Hats Off

We got in pajamas a little bit early tonight.  The Little Linebacker chose to wear his fuzzy footsie dinosaur pajamas.  Sidekick Sister went with stretch pants and a t-shirt, then added an over-sized tu-tu around her waist for flare.    Captain Kindergarten had on some striped shorts and the t-shirt he wore from today since he has outgrown yet another round of pajama tops.  Baby Girl was in blue footsies with colorful spots.  She steps all over herself when she's in her footsies and looks surprised every time she lands on her bottom.

I was done.  I was finished.  I had them in their PJs.  I could have called it a day.  But it had been a day with two temper tantrum like storms.  The clouds spun out fits of body-on-the-ground, leg-kicking, fist-pounding rain, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, that left the grass and the trampoline and the swing set wet and dripping and unplayable.  So by 7pm we hadn't really spent any time outside at all.  That always galls my soul.

So I thought a little spin outside, a five or ten minute romp, might do our spirits some good.  I told the kids they could ride their bikes on the driveway for just a few minutes before we came in for the nighttime routine.

But the boy next door saw us and we saw him.  And he had a couple of friends over.  And they all thought our driveway with all it's pajama-ed kids looked like a party.  So they brought their balls and their rackets and their bikes and their smiles and they mixed in with our sidewalk chalk and scooters and bikes and creepers and grins and turned our driveway into a laughing, crying, running, falling, jumping, tossing, that's mine-ing, giggling, happy, could-you-please-share mess.  And then the little boy across the street saw us too and he wasn't going to miss out.  Even a big, black dog behind our neighbors fence wanted badly enough to be in a driveway full of kids on a summer evening that he pushed the cinder blocks fettering him in with enough force to come rumbling out of his gate ready to lick babies and knock over small-fry in his clumsy joy.

Our five or ten minute jaunt turned into an hour and a half of real, bite-out-of-the-apple summertime. 

When it was time to come in, when the sun had gone down, as the Little Linebacker threw his body around our house and the front porch in his own tempest of protest against coming in, I noticed that I was itchy.  The mosquitoes had gotten me good and left my skin with white lumps that I striped with red marks from my fingernails.  And I thought as I agonized and itched and calmed the little boy, "this is so like the pattern I keep writing on my blog.  Always with my joy there is discomfort.  There is some itch that wants to rob my mind and my heart of the more enduring, the more real, the more true happiness that I have felt."

So I guess tonight I am glad that I blog.  Because blogging has been showing me lately, that hard is normal, but beauty can always conquer hard if I just remember to see it.

Hats off to you blog.  You help keep my crazy ol' noggin on straight sometimes.