Lovely little things, 9

It’s been a lovely, little week.

dinner
Solo parenting. I hate it. And it’s not the additional work, the logistics of getting two little people up and ready for the day, not to mention through the day and then back down again, all on my own. It’s not even that I have to go for hours without being able to so much as pee by myself. It’s that it’s lonely. And I miss my partner. I miss my love. And I can’t get my body or my heart to settle until he is safely home.

The thing that makes this all bearable? Friends who invite us over for dinner, cook for us, lavish us in adult conversation and extra fun playtime, deal with the extra chaos and mess we inevitably create. Our friends remind me almost daily that we are never truly alone.

bubbles and chalk
It’s kind if our jam. Two mamas and three kids between us. A blanket stretched out on our front lawn or theirs, sticks of chalk and half empty bottles of bubbles scattered about. This year the girls run off, playing almost entirely on their own. And that’s new and fun and surprising (and, yes, a little bit sad, but mostly fun). This year baby boy tries to run off too and we chase him up the hill and back down again and he giggles like a mad man the whole way. And as long as this winter has been, the front yard feels like home now.

dreaming
I don’t take many selfies. Unless my kids’ faces are smushed up alongside mine. But this shirt? It’s oh so perfect in every way. And my love for Sevenly grows and grows and grows. Their charity this week is All Girls Allowed, dedicated to restoring life, value, and dignity to girls and mothers revealing the injustice to China’s One-Child Policy. Go wear your heart on your sleeve and support amazing people doing amazing work.

favorite words
“One can but hope to make a child laugh or feel clear and happy-headed as he follows the simple rhythm to its logical end. It can jog him with the unexpected and comfort him with the familiar, lift him for a few minutes from his own problems of shoelaces that won’t tie, and busy parents and mysterious clock time, into the world of a bug or a bear or a bee or a boy living in the timeless world of a story.”

~ Margaret Wise Brown

Happy weekend, all. May you find a story to lift you for a minute into a timeless world.

~~~~~

linking up with Lizzy for Ten Things of Thankful