Best Buddies

My kids love each other.  This makes me happier than just about anything else (well, there are a lot of things, including some big ones like Jesus' love and grace and mercy, my amazing spouse, my awesome parents and siblings and nieces, dark chocolate, growing gardens... these are on the top of a very long list).  No one can make the baby laugh more than her big brother, and no one brings a bigger smile to his face than his little sister.

He wanted his little sis to be with him while he had his after-prayers reading time in bed.  She just laid beside him and kicked and wiggled and gurgled at him.

 She was smiling right up until I took the picture when she put on this wicked frown, and kept it for all the pictures I tried to take of them together!  She really does love her swing and being outside.  

Big brother is missing both top teeth - he is having a hard time eating.

Baby girl is eating now!  She is growing like crazy, sitting up on her own, and even now trying to get up onto her knees.  Hubby put up the baby gate at our stairs - it will be necessary sooner than later.

Zipping Along

My wonderful hubby loves setting goals.  He knows what he wants to do in the next five, ten, even twenty years.  I admire him greatly for this ability to look ahead and plan for the future - he takes wonderful care of us both in the present and the future.  One thing that concerns me a bit, though, is how quickly things move along lately - and how close those five year goals are to being a reality.

I blinked and a decade of marriage came and went, not to mention an elementary school-age child who is quickly gaining on my height and baby who is quickly mastering milestones.  One of my students this past semester innocently asked how long I had been a nurse and I almost gasped when I calculated the years and realized I was no longer a novice nurse admitting to her patients a relative lack of experience.  My home hospital unit is moving locations, affording the opportunity to journey back through highs and lows of several years of memories from full time swing shifts, trying to lift patients around a pregnant belly, a parade of faces and circumstances both happy and sad, mistakes and successes, scores of students, the wonderful view from the top of the hospital over a multitude of changing seasons and winter and summer storms, and the trip to a manager's office to request a last-minute adoptive maternity leave.  It all went by awfully fast.

The benefit to starting out doing things (relatively) young is that one can not be too aged and still have a decade or two experience doing something.  Living in one's head all the time makes one an old soul, anyway.   I'm excited for all the things coming up, but have a much harder time than my spouse envisioning and planning the future.  I love being a nurse, mom, educator of wannabe nurses and my own children.  But how does it all fit together and how do I want to plan out the things I love?  That is less clear.  It is more difficult to fit together the pieces given a finite amount of time and energy, much less trying to stay on top of the goals for the day or week ahead (plan meals, scrub kitchen, get groceries, weed garden, reply to e-mails...).  Is it a personal deficit to not have a bucket list, or a ten-year plan?

It's easier to think about the far-away future - when I'm 55 or 60 I can think of a few things I would like to have under my belt.  Be pampering grandchildren.  Finally knit those "advanced" pattern with cabling, lace, shaping, and the whole works.  Be able to cook up one mean meal with everything done all at the same time.  Nourish a beautiful and unique flower bed without a single weed to be found.  But where will we live, how will I be employed (or will I?), will my kids have graduated from my school or someone else's?  Time and the Lord will tell, and, it won't be long.