The month of May and most of June were very busy for us, as August will be, but July...July is so very slow. And our little group of the Jackson/Erickson clan does not DO slow very well. We have learned many lessons.
For starters, I ingeniously declared these four sweaty weeks in the middle of the summer to be "Diaper Free July." Which means we are doing a lot of laundry, and a lot of bribing. On the whole, Henry is doing wonderfully. Svea loves sitting on the potty and wearing her "buh-looooomies" (underwear) but has yet to actually GO on the toilet. They love peeing in the yard, which Brian and I totally count as a victory.
They are both growing and changing so much, as any three and almost-two-year-old will.
Henry is such a happy, sensitive child. He is still obsessed with baseball, football (especially Van Tiffen - I tried to put in a link here to Van Tiffen who was a punter for Univ. of AL in the 1970's but the pictures of Alabama fans that came up in my search were just too disturbing), shoes, dressing himself, changing clothes 4 times a day, turning on the light in his closet and picking his own shirt off the hanger then turning off the light himself, Smarties candy, Hershey kisses, orange juice,
Wallace and Gromit, his Papa, his Pops, repeating himself incessantly, and riding his bike after watching the Tour de France.
Svea is so tough and such a crack-up. She loves to eat (almost all the hours that she is awake), she sings all the time and makes up the words for the parts she forgets. She loves her ABC's, taking her shoes off in the car, to have her arms and back tickled very slowly and lightly, Sesame Street, looking at pictures of cousin Lydia on the computer, to run with Henry, to be with Henry in any capacity, to call Aunt Merpha on her play cell phone, to draw and color in any media, to spell, to read books, to say NOOOOOOOO to everything even if she really wants it, and to be naked.
They keep us so busy and so happy.
When we were trying to decide to move to Evansville, a very wise man I worked with told me that, "When you live away from family and you have young children, the truth of the matter is that you just spend a heck of a lot of time with your kids." Thank you, Tom.
It's true that we spend so much time together and I am really grateful for that. Especially this summer.
Of course I have times when I can imagine being away from everyone for weeks, and I have no idea if we would have more or less time together if we lived anywhere else, but just for today, for where we are, I am so glad for all of this time, this laughing, these potty-training fiascos, this family.
