Just a Day in the Life

This morning began promptly at 4:51 a.m. B decided she was awake, and even after giving me a few good tries of trying to fall back asleep on the couch with me, she just couldn't. We were up and at 'em! And she was a bit on the whiny side. J graciously gave me some rest when he woke up at 6:30 with T. Thank goodness!

We went for a walk with a friend in the morning, and she and I were able to have some great talks about life and faith and God, while the kids ate their way through her neighborhood. After fruit bars, crackers, bananas, oranges, and juice boxes, they were done, and we were off to our next stop: library storytime.

I took a couple of pictures of the kids in storytime today. Bethany was very excited about the poetry journal she received for free from the library for checking out a poetry book this week. (You can see her holding it in one of the pictures. This evening she told me a precious story which she drew and I recorded in my own "journal." Be watching for it in a coming blog post!)
The kids enjoy the songs like, "Where is Thumbkin?" and are okay with the stories (as the pictures demonstrates, one is more interested than the other who is looking in the opposite direction).

To his defense, however, this librarian was clearly trained in the Dewey Decimal System rather than early childhood education. Nevertheless, it is a pretty enjoyable educational experience. However, what you don't see pictured is the stand-off between T and myself once he got bored and started copying another little boy whose nanny was letting him jump around and yell. This led me to get a bit more frustrated once he figured out he could turn the lights on and off during the little story movie they show at the end. Ms. Dewey Decimal wasn't too impressed either. Then, thankfully storytime ended.

We walked down the street a ways to hit a couple of stores before our big nap drive. At the clothing store that was going out of business, I tried on a couple of pairs of shorts to which B told me, "I don't like it. Maybe you can try another pair?" and T told me, "It's too tall." Thanks to the less than overwhelming crowd approval we headed on empty handed. It is quite a different experience to try on clothes now that the discouraging voices are actually audible.

We stopped in Party City to pick up something for T's birthday and the kids started hugging each other and then holding hands. They realized that strangers love this stuff and give many happy "awws!" I just smile back. It's nice being the one with the sweet kids. Hopefully, none of these people saw us at storytime 30 minutes ago.

After a usual stop at Petsmart, with too many cute comments to record, we headed back up the hill to our car (giggling with B trying to tickle T's "arm pots (pits)") and a much needed nap drive. I read, wrote, and reveled in the silence and then we headed home to make dinner and "see daddy!" We had a quite normal day today, but a precious one nevertheless. I wouldn't trade these "normal" days for the world!