little miracles

miracle #1: last week, wyatt said, "i'm going outside to practice riding my two-wheeler" (as opposed to riding the other bike with training wheels). now, this may not seem like a big deal, but wyatt has had absolutely no interest in learning how to ride a bike. he has humored me a couple of times and ridden around our driveway with my hand on the back of his bike for all of two minutes before he gets bored and wants to do something else. so, anyway, when he said what he said, i replied, surprised and curious, "okay. sure."

about 10 minutes later, he and seth come busting through the door, all crazy energy and excitement. wyatt's face is lit up like a christmas tree and he tells me, "mommy. you're not going to believe this. i did it! i can ride a two-wheeler now!" beside him, seth nods and says, "it's true. i saw him." so we all rush outside to bear witness to this monumental event. here's a little snippet:



miracle #2: seth has learned to swim. and i mean swim. before we left for our vacation, i bought the boys snorkels at the dollar store. turns out that a snorkel is the magic ingredient in seth's recipe for how to swim. he put on his goggles, stuck the snorkel in his mouth, and started paddling around in the water like a pro. the snorkel and goggles combination helps him relax and let the water do most of the work. i took him to a pool in clemson last week, and he swam the entire length of the pool so many times that i lost count. in typical seth-fashion, he sang as he swam, and the sound was piped out through his snorkel for all of us to hear. a couple of times, he even stopped swimming to do a little underwater dance. i didn't catch that on video, sad to say, but i do have visual proof of the swimming.

miracle #3: this is my third post in less than a week. crazy, huh? i doubt if this will happen again anytime soon, since my life is about to become a tiny whirlwind of cardboard boxes, newspaper, and packing tape. but who knows? stranger things have happened.

35

today is my birthday.

so far, it's been great. i slept in, then read for a little while until winn brought me breakfast in bed from starbucks--a mocha and a piece of coffee cake. yum. then winn, wyatt, and seth, and i all sat on the bed, crumpled covers all around us, while i opened some cards and gifts. the boys made me cards this year, which is the best. next, we got up, got ourselves together, and went to the pool. the combination of water and sunshine is one thing that always makes me happy. add to that two boys who have just learned to swim and whose laughter is one of my all-time favorite sounds, plus my adoring and adorable husband, well, a girl just can't go wrong.

winn just left to take the boys to a friend's house, and when he gets back, we--along with two of our favorite people--are going to leave for a night away in atlanta. (i just love hotels. . .and sleeping in. . .and not having to clean up). while we're there . . .mom, if you are reading this, this is probably a good stopping point for you. just click that little x at the top right of your screen. . .anyway, while we are there, three of us, including winn, are going to get tattoos. i'm so excited about that! then we'll do dinner, coffee, conversation, your basic enjoyable, delightful evening, and tomorrow juli and i will spend the day at the mall for our 4th annual summer shopping extravaganza. (we always do this right around my birthday so that i've got a nice little wad of birthday cash.)

all in all, can't think of a better way to spend my 35th birthday. this feels like a significant one, for some reason. i've got a ton of change coming my way, and i'm going to have to summon all my strength and depth of character and my 35 years to enter into it head-on.

my friend ginger sent me this great card that she framed for me. it says, "she packed up her potential and all she had learned, grabbed a cute pair of shoes and headed out to change a few things."

exactly. here's to being 35!

disney magic

we were in orlando, florida, last week with family (my mom and her husband, winn's sister vonda, her husband jason, jason's aunt carlena, and our two nieces, kylie and brynlie). two of those days, we spent at the magic kingdom. wyatt and seth loved every minute of it, and seeing the joy on their faces was totally worth the sheer exhaustion and near heatstroke that was my experience.

this picture was taken right after we all rode thunder mountain. wyatt and seth officially love roller coasters.

other noteworthy experiences:

• wyatt and seth were tall enough to ride space mountain (this is a BIG deal), and it didn't scare them one bit. seth's exact words, as we cruised to a stop, were "that wasn't crazy at all."


• i have a bone to pick with the state of florida and the city of orlando about their road signage--or lack thereof. my mom and i were caught for 2 hours in the black hole of their intricate system of toll roads. it seemed like some kind of sinister plot to keep tourists lost and confused and shelling out money, and i'm not so sure it wasn't. i'm going to draft a letter to governor charlie crist asap.


• there was an alligator in the lake beside our condos. my mom got her ire up just the teeniest bit and called the management about it. they said they hadn't had any complaints, and my mom said, "so if the alligator eats my two grandsons, that will be the first?"


• seth has some new dance moves. he showed them off at a restaurant we went to that had live music. check it out:

adolescent angst

recently, i've become facebook friends with several guys i went to high school with, and this simple act of "friending" them has brought up a host of memories.

high school was not a happy time for me. and while i had some good friends and was probably considered to be a part of the "popular" crowd, whatever that means, i was also accused of being a snob by a number of people. that was not an altogether unfair assessment. i was standoff-ish and rather self-righteous.

i particularly remember--to my absolute horror--saying to one guy when he asked me out: "i have standards, and you don't meet up to them." i can't tell you how mortified i am now that i said that to another human being. he was a friend and continued, with much grace, to be one even after my hateful, damaging words.

i don't think i actually was a snob. i didn't think i was better than everybody else; just the opposite, in fact. now that i have some perspective and have had some extensive therapy (thank God!), i realize that what was really going on in me was that i felt incredibly lost and alone and terribly afraid. i was trying to navigate life and adolescence on my own and had no language or frame of reference for the questions and issues that were surfacing in my mind and heart. my response was to try to bury these things as deeply as possible, pretend they didn't exist, and then to carefully craft a false self, one that enabled me to look like i was strong enough to handle whatever came my way. the fear was that i would be found out, seen for what i really was, so keeping my distance was key.

if only i'd know then what i know now: that underneath it all, we are all lost and afraid. we are all broken. and when we can admit that we don't have our shit together and we come out from behind the masks we've been wearing, well, then, we find a small band of people who really and truly see us and say, "yeah, me, too."

and then we're not so alone after all.