October 2

Yesterday I went out with my friend and rode 30 miles on the Butler Freeport Trail. It rained overnight, but by the time we got to the trail just before 8, the skies were clear. We enjoyed fresh air blue sky, and a mostly empty trail, although it was a bit soggy. Our bikes definitely need to be sprayed off. The morning gave me a much-needed break from the kids, and it also felt good to really stretch my legs and get a little bit of a workout.

Life with three kids definitely makes for full days (and nights). Max still requires a lot of help with sleeping at night. I consider it a huge win if I get a three hour stretch and I am mostly not winning. But sleep aside, I really enjoy being with the kids, which was always the part of work that I liked the best. We keep it pretty simple around here....we play in the park, make art, go to the library and build stuff with Legos. I babysit some of our neighbors, and find that more kids are generally easier to manage. As my kids get older, I am starting to have a sense of what the next stage of parenting will look like and coming to grips with the realization that baths and rocking to sleep and wiping butts is probably the easiest and most gratifying stage of this whole gig.

Last night when I was tucking the kids in to bed, I sang the words to Taps (Laurel is in Girl Scouts so our repertoire of songs is expanding greatly).

"....All is well, safely rest...." is one of the lines.

"Not everyone is safe," said Laurel when the song was done. She looked a little sad. I think she was sad because she truly values the feeling of safety and was enjoying some of that in the moment, tucked in with her brother in a great big bed inside a house on a cool, fall night. The realization that not everyone gets what she has is a tough issue to grapple with for six year olds, who have an unusual obsession with fairness.

As she leaves our proverbial nest and her exposure to the world both puts her at greater risk, and offers her a greater perspective, she will develop her own ideas about her place in the equation. And probably do a fair amount of screwing up, hurting other people, getting hurt herself. When I think about this right now, I usually think about Laurel, although of course Marko and Max will shortly follow in her footsteps. I just still have a lot of control and contact with Marko and Max, but Laurel is off doing her own thing for big parts of the day. First grade is basically a full work day, she goes to play dates by herself, etc.

Rather than thinking about what I need to do with my kids (i.e. my "parenting"), I've been thinking about my own actions, activities, and interactions with the world. Those are the things they'll actually take the most lessons from, I think. There are a couple of things we're involved in that we really loved but have turned into sources of tension. I don't have any answers or even cohesive thoughts about them at the moment. I wish I had some more time to read and write, but I have used up all of that time just on this short blog post. Back to wiping butts for now!