Freedom?

We are officially less than one week away from having TWO 2-year olds. That is currently blowing my mind. I can't believe how fast these two years went. I guess time flies when you keep having kids and you are sleep-deprived for going on three consecutive years....

Anyway, now that they seem to be turning a corner towards more independence (for better or worse), we've noticed a change in our house. This weekend, I finally realized "hey, this summer is enjoyable!"

For starters, I'm not hugely pregnant or on bed rest (see: the last two summers). Also, we have a yard. We had a yard last year as well but it was not enjoyable as Aaron and Brady tried to put every square inch of it into their mouths. Rocks, bugs, grass. You name it. We could NEVER relax. This year, different story. And Brett, so far, doesn't seem to be a child who puts things in his mouth; he is very much Alaina all over again.

Goddess had an interesting post up after this weekend about not using the "age excuse" anymore to avoid doing things. It's all true. Every word of it. We finally let our guard down a bit this weekend and took the kids to a BBQ that would interfere with both dinner time and bed time. We packed pajamas and just let them play until we thought they could play no more. I was skeptical, but it worked. And then - just to be crazy - we did it the next night as well. I'm still not ready to mess with nap time, but, I'd even be willing to push it back an hour or two if we had a really fun morning planned.

It's a great feeling to start thinking of outings and activities as "fun" rather than "work". Sure, "vacations" will not be vacations for the grown-ups for quite some time (they'll be "trips" as long as we bring the kids!). But, it's nice to start thinking of our events as fun family time rather than let's just do this and get it over with so we can get back home to the safe routine in our child-proofed house.

Wanna invite us over?