Seasons in life

Naturally, there is a very good reason why I have not been posting often in the past months. That reason is a beautiful, perfectly healthy, baby boy added to the family. Dade is our third and likely our last child. I'm getting into the wane of my fertility years, and I had some trouble with the pregnancy and birth.

Life comes in seasons, and seasons come with their own needs and delights. When we first moved into this house, we had friends visit on Saturdays. Now, my youngest brother and his wife bring friends over on Sunday afternoons for video gaming. Different seasons... different people, same fun. Right now my children are young.. a grade schooler, a toddler, and an infant. We have certain rituals and schedules that will pass with the season. Others will not.

I was cleaning and organizing my house and my life. Then this pregnancy started to get more difficult and challenging, and I knew it was not the season for turning my house from its clutter-filled self into a Better Homes and Gardens magazine centerfold. Now, however...

My baby is three and a half months old. Of course I will still spend plenty of time each day hugging and cuddling him, but he needs more than just that now. He has a playmat and a swing where he can learn to reach for toys and shake rattles. My daughter is preschool age now, and it's time for her to pick up some of her simplest ABC's and 123's. My son's homeschooling begins today, just a couple of subjects that run to 36 weeks instead of 35, and he is now in fourth grade. And the house... "is a wreck".

Much needs to be done outdoors, but that will have to wait for a different season, a season in which my baby is toddling along instead of helpless and tiny, a season on which I can handle the chemicals without worrying about them getting into my breastmilk. By next spring I should be able to work on taming our wooded lot, though this fall I hope my grandfather will come with his chainsaw and remove the autumn olives which are trying to creep into our lawn. New England is crazy when it comes to forest. In places like Arizona, you maintain a green stretch of lawn only by fighting the desert daily... in New England, your fight is with the forest, and it will send out saplings as scouts... once the saplings are big enough, they will shelter woods plants and kill off your sun-happy grass. But that fight will wait.

Meanwhile, we are finally managing to deal with the rooms in this house. Most of Tricia's room is cleared out, and she has been moved downstairs. That leaves the nursery free, and now we are working on setting up the baby furniture. Pretty soon we will no longer need to change Dade on the living room table.

Not that it hurt him to be changed on the living room table, mind you. That was a different season, a season of recovery and rest, of cuddling and napping frequently. Now, however, it is time to start moving ahead again.

Perhaps I may be able to start posting more frequently, too.