the first and the last

the first day of 1st grade. July 25th, 2006:

the last day of 1st grade. June 29, 2007:

what a difference a year makes. like i said in the previous post, i can't believe how much he has grown up.

i have a seven year old...

harry had a birthday. he's seven now. i was completely overwhelmed by birthday parties and family in town, fireworks, and making slime. see, we had a friend birthday party that morning with kids from his class. it was harry potter themed, so we "learned" in different "classes" how to do stuff. we had a care of magical creatures class, where the 7 year-old's chased chickens. we had a divination class, where they played memory with words and pictures. and a potions class where we mixed baking soda and vinegar and let it explode all over the table. and then we made slime out of glue and borax. it was a blast.

then we had a birthday party that evening with cousins and other family. pandemonium. we had family in town. i don't think our small house had ever had that many people crammed into it. then we went to our local town's firework celebration. throw in there a parade, a park festival, finding a cake. it was a full day.

and on that note of 7, my 7 year old is on his last week of school. finally. but as i watched him leave this morning, something my mother in law said when she was teaching first grade hit me..."we get them as little kids, and by the end of the year, they turn into big kids". i see a struggle inside him. a struggle between messing around and being responsible. he can be totally crazy, chasing his little brother around, and then he'll be scolding his little brother and being "too cool" for doing something similar. it is so much fun to see him grow up. and he has done a lot of that this year.

he is such a monkey. occasionally he still gets hurt and cries for mom. but he climbs tree's like a true kid. he has a passion for it, so i just don't watch him all the time, lest i worry or yell at him. he needs the adventure of it.

he played machine pitch baseball this year. he spent the majority of the games getting pointers on how to hit the ball. but when he finally did hit the ball, you could see on his face...he really loved it, and he accomplished it himself. he went 6 games without a single hit, and he still loved going to his games. he never gave up. what a great life lesson for all of us.

so i guess i should stop bragging about him, but as i mentioned to my mom yesterday, fussy is my easiest kid right now. with harry, i am being constantly thrown off balance. he will cry like a little kid about something really silly; be mature and understanding two minutes later about something i was sure was going to upset him. it seems being a mom gets harder in some ways the older they get.

it's not that I have forgotten you

or that I don't have anything blog worthy happening in my life. The thing is, I haven't had time to sit down and actually type anything out for the longest time. My time is gettign sucked away to family things, baby things, garden things, church things, school things. mostly family and baby things.

our house flooded a couple of weeks back. again. we had a nice rainstorm and our sump pump stuck itself in off position. so while I could have blogged about how it SUCKS royal to tear the basement up, do about 20 loads of laundry (from all the baby clothes stuck down there), meanwhile trying to keep fussy...well...trying to keep fussy happy.

I could have blogged about how school is almost out. almost. or I could have written about seeing my long lost uncle from california. Or about my inlaws visit to see the twins blessing. or my nieces baptism. but I didn't. mostly because i'm tired. tired of getting harry out of bed in the morning, tired of the inlaws visiting and making us feel very unimportant, and tired of the fact that I won't ever get to do what my sister did. get her baby girl ready for baptism. (insert crying face here)

or i could really blog about my blisters. i've got two right now that are killing me. i know that is boring and terrible and i'm just complaining. but it is making it hard to enjoy the run that i want to run on saturday, but i won't because it is harry's birthday. make sense. yeah i know. it is bedtime. the boys are all upstairs and i think big d is worn out too.

which leads me to what i really should have blogged about. fathers. how great big d is to his kids. how much i love him and all he does. especially when he takes a good long turn with fussy and lets me cool off.

and my own daddy. the guy that taught me a lot about how to treat people. the guy who will drop anything and come to the rescue when his daughter's basement floods. that and he makes big d feel right at home.

so my hat is off to my favorite fathers in my life. thanks for all you do.

and for all my faithful readers, sorry this break was so long. i hope to get back in the pool, or on the wagon, or whatever.

fussy happy