The Summer Moving Cycle, Happy Boys, and Praying for Rain

The Summer Moving Cycle

Dan keeps asking us when we are going to Germany. Oh….Ummmmm….  It’s so hard to see the boys deal with losing friends, but it’s a thing we all have to go through, over and over again.

We live in a neighborhood designated for graduate students. Every time a quarter ends, people move, but the biggest moving cycle of all is the summer cycle. When we came back from Alabama, we found that two new families had moved in right beside us.

The boys are so happy. To replace the family with no kids, a family with two elementary children moved in. They have spent the last three days playing with the 2nd grader ALL DAY  LONG. None of the new kids have experienced the pain of month-long poison oak or ticks from our friendly neighborhood woods, so temptations are being revisited.

I found Joshua in the woods, in flip-flops and shorts. I about died. Sometimes poison oak takes a week to show a reaction, so I’m sweating this out. It took that boy two rounds of Prednisone, a MONTH to recover from that stuff. How could he just forget???

Bugs and Boys

With school out, I am able to better enjoy my position as mother, rather than teacher. I can just sit outside in a chair and watch them play. I can follow JD around saying, “No, no. Don’t step on the flowers. Walk around the flowers.”

JD is feeling much happier. I think he’s left Angry Bird behind him. It took him a few days to recover from our vacation, but I felt like even while Sean and Amy were still here, he began to behave better.

Have you ever tried hiking with a two-year-old? It’s pretty funny, and it is s-l-o-w going. JD stops at every single bug that he spots and says, “Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug.”

If Daniel is around, Dan will say, “Bug?  Where!!???” Then he will rush over and squash the bug, no matter how special it is. Dan relishes squashing bugs. My boys have made a few girls cry over the years with their talent for this.

I go back and forth, with the bug thing. On one hand, it makes me gloriously happy to have three solid bug squashers in the house. I don’t want bugs in my house. On the other hand, I want them to have respect for life and not just kill tiny living organisms they find outside for the sheer joy of it.

I enjoy the hugs and cuddles from my children so much. This morning, Dan crawled into our bed around 2am. He brought his pillow and his blanket with him. That blanket barely even covers him at this point. I don’t know what we will do when he outgrows it!

It was such a great feeling to roll over at 6:30 this morning, and there was Daniel’s angelic little face sleeping beside me. I just laid there and thought and prayed and enjoyed it. I will miss things like this when he’s older.  When I was a kid, I always went to my parents’ bed if I had a bad dream. We have that same policy. Most nights, no one migrates to our bed, but when they do, I don’t mind it.

John David is finally talking now, so it’s really nice that he can tell me what he wants or needs. Just as I suspected, when he calls me into his room because he’s having trouble sleeping or going to sleep, he wants one or two things. He either wants a drink, or he wants me to rock him in my lap. Usually, he just wants me to rock him.

“Rock? Rock? Rock? Rock?”

It melts my heart every time, and I rock him. He doesn’t fall asleep, but we enjoy our time to cuddle. Sometimes he asks me to sing. They all like the “Go to sleep” song. You know how he used to wake up every single night, in the middle of the night, until he was 20 months old? I’m convinced he just wanted the cuddling, and babies don’t keep, so we cuddle.

I think I’m feeling extra nostalgic about it this time since JD is my last baby.

Right now JD just went to sleep,Daniel is playing trains, and the big boys are playing Skylanders with our new neighbor. I have been tripping over Skylanders all summer, and I am here to tell you that we refuse to buy another game that requires you to buy little men to go with them, at $13/pop. Let’s stand strong and tell those Skylanders people that enough is enough already! Make a new game that goes with the men that we already have and does not come with new and different ones!!!

One last thing. Let’s pray for rain for the West! California is all brown again, and it bothers me. Plus, the prices on your produce are about to go up, y’all. This is where we grow that stuff!

Every time I pray for rain, I see that prayer answered. Imagine how much more rain we’d get if we all prayed!!

Whose with me?

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also, and greater works than these he will do because I go to My Father.

And whatsoever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”     John 14:12-14