Despite the fact that it’s a Saturday night and the summer sun is still very much shining, the boys had an early bedtime tonight. I was scrolling through some of the photos from the weekend so far, and caught myself thinking how blissful it is to be this kind of tired at the end of a couple of wonderful days. The kind of tired that carries you sleepily from a well-earned shower directly to your bed and the soft drape of your top-sheet. The kind of tired that makes you actively aware of how good it is to (literally) put your feet up. The kind of tired that renders your mental ticker tape all but silent, and allows you to appreciate just how good it feels to close your heavy eyelids.
Yes, looking at the photos from the first portion of the weekend already tell a pretty compelling story. I picked J up from the bus stop with my bathing suit already on, pool bag packed, noodles in hand. Make no mistake: we were starting the weekend in the 87* heat at exactly 3:36 and not looking back. We headed over to our neighborhood pool, took a few silly selfies while waiting for our sunscreen to soak in, and then spent an hour+ swimming. Eventually Dave joined with O, A, and a host of new pool toys that provided another couple hours of entertainment. Because I was very much in on the pool action, my phone stayed stashed until we came out for potty and snack breaks, but we do have a few shots of the boys huddled on pool chairs in their beach towels, which is quintessential summer to me.
This morning, Dave took A out to run some errands and get some 1:1 quality time (read: walking around a nearby downtown at whatever pace A set + pizza lunch + ice cream). I took J and O strawberry picking for the first time (for all of us). We rode the wagon behind the tractor, picked 6# of fresh strawberries, impulse bought all kinds of strawberry-related jams and sweets from the shop, and then hustled back to blow through nap and quiet time in favor of attending a friend’s backyard birthday party. Said party included an inflatable water slide, a kiddie pool, a slip-&-slide, and 3 types of dessert. By the time we got home, it was after 4, and the boys plopped their soggy, bathing-suited bottoms down on the couch (oops) to watch A’s favorite rendition of Wheels on the Bus on repeat while Dave prepped baths and I prepped dinner.
Net-net, I have something like 50 pictures from the past 36 hours, featuring my beautiful sons having beautiful childhood experiences during a beautiful time of year in Michigan.
Until I thought about it, in fact, I almost forgot that part of the reason I was so determined to kick off the weekend with fun and pool time was because I had a miserable meeting at work that had deflated me on Thursday. Or that I got so frustrated with the boys’ behavior getting ready for bed on Friday night, that Dave checked in with me later to ask if I was “really that mad, or just putting on a performance for effect” (unfortunately it was the former). Or that we were over an hour late to the birthday party today because I grossly underestimated how unhelpful the boys would be at actually contributing to our strawberry collection, and therefore how much more time it would take me (who, at 31 weeks pregnant, is not particularly well-suited to bending over or squatting down for extended periods) to complete the activity almost entirely by myself.
Clearly, not every day is idyllic. In fact, I’m willing to bet that there were bona fide snafus in every. single. one. of our days for the past several years – with the odds exponentially increasing with each additional child and the myriad variables they introduce. These are almost never documented in photo form, despite their frequency.
But by the end of the day, when I scroll through the day’s pictures – frozen moments of our family memories being formed – all I can see are the smiles, the love, and the joy. And while I openly acknowledge that those are only part of the story, they sure do match my holistic feeling of hours well-spent.
So take the pictures of your favorite people doing their favorite things. Take the pictures of experiences in action. Take the pictures of bright moments that can provide you with a self-indulgent mental destination to visit later in your day (or month, or years from now). Let the internal narrative grow. If seeing is believing, if a picture is worth a thousand words, if perception is reality, then I am definitely in favor of creating a paper trail of all kinds of evidence that your life is that happy.
Or, if not strictly “happy,” then at least full of so much action and fun that you are as spent as J after our Friday evening at the neighborhood pool, captured in photo form below:
Summer weather is ramping up here in Michigan, and we had a couple of days of temperatures exceeding 85* over the weekend. We celebrated by getting Slurpees twice in one day, doing a hasty restock of summer essentials (sunscreen + swim diapers + popsicles), & skipping our scheduled swim lessons to stay longer at the recently opened neighborhood pool. The boys alternated between sweaty and chlorinated, missed a couple of meals in favor of cracker snacks and carrot chips consumed atop lounge chairs and underneath damp beach towels, and slept like logs at bedtime.
Even as an adult, there’s something deeply satisfying about looking at your day’s agenda & knowing you’ll be outdoors so much that there’s simply no point in bathing until right before you call it a night.
But the real MVP of the weekend was this gem:
Per usual, I am evidently years late to a given trend as lots of people have confirmed this is, indeed, delicious… but I only just discovered this after my friend, Julie, surprised me with this treat at our sons’ soccer games on Saturday morning. It was light, fresh, flavorful, and I now have an official “treat yo’self” plan for the summer when I’m out.
Let’s start with the most important point: in this baby-making season of life, I’ve become far more aware of other people’s experiences conceiving (or not), feeling healthy and supported (or not), carrying to term (or not). There’s so much you can’t control, so much that you don’t know about your own body until it’s tested in this unique way, and no shortage of unprecedented scenarios that come up during the process to keep you humble to the fact that even if things appear to be going “as planned,” your world can turn upside down in an instant.
All that to say, I am currently pregnant with our 4th baby, and I am profoundly grateful for my almost entirely unearned privilege of having pleasant, uneventful pregnancies.
By the numbers, however, Dave & I realized recently how comical the breakdown of time looks during this chapter of our lives. Since J was conceived in fall 2014:
- I have been pregnant for 3 years, nursed for 2.5 years, and therefore had just 15 glorious months when my body was not quite so directly responsible for another living being.
- As a result of point 1, I have fluctuated in weight from my former (pre-pregnancy) average, ranging from -15 lbs to +40 lbs. I have spent so little time at what might be my “normal” size in the past 6.5 years, frankly, that I’m not even sure what my body’s dimensions technically are anymore. Thoughts and prayers go out to my credit card bill when I officially retire my maternity + nursing clothes & restock my “solo” wardrobe.
- I have received the recommended 3rd trimester Tdap vaccine 4 x in 6 years, whereas the normal booster cadence is 1 x every 10 years. I am pretty convinced at this point that if I were to step on a nail, the nail would simply melt under the strength of my juiced up tetanus immuno-response.
Jokes aside, I really enjoy being pregnant, I have minimal qualms with nursing, and I made a deal with myself years ago to be more appreciative of my body after seeing it demonstrate what it can do (on autopilot, nonetheless!) in the most critical moments I needed it to perform. But I’m simultaneously looking forward to the fact that when Dave & I are ready to close this chapter of creating incremental life in the world, I’ll be able to enjoy the silver lining of having my body back to myself. Maybe this time wearing a new, well-fitted bra. And definitely while enjoying a glass of wine.
If I can get through my weekend grocery run in <45 minutes, it is a major coup.
To be clear, I have grown quite efficient in my list-making, organizing our week of meal ingredients and quantities by department. I also have no problem moving swiftly with a child (or two, or three) in tow, as I am seldom without at least one during errands. More than that, I can even do so while narrating all the grocery goings-on with said child(ren) — in a practice I picked up from my own mom — however non-conversant the child may still be.
No matter my prep, my process, and my years of practice, I simply can’t wrap up quickly. And the reason is simple: Steve the wine guy.
Steve the wine guy is not, strictly speaking, just a wine guy. Rather, he’s my grocery’s drink specialist (there’s probably a professional title for his role, but all I know for sure is that there’s a sign with his face and name on it near the alcohol section that suggests shoppers ask him if they have questions). When we first moved to this area, I went to this grocery seeking advice on a DIY-style wine pairing for a dinner menu I had planned for my sister’s bachelorette party. Steve was available, offered fantastic suggestions for the event, and a friendship was born.
Fast forward almost 6 years: he has seen my boys grow from being strapped in their infant car seats to tearing down the frozen food aisle towards the end cap featuring all the Hot Wheels we don’t need. He has helped carry bulky objects out to my car, has flagged other co-workers to give me a hand when he spotted me coming into the store with my hands full and in need of a cart, and he has happily alerted me to upcoming 20% off wine sales. He updates me on the Labradors he breeds, tells me if there are any litters of puppies on the way, and likes to point out that the food I occasionally open to entertain or satisfy a hungry child shopping with me (blueberries, baby carrots, bread) is often the same that he uses to treat his dogs.
I sometimes pseudo-complain to Dave about how long my grocery trips take, as if there’s nothing I could do to expedite them. But I think we both know the truth: I really love people and cultivating relationships with them and playing a small part in making someone else’s day a bit more sunny. Plus something about forging community in the places we’ll frequent seems like a fundamentally good investment to me.
So yes, I will almost always make a point to say hello to Steve the wine guy, even if he’s with another customer and as if we are bona fide friends. And I will probably always ask him how his dogs are doing when he swings by my cart to see if he can coax a smile out of my ever bashful toddler. And frankly, regardless of Steve, I’ve also gotten pretty chummy with the produce guy who teases that we nearly clean them out of broccolini when we visit, or the meat guy who likes to tell me stories about his grandsons when he hears me chatting with the boys while we wait, or the check-out clerk who has 2 cats and feels strongly about alternative solutions to declawing them (honestly couldn’t tell you now how I know that about her except that it involved a long wait for my balloons to be inflated).
And thus I will likely never make a “quick” grocery run.
Today I am grateful for:
- Finally locating 2 missing library books that we have otherwise auto-renewed an obscene amount of times… I mean, Mo Willems’ “Pigeon” books are good, but they’re not that good…
- Putting the Bachelor in Paradise premiere date on my calendar for August. IMO it’s equal parts guilty pleasure and I-am-immune-to-your-judgment-because-I-am-so-enjoying-myself programming.
- Weather consistently warm enough to move my lemon tree outdoors! In the process, one of its winter warrior lemons fell off and we cut it open to find that, although small, it appeared perfectly ripe and tasted great.
I am 35, which means I’m old enough to appreciate what a joy Tide original scent is on freshly cleaned laundry, but young enough to remember when Friday nights were a thing.
I have been married 9 years, which means I have discovered new dimensions in a profound & evolving love, and also have asked my husband to flush out the wax buildup in my ears… more than once.
I have 3 sons, which means my single-family residence is increasingly eligible to rezone as a fraternity house.
I work at a global tech company, which means that since March 2020, I have been holed up in a corner of my unfinished basement with a $40 faux-wood photographer’s sheet prop behind me to give the illusion that I am not, in fact, making business decisions from within what appears to be a poorly appointed prison cell.
I am not strictly a “glass half full” person, but I am definitely a “glass could have been emptier” person, which means I spend a lot of time counting my blessings even when things go wrong.
Hence the site name. In my estimation, lemons don’t get nearly the acclaim they deserve compared to the “make lemonade” adage.
Every year I write a letter to send along with our family’s holiday card. It includes illustrative anecdotes that portray the mess, the humor, and the passage of time with our three sons (5, 3, and 1). Every year I (humbly) receive a flood of compliments — how fun it is to read, how vibrant our household sounds, how relatable so much of it feels. One friend told me that he saves it for after his children are in bed and he’s poured himself a glass of wine (though I hope he told me that as a way to suggest it was an enjoyable event and not that the font has gotten so small and the page so decidedly double-sided (to be clear, it absolutely has) that to read it requires hydration along the way…).
At the urging of a few particularly enthusiastic friends, I am trying my hand at more frequent cadence and a wider potential distribution list. Normally I have a pretty limited social media presence by design, but I have to say that I find the idea of translating observations, thoughts, and feelings into words that might resonate with others so appealing. So here goes: life as I experience it — and maybe you do, too.
