My Favorite Four

We're thick in the middle of a good routine that I occasionally think will never end.  But I've been in this good place before, and I know now that it always ends.  But this is life today.  Noah is my shadow.  He marches purposefully throughout the house, discovering what's behind closed doors and peeking through windows.  He takes his job to be curious very seriously.  

He spends a lot of his days in his carseat, but he never complains.  He just chats on his phone and then falls asleep.  He is my only baby to transfer happily to his crib when he falls asleep in the car.

Noah loves to cuddle when he gets up from his naps.  I love that I (usually) have absolutely nothing else that I have to do when he wakes up, so we cuddle.  Then, once he's a bit more awake, we read books in our chair until Leah gets home from school.

Emma is my opinion-about-everything shopping buddy and daytime companion.  She loves going to the grocery store because she knows she'll get a donut out of it.  She picked out this "blender" as the perfect gift for Grandpa's upcoming birthday.  She has started a pen pal exchange with Grandma, and is never happier than she is when she receives her very own mail.  She wants to move our house next door to Grandma's house.

She is my naptime companion.  Every day we pick Adam up from preschool, come home for lunch, then head upstairs for story time (we can't call it naptime or rest time, just story time).   We snuggle up together on her bed, we read her pick, then we read my pick, then we both roll onto our left side and fall asleep.  After a bit I slide out of bed and get a few things done while the house is still quiet, and she always wakes up and asks if she can watch a show and drink a glass of orange juice.

Adam loves preschool, and wishes he could stay there longer each day.  He gets a fair bit of down time in the afternoon, although he doesn't realize it.  He reads for an hour, plays on the computer for an hour, then spends the rest of his afternoon playing with whatever activity is laid out on the craft table.  He can sit for three hours or more working on his Legos, Knex, or perler beads.  If the weather is nice enough to be outside, he is sometimes the first one out and last one in, other times the only one that refuses to go outside.  Adam always, always, always wakes up in a happy mood.  I appreciate his little ray of sunshine first thing in my morning so much.

Leah dutifully gets up, goes to school, and comes home ready to rest, although she does her homework and practices her violin without too much resistance.  She is like me- often uninterested in talking about her day because she just lived it and doesn't want to relive it.  But her stories and insights into her classroom are always tender.  She told me her best friend at school is her teacher Mrs. Eischeid.  She hesitated to participate in dance party day today because she "doesn't like it when people look at me" (something I've observed but never said as much).  She won a principal's award for scoring the highest in her class on reading assessments.  And here she is imitating Caesar.

Life is simple and good right now.  Summer is just around the corner, warmer weather is surely going to stay soon, and these simple routines of life will come to an end before I know it.