ALL My Time

I'm on the tram headed home Saturday afternoon, after being gone for a measly 2 hours to go to the store and hit the gym, and I check my phone to find the message "How far away are you.....boy awake and hungry". I speed home since the milk machine was being beckoned, and arrive to a husband at his whits end and a misbehaving 5 year old, and an awake hungry child. Later in the day Ryan comments "Man, you can't get ANYTHING done around here if you have to hold the baby". And so my story goes. NO, you can't get a lick of nada done around here when the baby is awake, and AWAKE is an understatement.

Let me introduce you to the never sleeping child:


I've gotta give him some credit, at least he sleeps thru the night - for the most part. Really, I can't complain on that end of things, he does wake usually once to eat and have a late night party for an hour or so, but during the day this little guy doesn't want to miss a beat. I wasn't kidding when I used to comment on how active he was ALL day long in the womb. I used to think he must be active but sleeping, like in the REM phase, but now I know the truth. He was awake. I know it.

Today as I was driving thru the amazing forest between our house and the school, admiring all the fall colors that you never get in Texas and feeling like this will be my last real fall ever to see again....(the depression over leaving this place is a whole nother story which I won't get into at the moment for fear of ruining my keyboard over the tears that would fall in to it). The colors are absolutely outstanding. Until living here I thought those colors were just make-believe, just sets of fake leaves on the Pottery Barn shelves. No, they are actually real, and more vivid that you could imagine.



And today, I learned why they actually call it FALL. Cause the leaves FALL off the tree after turning such lovely reds and oranges and yellows. Took me 3 years of living here to figure that out. The leaves blanketed the forest floor and we go to drive thru it. I'm sure they would have crunched when we drove over them had it not been raining. The past few weeks our drive has been enhanced by the fact that the sun shines thru the canopy and ray of light streak across the street as we drive through. Man I am going to miss this place.

So as I am driving in my state of awe, I think about all the times I've been asked by someone that doesn't have kids yet, or by a working mom that's never really stayed home, or by some woman whose kids are older and has apparently been out of touch from the land of kids for a long while....nonetheless someone who has not recently spent time with an infant, "what DO you do with ALL your time". All my time? Are you freaking kidding me? All my time? What time? Have you smelled me lately? I can hardly catch a shower let alone clean this place enough to not trip over stuff as I stumble out of bed in the middle of the night. Shall I again introduce to you the never sleeping child:



ALL my time. It cracks me up thinking about it, and at least for a couple moments in the car today I was laughing at that comment instead of grasping to my last glimpses of a real fall!