When I got home from my trip (which was wonderful), I soaked up love and welcome. Sarah was clearly pleased to see me when I met her bus and Amy leapt into my arms while telling me how much she missed me and loved me. I’ve been really focusing more on noticing the love in a bigger way than I sometimes might. Noticing the love that comes to me regardless of how imperfect I might be feeling. Noticing that the girls really don’t care if my clothes are fitting a bit more tightly or if my hair makes me look like a water buffalo. No one seems to care. It doesn’t stop any of the love. The only person who criticizes me seems to be myself. I am endeavoring to be more conscious of any mean thoughts and to change them, to see myself more as the girls do. One year I made my mom a present of an old pair of my glasses with post-its piled up on each lens with loving and true sentiments of how I see her. Because that is the thing: we need to see ourselves more as others do and we will probably be so much kinder to ourselves than when we look with our own eyes.
Sarah lost her ring. For real this time. It was just a small silver ring but she really loved wearing it and playing with it. When she lost it, either at school or on the bus, she was extremely upset. Once she regained her equilibrium I said maybe she could get a new one for Christmas. That seems to have solved the problem. I didn’t want to replace it immediately and thus have no consequence for losing it, but I do want her to have a ring if she wants one. Amy wants one too. Now I just have to measure their small fingers.
Friday night was the Fall Festival for Amy’s school. Last year the fall and spring festivals were rather stressful because I was mostly solo parenting. This time it felt easy because we had both parents so I didn’t have the stress of keeping eyes on two roving kids who want to do different things.
Saturday we went to a pumpkin farm that had a ton of fun things for kids to do. With each thing we had to pull the girls away because we knew they would be upset if they ran out of time for all of the other activities. They began with playing in large boxes filled with dried corn. After having some food they discovered the live music and would have easily spent all afternoon there. Sarah especially had a glowing joy about her as she danced. When she first arrived on the scene no one was dancing and she was solo. Her moves and joy encouraged other kids to join in the fun. Next we went out to the pumpkin patch and play area that included a super long slide, a firetruck, rubber ducks that you could move down troughs by pumping water, and human-sized hamster wheels. We stayed as long as we could and when the tractor took us back to the car we were one of two cars left, which was hilarious because Carl and I have a small history of being the last to leave places. It was such a fun and (mostly) easy adventure. How do I have such grown-up kids?!?
May you see yourself through my eyes.
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