It's Back!

That feeling I told you about, remember the one that I lost? Well it's back!!!! If you don't remember you can read about it in a poem I wrote over here: Lost Feeling. And it's also the feeling I had on my birthday this year that I describe in a poem over here: My Boy . It took three months of James being back home with us for that feeling to return, but it is back now.

I often catch myself looking at my husband and our boys and just thinking:  

I love our family!!! 

Watching daddy and Darrell walking hand in hand to the back of the yard to find blackberries, James wanting to follow in his brother's footsteps after; I love our family.

James sitting in my lap still moody and grumpy from just waking up, Darrell sits down near us and puts a blanket over his own head and slowly lifts it up saying, "Where's James?" and James cracking up laughing because his brother is playing peek-a-boo with him; I love our family.

Last night daddy teaching Darrell how to walk like a duck, hop like a frog, how to crab-walk, walk like a bear, and more... The whole while James just wanted to climb up, with his blanket, and sit in the big comfy chair with me and watch daddy and Darrell playing together. The contentment in that moment was just beautiful. All of us in the same room together just enjoying one another's company. James would have been down on the floor playing too, I imagine, if he wasn't already tired for bed. The boys went to bed late last night because time got away from us and... I just love our family. I totally don't regret the reason we lost track of time.
     Yes, sometimes I still think about how I want more kids. And sometimes that dreaded sad feeling still washes over me and I think: I want a baby. But so often lately I just find myself sitting back and enjoying the view in front of me; I just want to soak it all in.

I'm holding Darrell while I'm make a pan of cream-of-wheat for breakfast. He's just woke up, his brother is still asleep, and he's already talking a mile a minute. He's telling me all about how him and daddy are going to go outside tonight and catch "bug lights", that they're going to eat a blackberry, that our outdoor cat Clover's hair got on his hands, that he stepped on Clover and that wasn't nice, and then? Then he's telling me about how a little girl hit him and that wasn't nice, and that her mom gave her a swat for it, and then directly afterwords he says, "but I just love her." I chuckled at that and asked, "But you just love her?", and very matter of factually he says, "Yes. I just love her." And then he's talking about things in the kitchen he sees in front of him, and then "I step on Frosty (our other outdoor cat), and that's not nice." And I think, I love this kid!!! I love listening to him talk, love his little vocabulary, love his imagination growing....
     The other day I made Mickey Mouse pancakes. I reached over to Darrell's plate and took one of Mickey Mouse's ears and ate it. Darrell said, "What happened to Mickey Mouse's ear?!" And I said, "I ate it." His little jaw drops and he says, "That is disgusting.". I cracked up! That was one of the first times he used that word and I knew, I knew that he knew what it meant. He amazes me. He amazes me every day with the things that he says. And that memory!...
     He loves books and his favorite story right now is Jonah. He loves it from his Bible, he loves it from daddy's Bible, and this week he found out that I have an audio version of his storybook Bible and he want to hear Jonah on that! He was already starting to memorize the words to it, but now that he can hear the CD tell it to him too.... He's sitting at the counter quoting, 

"Tell your worst enemies that I love them."

"No." Jonah said, "Those are bad people doing bad things."

"Exactly." God said."

    Darrell is also dying to watch Wreck it Ralph all the time right now and quotes the Bad Guy Affirmation from it, but I'm sure glad to see his favorite movies aren't the only thing on his little mind, you know? :-)

We recently celebrated Darrell's 3rd birthday, and James is only days away from that 1 and a half years mark; my boys are growing up! Right now I'm working on cutting the clutter out of my house and my life, I want to live life on purpose. I want to spend my time intentionally enjoying raising my children with my husband by my side, and not waste my time on junk that's just not worth it. I think things around here are finally starting to change, and I'm just so excited about it!