May is always a crazy, crazy month around here. And it never fails to sneak up on me at least a little bit. There isn’t going to be much of a theme to this one, unless random thoughts is a theme, which I guess it is.
1. The baby of the family is graduating. Okay, he’s not the youngest child here, nor does he act babyish (did he ever?) But he was our the baby of the first “set” of kids. If we had not had the vasectomy reversal, he would be the baby of the family. Whoa. Maybe in some alternate universe there is a me whose kids are all grown up. I am very much not ready for that. As exhausting and busy as all these little people are in this house, I am so grateful that this chapter is not over. I get to spend more years savoring them, seeing the world through their eyes, and, yes, ticking off minutes sometimes as they somehow both drag and speed by.
Anyway, this baby of ours, soon to be 19 years old, is an amazing person. He’s just itching to get out into the world and figure things out for himself. I’m pretty sure he will do it too.
I don’t have those mushy saying goodbye kind of feelings right now, since he has no plans to move out. But I am sure they will hit me at some point in the next few weeks and turn me into a puddle.
2. How does May do this to me every year? It sneaks up. The calendar looks all empty. I knew that there were many events lurking, since we have a graduate, but there is this eerie calm that settles over things in April. It’s like those first few bars of the Jaws theme.
Then suddenly, emails, phone calls, invitations in the mail, notes home from school, and more all begin to fly in at once. It hits like a hailstorm. If I get one more email from school about, well, anything at this point, I may lose my mind. But here we are again, white-knuckling it through May. I think I made Google calendar cry the other day as I added yet more items to the agenda. (Thankfully, after next week we will get a bit of a break in the pace of things until the last week of July or first week of August.)
3. All of this would be easier if the baby would just SLEEP. Gwendolyn will be 10 months old on Sunday and is still taking one hour naps during the day and mostly sleeping 2 hour stretches at night. I did get a 4 hour stretch of sleep out of her the other night, but I paid for it the next night in 1 hour wakeup calls. At this point, I just always have a headache from being tired. We tried everything. Every. Thing. She is just going to have to outgrow it.
4. Fun stuff: I’m trying to get back in the habit of daily bible study (which is difficult when the only thing you can think is, “Please God, let me sleep.”) And I found this great thing:
Here’s what it looks like inside:
I’m a little bonkers for coloring. Or, at least I love the idea of it, I seldom get to do it. But I try. I even set up a table so the coloring stuff would be available at a moment’s notice. When people come to my house they just love that I have a craft table set up “for the kids.” But this little journal incorporates just a little bit of coloring and a little bit of guidance with what to write. It’s the perfect helper to make that 15 minutes or so count. I really like these pens, you can write AND color with them:
5. Joe vs. The Volcano. (I told you this would be random.) I love this movie and I was having a tough day a couple days ago, so we had an emergency viewing of Joe vs. The Volcano. It was perfect. The house was a mess, the kids’ homework was shoddily done, and everyone stayed up just a little too late. But we all went to bed happier. If you have never watched it an you like quirky movies like The Princess Bride, this one is for you.
6. My reading challenge. About the only real goal I set for myself this year was a reading goal of 50 books. I’m doing pretty well so far. I’ve finished 19. You can check out my current reads on the sidebar and the books from my reading goal over on Goodreads. What are you reading? Doe have any good recommendations? I know you do!
7. Here we are, finally at number 7, what else can be said right now? Maybe I will conclude by just being very thankful that our kids’ teachers don’t give us a grade for our parenting and follow through with homework and projects for the past year. I am worn out and ready for summer. We’re almost there.
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May kills me every time, too! Not only is the end of the school year coming, but we also have “birthday season” in our family with 5 birthdays within 45 days of each other every spring!
The Quieting Your Heart Bible Study looks fun! I need to invest more in quiet spiritual time as well. Since you actually have it and can thumb through it, does it have any anti-Catholic stuff in it? Sometimes non-denominational Christian materials are great, sometimes they are not. In my pre-SAHM days I worked for a publishing company where that was true. Anyway, just looking for some more info. 🙂
There is nothing anti-Catholic about it. It is just places to fill in what you are reading, what that reading tells you about God, things you are thankful for, and what you learned from that passage. Plus a little bit of coloring. I usually go by daily or Sunday mass readings and this works well to gently guide the process. There is no actual teaching in the book itself.