Happiness

I'm planning on following up my last post soon, but have some other things to post in the meantime. Pictures coming in the next couple of days!

My garden is coming along swimmingly. Half the corn is in the ground and the other half will go in tomorrow. It's doing quite well. My Roma tomatoes are into their pots and growing wonderfully. The bush and pole beans are doing quite well. I already have several blossoms on the upside-down banana pepper plants. The other tomatoes (beefsteak and cherry) are still seedlings but will be transplanted into 4" pots tonight. I just planted watermelon seeds last weekend. The dill is doing great on top of the banana peppers, and the other herbs (oregano and basil) will be planted as soon as my cherry tomatoes are in their hanging planters. The peas are going into the ground this weekend, and the onion seeds will be planted at the same time. The only ones not doing so well are the bell pepper seedlings and the Swiss chard. The Swiss chard looked great at first and has petered out--most of it is dead. The bell peppers are healthy, just not growing very much. I'm not sure why. If anyone wants to know what I'd like for the holidays in December, a seedling heating mat and grow light would be lovely and thoughtful gifts ;-)

I registered Patrick for kindergarten the other day. It made me sniffle a few times, and perhaps a tear or two leaked out later that evening, but now I'm excited for him. His excitement is HUGE! He has a new T-shirt for his elementary school, loves the fact that there is a cafeteria, and is excited that our next-door neighbor Sean will be starting kindergarten with him.

One of the reasons that Jason and I chose our house was because of the neighborhood. We drove onto the street the first day and there were kids out playing and riding bikes! They weren't all hidden away inside playing video games or whatever. It made such an impression that, even though we didn't buy the house we saw that day (thankfully, as the Mobley family then bought it and we can't imagine our street without them), we went back on another trip to look at our house. The idea of being in the neighborhood with kids who play outside was too big a lure to resist.

Bear with me, I have a point (and no, Siobhan, it's NOT on top of my head).

Lately, Patrick and Sean have been playing together many afternoons after school. I love that we live in the kind of neighborhood where my son and his friend can run back and forth between our houses, finding worms and roly-poly bugs, running toys down our insane driveways, playing Frisbee in the yards...it just makes me happy.

I'm also happy about the fact that Patrick's new elementary school is going to have two multiage K-1 classrooms next year. I went to the informational meeting about it last night and put Patrick into the lottery for one of the 20 kindergarten spaces. I desperately hope he gets in because I think it would be an absolutely wonderful thing for him. I'm sure he'll do fine in a regular classroom, but I think this would be ten times better for his type of personality. We'll find out in a month or so!

After the meeting last night, we took the kids to the most delicious Chik-Fil-A dinner ever (OK, all Chik-Fil-A dinners are yummy. Chargrilled chicken sandwich, mmmmmmm...). The kids went out to play afterwards and both had a blast. At one point, I told Jason that I was so happy seeing Melkamu there--he was playing all over, climbing everywhere. I was amazed at how quickly he could climb up to the top! A year ago, he was JUST taking his first steps at almost 18 months old. To see him climbing and sliding all by himself made me feel all warm and fuzzy. Sometimes he would come over and see us, but then go right back in. It made me so thrilled to see him as a normally-attached toddler. He felt secure enough that he could go play with us out of sight and know that we'd be there when he came out. And when he came sliding down, he always looked at us with a big smile to say "Look at what I just did!"

Sometimes I look at my kids and wonder how I could possibly be so lucky to have them in my life. Then I stop wondering and simply appreciate them!