First leaf raking…

It’s been a whirlwind last few days…. David and I went to D.C. for The Justice’s 20th anniversary on the bench dinner…. spent some time with old friends from when we lived there…. wandered around at our old apartment complex in Arlington with a different sweet baby boy than we left with… and spent long hours in the car, talking and listening to said baby boy cry….

I went to Mom and Dad’s to pick up the big boys yesterday. After struggling with whether or not to attempt the fun, yet ambitious, playdate that I’d planned for my MOPs small group today, I decided that my decision to bail was right after I locked my keys in the car while attempting to load the van. Thank the Lord that David hadn’t left to drive to a courthouse a couple of hours away or I would’ve been picking them up today instead. Sometimes I just have to figure out what will take me over the edge and cancel accordingly…

Sometimes I think we’re nuts attempting everything we do right now…. and other times I think we are probably striking the right balance. It just depends on the week….

Today has been absolutely gorgeous, so we played outside some. Baby napped in his swing, so there was time to read Richard Scarry books, practice drawing “2’s” in a workbook, play games with Seth of his own devising, watch Evan run around with his new ball David bought him on the trip, etc.

Every day, Seth seems so much older to me. He’ll be 5 in January, and I’m just not ready in some ways. But he’s become sooo helpful that maybe I can be reconciled to the change. I sat them both down with blank sheets of paper and leftover stickers from our years of teaching Sunday School. Evan can’t peel stickers off the page yet, but Seth can. Guess who peeled stickers for his brother today for the first time? He would attach them to the end of his new slide whistle and hold it out, and Evan would pull them off. Adorable… and immensely helpful.

Don’t let the picture above deceive you. Both of them cannot rake, even though Evan did a passable impression for the pictures. He did eventually prove helpful by picking up leaves and putting them in the bucket. Seth raked up pile after pile and put them in the bucket, and then he was actually tall enough to take those two buckets out to the yard waste can and pour them in! My first baby is growing up…