please let me remember this moment forever. Please let me remember the soft, sweet touch of his little boy hand on my arm as I lay there in pain, feeling sorry for myself. Let me remember his love, and his sweet thoughtfulness that is far beyond his years, and the way he smiled up at me, as tears filled my eyes, and he curled closer to my body, and I could feel all his warmth. What a sweet little boy. How, in a million life times could I have EVER gotten so damn lucky?!

You said once that love was touching souls

Surely you touched mine

Cause part of you pours out of me

In these lines from time to time....

Terribly Apathetic

I am feeling terribly apathetic this week. I used to know a boy who used to say "A brain with atrophy=apathy." It's pretty true. I become apathetic from boredom, monotony, stress and struggle. I think I need a vacation.....Summer is coming and I would love to get out of town. Dave and I are taking the kids to his home town, and up to his grandparents summer house to see his family and get the hell out of the heat. But I think I need something more like an adventure... I want to be waist deep in the ocean, in water so clean and blue you can see to the bottom, with a drink in my hand that has some fruity, girly name while the sun bakes my skin. Then at night I want to dance beside a fire roasting some kind of animal, in a gauzy white summer dress and no shoes, slightly drunk, kissing my dude all the way back to our cabana that open windows and white linen floating in the breeze. In essence, I need to live out the crap they display in cologne commercials or advertisements for erectile dysfunction. Ever going to happen? Probably not. A wonderful dream? Absolutely.

In the meantime, I am still dreadfully bored and day dreamy and completely restless. I think its the onset of Summer. This season just does something to me...every year.

Finding Those Moments

Every Friday, I will be posting pictures of sweet moments with my family, that are ordinary, everyday, nothing special, but lovely. Lovely little moments that I want to remember and cherish forever. I hope this will make me appreciate my life more, and help me to look for the beauty and the lovely and the wonderful in every day of my life, not just on special occasions.

With Lainie being at her Grandma's house this weekend, I was lucky to have some sweet one on one time with Jackie, and we took to the park for some Mommy and Son fun. Here are my sweet moments with my sweet boy.

Life and Stuff

My life is an interesting one, if you ask me. Challenging on it's good days, and an uphill battle that calls for all of my endurance and perseverance on it's bad ones. But it's mine, and this is what it's been like lately, for those of you who care:

The kids are on Spring break this week, and I had planned to take them out of town, but Life got in the way, and things came up that made that impossible. Lainie is coming more and more into her own, and growing up staggeringly fast. It hurts sometimes to look at her and realize how close she is to being a young woman, and how I feel like I didn't cherish her baby hood as much as I wanted to. Jackson is getting bigger too, and that is coming with it's own challenges. He is more stubborn, saying "NO" whenever he can, not to be bad necessarily but because he wants to know when he can get away wi

th it. He throws bigger tantrums now, stomping his little feet, and whining. Pouting his lip out and yelling "You're making me so mad!" It's cute, and infuriating at the same time.

I'm exhausted. I feel like I have no time at all to get anything done, but at the end of the day, when I add up everything I did it seems like nothing, which really pisses me off. Must find a way to make the days longer.... My apprenticeship is going well, and I am loving every moment I have of learning and observing, and m

aking little decisions here and there about what kind of midwife I want to be someday. I feel truly blessed to have the preceptor that I have, and blessed that we get along so well. As for the romantic (ugh, I hate using that term) side of my life, things are coming together

I think. I have at least decided what works for me and what doesn't and I think I'm finally seeing eye to eye with The Dude about it. Whatever we are or aren't, it works for me. I'm blissfully happy with the time we spend together, and how much closer we've become over the last two years. So that's a win in my book.

The house is a mess, I desperately n

eed to go grocery shopping, I have a ton of stuff to catch up on, and more than a few mountains of laundry to do. But right now, the kids are peacefully sleeping, (I can hear Jackie snoring from his room like a little piglet) I car danced to Faith by George Michael like a rockstar today, and I feel quite blessed to have the friends and chosen family that I have.

And I've had some quite cherishable moments lately. See Below.

Dave and I laughing our tushies off on a laid back Sunday night

The kids room being spotlessly clean FOR ONCE!

My baby boy, lost in the land of bedknobs and broomsticks. Goodnight, sweet prince.

The Smell of Summer

It smells like summer outside today. Clean, fresh, green and warm. That feeling that a new season is about to spring forth into life and change everything. We don't really have a Spring in Arizona. It is winter, then it's hot again. That's it. The heat is stifling. Suffocating, heavy as a wet blanket and thick. You can feel like you're drowning in the heat sometimes. Like it is too much to take, and you will simply suffocate or melt where you sit, and I am not looking forward to that feeling. But I love summer, none the less. I love the feeling of Summer. I love the energy and the freedom, and the sense of freshness and youth. The changing of the seasons is a spiritual thing for me. I feel tied to the seasons in some way. Like I change inside right along with them, and they move me, and open me and give me gifts and blessings and tests. The things I need to keep growing and learning and changing.

Summer feels like new love. That feeling in the beginning when all you can do is smile. When everything your new love does makes you blush and grin and swoon and melt. That feeling of running and falling and being blissfully asleep in the grass all at the same time. Pure splendor, with no baggage or jaded problems. It feels sometimes like those fleeting realizations we have when we're falling toward love that things are moving too fast. Like the world is spinning a million times harder and your feet are coming off the ground.

At the end of it, we are sunburned and tired and another season older. Things wind down. Become quiet and soft. Our new love either bends gracefully and gently into the sweet earthy tones and somber mood of Fall, or it withers in the cold and snaps in two. Dying out like a smothered spark.

Summer is a time to be free. To leave the house in barely any clothes. Summer dresses so thin they're almost paper, and shorts up to there. To let the warm sun bake your skin and rub your shoulders til they glow pink and bronze and shimmer in the light. It is a time to run wild. To dive into the cooling waters and let the tide take you away. The season of relaxation and bountiful gifts. Be young. Be free. Fall in love. Open up and remember your inner child. Let the wild winds take you, and leave traces of somewhere far from here in your hair.