Week Fourteen: On the Loose

Some might think that fllying with a five-year-old and a three-month-old all by me onesie is ambitious. But I realized as Will flirted with the ladies in the seats behind us and Emily rocked out to my Mp3 player, that I totally made it look easy. In fact, I was able to just shrug and smile as we exited the plane and everyone on board commented on how well behaved my kids were. It made up for the inward collective groan when we boarded, I guess. So okay, it ws only an hour flight, but these kids were so great, they actually made flying as enjoyable as it can possibly be (I still tightened my grip on Will everytime the plane jumped a little, and my palms were dripping with sweat during landing and takeoff).

So why would anyone be crazy enough to fly with two small children? To go to the ocean of course! Actually we had some extra tickets left over from flying to California in January and had to use then before the end of the year, so my mom planned a trip to Ocean Shores since I hadn't even seen the ocean since I was about seventeen. Too long, in my opinion. Living in land-locked Pullman makes me really miss the damp salty air, and to get to see Emily playing in the surf was amazing.

Will enjoyed the beach as well. He was pretty much parked under an umbrella the whole time, but he's such a fantastic sport about traveling and everything, he's just happy to have someone hold him (and some diaper-free time).

And if just traveling with two kids wasn't ambitious enough, we also attempted to get some professional pictures of my kids and Sara's son, Evan, together. Between Evan trying to escape every chance he could, Emily not wanting to wear the cute cordory jacket Sara and I picked out to match the Boys' pants, and Will not wanting much to do with the whole business, it's a wonder we got any pictures at all. But even if Will isn't smiling in any of them, I'm so glad we captured the moment. They grow so fast! It was just a year ago that Sara was pregnant with Evan, and Will was just a tiny mass of cells. I actually called Sara when she was in the hospital after Evan was born to tell her I was pregnant!

But, although I can hardly stand to think about it, let alone write about it, we did have a major milestone this week, which as you know if you've been reading this blog, we've been anticipating for a long time. Gulp, Kindergarten.

It's hard to explain, but I think any parent that has watched their child go off on that big school bus, or probably driven off in a their own car understands the feeling. It would be like an extension of me, say, my arm, just unattached itself and went off on its merry way. And your heart swells with pride and aches with loss at the same time.

But really, I am mostly so, so proud of our little girl, who so bravely marched on the bus this morning and said hi to the bus driver. Then when I saw her sitting on the bus as it pulled up after school, her little round face trying not to smile too big when she saw us waiting for her, I knew that she had survived, and more importantly was proud of herself.

To reference a writer I'm sure I've mentioned before, Catherine Newman, says in her book, that having children, it's like your heart is actually walking outside your body.

Indeed.