I guess I'm old, but I'd rather be baking.

So, the big party last night was largely a success. Fun was had by all, there was the requisite bar drama, I got to dance in my shiny new red shoes, and I saw three am stone cold sober.

 That in itself is worth mentioning. I haven't stayed up till three am since prior to the birth of my second child. And really not ever without being somewhat lubricated by a plethora of alcoholic beverages.
 
I don't remember clubs being so pushy-touchy-feely.

But there I was, in time for last call being knocked around by a bunch of really inebriated men fumbling all over themselves to manage to get a) beer, and b) someone to sleep with them in the next twelve minutes.

 The bouncers were four square against me observing from the balcony. Now that would have been fun. No, instead, it was rather like a grown up version of the ball pit at McDonald's...smelly, slimy, filled with questionable objects, and quasi-violent.

 Sober clubbing is rather awkward. Don't get me wrong, it was fun, and I'll probably be ready to do it again when my friend has a birthday again...next year.

 Give me a pub with a deep fryer and a large selection of beer for my husband to go nuts over. Give me a jazz club with a selection of wine that I can't pronounce. I'll point at the menu and pretend I know what you are talking about when you say, "hints of berry and chocolate."  Give me the blues club that used to hang out at my old bar. Those people knew how to party...and no one EVER copped a feel on the way through.

Give me a big bowl of bread dough to work with while my kids play happily within earshot.

 So I woke up old. Old and happy. I don't miss my club days...I like a place where I can have a conversation.  I like to have my husband with me so I feel safe. I like..my life, just the way it is.

So, Bethlehem, thanks for the entertainment, the bruising, and the reminder that my life is perfect, just the way it is. Grown up and everything.

Can I stop time?

The day I want to freeze, and hang on to, and just live over and over and over again.

 Up early, we finished the day's shopping before 11 am, came home for some rest and a snack, and hit the local pumpkin patch for some fall decorations. Tiny little girl sized pumpkins, gourds, Indian corn, and one giant perfect pumpkin for carving. The little girls were just fabulously behaved, grinning from ear to ear, faces flushed from the slight chill in the air, eyes bright with joy.

 On the way home we stopped for hot chocolate, and hit the local playground before naps..oh, so much fun. Having an extra pair of hands makes all the difference! Watching my two youngest girls run madly around, just pouring their hearts in to their play, it seems like my happiness, my joy in them, would be a truly fabulous reward for my crappy and schizophrenic childhood.

I couldn't be happier. 

I just want to keep them here, in this moment, at this age,  forever.

Do you think they'll mind?

I gave birth to the Devil.

It's not the first one. Although she and I only speak the same language every second Thursday, and on days that involve something she REALLY WANTS TO DO, she's genuinely probably the sweetest tween on the planet.

It's not the second one. No. While, if left alone with an empty shampoo bottle, two paper clips and a My Little Pony, she could probably build an atom bomb and solve world hunger, she's okay, too. Because she doesn't have a subtle, or quiet, bone in her body, you KNOW when she is up to something, and her plots are fairly easy to foil. Like, when she was trying to flood the upstairs bathroom, I knew it, without stepping up the stairs.

She's not quiet.

 Nope.

 The real wild one is, by far, the quietest. She's built, solidly, like her marginally older sister, and that provides me some advantage, since if she were mouse like, I'd probably never be able to find her except when she wanted to eat. She can cause mass destruction in the blink of an eye, and you will NEVER HEAR IT COMING.  I just came back from warming up my coffee, to find that she had sidled her way past my homemade barricade, slipped behind the couch, took out the end table, and was attempting to rewire the lamp.

She did this in the time it took me to walk out to the kitchen and pour coffee. No cream, no sugar, because I'm alone with her and I know I don't have time for bells and whistles. Caught, she gave me an angelic smile, and slipped back behind the couch again.

So she could come and give me a huge snuggle, with sweet smiles and giggles. How can I even scold her? She's too freaking cute!

See? The Devil.

A routine is slowly emerging from the chaos...

There are many wonderful things about this house.

It's quiet. Not the "I hear every noise in the house kind of quiet" but the "I'm safe here" kind of quiet.

MissAngelPreschooler ADORES her purple room. She even goes upstairs ON HER OWN to nap in the afternoon. No bribery or nap warden required. At the old house, naps involved me standing outside her room trying to get a work out in the eight foot square hallway that also contained a dresser, a shoe rack that wouldn't fit any where else, a brass coat rack, a large quantity of toys, and a shelving system that was rigged in a vain attempt to give MissAngelPreteen a sense of normalcy. I spent the afternoons shouting "go to sleep!" while tripping on mass quantities of crap.

It was lovely.

The space here is nice.

The extra bathrooms is wonderful. I don't even mind that we have to do a potty tour twelve times a day. Seriously, I've even seen the child pee in the downstairs toilet, only to announce that she was going to poo in the upstairs toilet. All I've got to say is, the kids got serious control.

The washer and dryer are heaven. Sheer heaven.

And I've been cooking. So much cooking.

We've also had company, for the first time in four years. I even had coffee at the table with my mother.

Yeah, that was awkward. But I got to see my beautiful little sister, which made up for it.

Still, there is a mountain of boxes to my right. A pile of crap the size of Mt. Rushmore in my garage. A living room, hallway, two bathrooms, and a front bedroom. that needs to be painted. My baby is still half naked, and we really should rename the dog Sybil. A mountain of laundry in my basement.

Life is good. Now I have to go clean up from last night's dinner.

ah, the joy they bring.

The lights are off.

It's TEN FORTY.

The birthday girl went to bed willingly. One child is dozing on the bed she made for her sister. The sister who stands tall, curly head rocking back and forth, shape not unlike a sumo wrestler in her diaper. It's too hot for clothes. At least it is if you are one, and make gorgeous cooing sounds when people stare at you.

The living room is stacked with boxes, bags of yard sales offerings stuffed into the corners.

The big move is two weeks from today.

And all I can do is stare at this beautiful child, and wonder how it is she's mine.
Life is so good.

Past meets Present

Today was a beautiful day.

The sky was perfect, the sun golden, the wind light and delicious.

My children were almost half as wild as they can be. Actually that's not true, they were perfectly well behaved and remarkably kind to each other.

It was a perfect day.

Except, I miss my grandparents, and their ghosts were following me all around the land of make believe. I could see my grandma standing outside the haunted house (yes, the same haunted house they took me to when I was three.) I'm fairly sure no one has dusted it in the last thirty or so years.

My grandfather standing back and watching me in the field of candy canes. The maze I used to run through as fast as I could. The train ride that I thought was hours long when I was younger was really just a couple of short minutes.

It seemed like every time I turned the corner I was fighting back tears. Sad tears, as I know I missed the ends of my grandparents lives, and happy tears as I watched my own children play with their great grandfather. I get so caught up in every day moments of what I need to get done that we don't visit with people as much as we should. We do the dishes and the laundry and the cleaning and the packing instead.

Oh, it was such a perfect, bittersweet, wonderful day. A day I will hold on to till I'm taking my own grandchildren to visit the same park.

Another minute I want to hold, shining in front of me, and watch it in my mind time and again and again and again.