Jonas Knievel

Jonas did something yesterday that I have to share because I don't want to forget. Every time I think of it it makes me shudder...and then laugh. Liam and Jonas were cleaning their room, which is upstairs. I gave Liam an empty diaper box and told him they could use it for any garbage. I had split the room in  half and told Liam he had to clean one half and Jonas the other because every time they clean their room Liam complains that he does most of the work while Jonas plays around. A few minutes later Liam comes back downstairs because he finished his side of the room. I could hear Jonas playing around with the box at the top of the stairs and before I could figure what he was doing he got into the box and slid down the stairs. About halfway down the box split apart, he tumbled out of it and smacked his head on the railing. Of course there was crying, a small bump on his head and Nate and I asking him what the heck he was thinking! Then I reminded Nate that he tried something similar when he was a kid and he reminded me that yes, he did get in a box and slide down the stairs (actually I think he sealed himself in the box and told his brother to push him down the stairs?) but there wasn't a baby gate at the bottom of it! Clearly Jonas hadn't thought the whole thing through because the baby gate was locked in place at the bottom of the stairs. So I shudder when I think of what could have happened to our little dare devil and then laugh because I can't believe he did that.

The Itch

So, you know how we move a lot? Sometimes when we've lived in one place for a while I start to get this itch to move again. I am starting to feel the itch now. But we won't be moving any time soon. Nate did finish the first draft of his dissertation a couple of weeks ago (YAY!!!!) and is now working on making corrections and waiting for his supervisor to return his other chapters with suggested corrections. What that means is that we most likely wont be able to apply for any new positions for this fall but will have to wait until next fall. We knew when we moved here that it would most likely be for 2 years, and we will be fine here for another year. I just think it is so strange to be feeling this way when I REALLY dislike moving. I would say it is one of my top 5 least favorite things to do! But I have to admit (and Nate and I have talked about this a little before) sometimes when I see a U-Haul truck heading somewhere I am secretly envious. Maybe it is just that I am craving some adventure because I'll be honest, there isn't a whole lot of adventure going on here! Or maybe I know that this isn't "the place" for us so I just want to get on with it. But then that makes me wonder if we will ever find "the place". There are a couple of places we have lived that I think I could be happy for a while and I think a big part of those places are that we had friends and our kids had friends. I don't feel like I have had that for a really long time. I know I have friends, and there have been great people where ever we have lived but I need friends who live nearby and that I see on a regular basis and that I can call anytime to see if they want to go to the park or have a picnic or go get pizza, without feeling like they don't necessarily want to be hanging out. I know I am probably over reacting about this but it has been on my mind a bit lately.

I know what I need to do is stop worrying about the next place we will live and make myself happy here. First off I need to come up with A LOT of activities for the kids to do this summer because if we sit around watching Netflix all day I think I might completely lose it!

After School

I can remember being eager to leave school at the end of the school day but every day after school Liam and Jonas ask if they can play on the playground. I used to come up with any excuse about why we couldn't stay. Although Adele is 4 years younger than Jonas and 6 years younger than Liam she thinks she can do pretty much whatever they do. She follows them up the stairs to the big, open top, cork screw slide like she is just another one of the big kids. Meanwhile I stand on the outside of the play equipment with my arms up, waiting to catch her if she falls. And then when the kids who stay in the after school program come out they crowd the playground making it hard to keep track of her.

Since the weather finally got warm again I have stopped finding excuses about why we can't play on the playground and let them have some fun. I am not so eager to get home and fight about doing homework and starting dinner. Liam and Jonas usually run off to find friends from their classes. Adele is happy to run back and forth and go down the slides. Recently there are a lot of little girls who have started following her around. They follow her up the stairs and make sure she is safe while she goes down the slides, making it a lot more pleasant for me because I don't feel like I have to follow her every move and if I ever lose her I just have to look for the crowd of little girls running and around and I know she is somewhere in there, safely surrounded. I wish I could get a picture of it. Sometimes there are 10 of them. Every now and then one of them will run back and report to me, "Adele fell, but she got back up and kept running." Sometimes she seems to like having them around but other times, like when they try to hold her hand or pick her up, she pushes them away and runs as fast as she can in another direction. I thought it was the sweetest thing one day, there were a lot of girls following her and they were crowding her a little too much. She saw Liam running around and she ran to him and put her arms up so he would pick her up. It melted my heart that she knew she could go to her big brother to "save her".