now.

The mornings are darker.
The evenings too.
Some people don't like this time of year's change of light.

I embrace it.
I wait for it.
The boys like the challenge of playing outside as dusk settles in. 
The mornings and evenings bring about a quicker calm.

Piano music plays more often than Kid's Bop on Pandora.
Lamps become useful.
Candles make little ones curious.

I am more motivated to cook.
and bake too.
And the house goes through transitions...decorations, outdoor clothing needs, closets, and the garage.

Apple Cider is added to the grocery list.
Apples taste that much more delicious.
Halloween candy taunts us at the end of every aisle.

Socks...the hunt takes place every morning now.


This morning my three were settled around the lego bin, together.
Love that.
And Sydney found the last of our cherry tomatoes that were ripening on our kitchen table and has devoured them all...fully ripe or not.  That girl keeps me hoppin.

This time of year I seek inspiration but find I am so easily inspired ....

There are blogs that have simple lines that really resonate with me.
And I want to take their words and go on and on about why they hit home.
Things like...

 I start my day because of them, and it finally comes to a slow and sleepy stop because of them.

and...

Someday, I want them to see me, documented, sitting right there beside them: me, the woman who gave birth to them, whom they can thank for their ample thighs and their pretty hair; me, the woman who nursed them all for the first years of their lives, enduring porn star-sized boobs and leaking through her shirts for months on end; me, who ran around gathering snacks to be the week's parent reader or planning the class Valentine's Day party; me, who cried when I dropped them off at preschool, breathed in the smell of their post-bath hair when I read them bedtime stories, and defied speeding laws when I had to rush them to the pediatric ER in the middle of the night for fill-in-the-blank (ear infections, croup, rotavirus).

I'm everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won't be here -- and I don't know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now -- but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.


and....

Today is my birthday. And the odd thing, the beautiful thing, is that I feel good, optimistic, full. About where I am. About where I’ve been. About where I’m headed – even if I don’t know exactly where that is. (We never do, do we? And isn’t this what makes life so amazing?)

and....

Don't you just want to absorb that truth? Faith. Gotta have faith when you can't see what's next.

Today is here.
And we are here.
GO!