Farewell to 2015

I'm watching Max sleep right now and his cheeks are starting to get fat baby jowls. His legs are stretched out straight which make him look twice as big as he did three weeks ago when he was born. Three weeks?! It's only been three weeks? It feels like a minute and a half, but also an eternity. Sleep deprivation will do that to you. In the other room Laurel and Marko are playing some elaborate game of pretend. There's a cell phone and a grocery order and some otters involved.

M and I had a great plan to order Thai food for dinner tonight, but the restaurant was either closed or too busy to answer their phones. We had just been to the grocery store and were on our way home when we tried to order. All 5 of us together in the truck...it's crazy. Everybody is within arm's reach now and it's a complicated affair to get all the buckles ratcheted down correctly when we get in. I took Max to the cafe area (grocery stores have bars and cafes now, apparently) and fed him, while the rest of the crew went to find some pork roast for tomorrow's dinner.

2015 was a good year for us. No major calamities and a healthy baby boy at the end. M placed 1st or 2nd in a number of ultramarathons this summer and PR'd two marathons. He also reached his goal of completing a hundred mile race, and finished well under his projected time, earning the coveted belt buckle. Laurel started kindergarten, lost a bunch of teeth and learned to ride a bike. Marko went from toddler to imaginative little boy and I feel safe in declaring him potty trained. We took a very long road trip to Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, where we got to visit some of our favorite cousins (and aunt and uncle!) and a good friend who now lives in Baton Rouge.

I had a good year but my accomplishments are more subtle and hard to write about. I did absolutely nothing I would list on a resume. It was all tiny little domestic and neighborly acts - delivering banana bread and writing for the neighborhood blog and shoveling someone else's sidewalk. I babysat other people's kids when school was closed on Election Day and did a run for 412 Food Rescue and gave away 75 ice cream sundaes on National Night Out. I wiped a lot of butts and did a lot of laundry, and of course spent the majority of the year gestating a human.  I'm really good at making tortillas after a year of Taco Tuesdays. I repaired all of Mrs. Schreiner's Montessori mats and volunteered to be the assistant leader for Laurel's Daisy troop. I took a lot of walks in Frick Park at kid pace. I gave away children's magazines to fussy little kids on the PAT bus and restocked the Little Free Libraries with some of my favorite books. I sent a lot of messages to 311 and served on a traffic safety committee. To be honest, it often felt like nobody cared or even noticed what I was doing and when I first sat down to write this blog post I was wondering what I would say about my year. Half of the things I did got undone fairly soon. I thought I had accomplished nothing. But in fact, I grew into my role as mother and joined the ranks of generations of women who just keep things going in their homes and neighborhoods and schools. At this point, it feels like a year well spent.

Happy New Year!