terrible twos....

    ya know i guess i just never really realized how much time a two year old takes up! he is so thirsty for knowledge and experiences that i barely have a moment to call my own these days...or for any of the days this summer... or fall for that matter.

    after my success early this year with overcoming my self doubt & just seizing the day i was ready and willing to go forward in a hurry. i had so many plans for things i was going to get accomplished and really got caught up in trying to get it done. i felt that after years (...and years, if i'm honest) of my close people telling me to go for it, i finally did and it was wonderful! i had found the outlet & the desire & the gumption i had always been lacking. and then... i found myself feeling so much frustration at having found all of those long sought things and then dealing with the demands of a two year old.  in desperation i instituted a tradition of walks at our local state park, which is luckily only a few miles south of town.  initially these walks were to wear him out so he would nap for me so i could get things done.

 but in the course of going on these outings with my little guy, who loves to wear his own backpack and run most of the way, i discovered that the walks were healing my frustrations.

 i saw the trails through his eyes. 

the fascinating colors of fall, the sounds of the birds, the mystery of the wind in the trees and the prairie grasses...that little gasp and then, "wissen!" he says with his little hand up to his ear.

 the occasional snake, buzzing bee or prairiedog whose paths we crossed,

 the flowers & plants he pointed out to me.

 his interest in the trail signs and informational markers..."wat say mimi?" he asks at every one.

my admiration of his boy-ness when he bites the dust and gets a skinned knee but doesn't care

& of his bravery when he conquers his fears and jumps off the end of the bench at the council ring. 

 his absolute delight the day we saw the garbage truck driving through the park from the far side of the lake and he ran all the way up the hill calling "garbage truck?!" and was rewarded on the other side by getting to see the big, grumbly truck drop its fork arms and lift the big dumpster over its cab and dump! into the hopper. in all these things i realized that my aspirations had time to come to fruition but this time... this tiny span of time in my life when i get to experience this amazing thing, is just that. a tiny span of time, a window into the wondrous nature of life at two years old.

 it'll be over before i know it & it'll never happen again. my knitting and sewing and all those things can wait but this won't. it's challenging to remember that when he's screamin his head off acting like a banshee but i'm gonna give it my all!  three cheers for the "terrible" twos!!!!

on dealing with some people...

while washing up the last of the dishes today i realized i had forgotten to wash the knives. after a pause, i ran an inch or so of nice hot water into the sink with a tiny squirt of soap and put all the knives in to soak.  now, i NEVER put my knives in the sink...while they are dirty they are on the counter behind the sink and when i wash them i do so one at a time. i'm a bit of a clutz and it's just safer for me that way. but there were alot of them and they were sticky so i did it. point is, for me, it was an out of the ordinary thing to do and they say that doing out of your ordinary things helps build neural pathways in your brain. so... as i was standing there, giving the hot, soapy water some time to do its work before i started scrubbing, my mind began to wander a bit and  i considered just leaving the knives to wash when i got back from running my daughter over to her friends house. then my brain gave me some wonderful examples of why it was a bad idea, most of which involved some unsuspecting (or clutzy) person reaching in and drawing back a bloody hand.  now of course, intellectually, i know that i would probably remember the knives were in there and that if something heinous did happen on my 10 minute trip to drop off my daughter, and someone else was left to deal with the knives, the water would at that point no longer be soapy thereby resulting in them being able to see the fact that there were knives in the sink and disaster would be averted.  ( i know, i know... but this is how my brain works so bear with me) so anyways, i decide to just stay and wash them and while i'm standing there looking at the bubbles i have an epiphany....  dealing with some people is like reaching blindly into a soapy sink full of knives.  you can be careful and most of the time you'll emerge unscathed but there's always gonna be that once. that one time you reach in and get cut. and you have to wonder (or i do anyway) is it worth it? why would i NOT do what i know is good for me and just not even go there... to the metaphorical sink full of dangerous sharp edges hidden amongst the innocuous mounds of rainbow tinged bubbles?  hmmmmmmm.