Obsessions

Steve has been a no-show for a couple of weeks now. What's he been doing, you may ask? Work. How fun and exciting is that. Yay for him to suggest that his company needs a spreadsheet made ASAP, and who do you think they wanted to have do it? Him. So he got a laptop and traveled day and night with his new little buddy. Evenings no longer belonged to our family, nor did our Saturdays. My only hope was that some day he would finish and return whole once again. And maybe even bring a bigger paycheck come review time. So on he worked away, until just last night he declared he was finished. Whoo hooo!

Aliza likes to jump rope. She discovered this only recently, and is one-track minded now. During breakfast this morning, I caught a glance over at her and she was pretending to jump and count how many times she could do it. One, two, three, four, five....seventeen, eighteen....and so on. Her cereal sat and got mushy as she focused on the task at hand. Every afternoon since, she has begged and begged either Steve or I to turn the rope for her. And she's gotten good! I love hearing all those rhymes that go along with the jump roping too; reminds me of my not-too-far-off childhood. So I guess spending every afternoon jumping outside is ok with me, as long as I can live vicariously through her.

Grace is silly. Born with a double dose, I think. She and I have off the wall conversations daily, and she's always trying to get my attention and show me something crazy and possibly dangerous. Today was my favorite. SLOW MOTION. While walking from the gym to the car, Grace is refusing to stay by my me and is trying to bolt for the car. "Stop," I tell her, "or I'm not walking another step." Reluctantly, she finally comes to my side. "We have to be buddies in the parking lot and stay right next to each other," I say. No response, but she IS walking next to me. Next thing I see is a slow motion version of her running to the car. I can't help but laugh, and that gets her performing even more. Arms in motion, legs slowing running. It's hilarious. AND, she's staying next to me. I'm thrilled, and Grace is happy. Maybe we'll be moving in slow-motion more often.

Gavin has perfected the art of clapping his hands and screaming for attention. These "abilities" were manifested for one purpose only - to get our motion-detecting spider to drop. Now the background. For Halloween, we hung up a spider from the ceiling and whenever you clapped or slammed the front door, it would drop down and then climb its way back up. Well, Gavin took a fondness to this, and everytime he would walk into our front room, he would clap like crazy. His little itty bitty clap, however, wouldn't get the attention of the spider way up on the ceiling. So, the scream evolved. It works every time and he has it mastered so that he can get that spider to drop whenever he wants. Which is every five seconds. Good thing Halloween is only a week and a half away...

I have opted to make running my obsession. Only by default, though. After having three kids, it's the only thing that is getting me back to semi-normal. All you moms out there know that "normal" is never what it was before. And so far, I'm happy with running. I've gotten over the nervousness that used to accompany my trips to the gym, and I'm actually training to run in a 10K. Who could've imagined? Certainly not me. Running was always my nemisis, and I self-labeled myself as a girl who just wasn't cut out for it. But here I am, years later, working towards 6 miles. So I'm ready to prove to myself that at 29, there's still a lot of ME left to discover. Maybe I'll rekindle my dance or volleyball skills next?