These kids! Oh boy. These kids fill our days right up to the point of overflowing every single day. I love them so much. We celebrated Rowan's 4th birthday this week and he really had a great day. He gets it. He knew that it was his day and relished every single song and well wish that came his way. It was awesome. He's growing into such a beautiful, sweet, thoughtful and theatrical kid. He's such a little ham and I love hearing the crazy songs and stories that he comes up with.
Micah continues to be the most easy going toddler, yet at the same time he's totally a handful! We've gone beyond the point of just removing the kitchen stools to prevent him from climbing up onto the counter, he now just moves whatever furniture is handy and gets wherever he feels he needs to be. He's a climber. And a jumper. And a digger. But he also loves to colour and read books and is happy playing on his own for decent stretches of time. He also loves knitwear and shoes. Anybody's knitwear and shoes. The bigger the better! Micah wearing his Chris' boots is probably one of my favourite things about this age. He's almost 2 but still looks like a baby to me.
I'm so lucky that both of my boys are very snuggly! Not always, but given the right circumstances I can gets loads of snuggles from either of them, sometimes even at the same time, though that's rare.
They make our lives feel busy and full and I am so thankful for the way they've made me assess my priorities and re-evaluate what really matters. Spending time with them is always time well spent. They do make work tricky... but I'm learning little tricks to make it all work. A valuable trick I learnt last night: Don't schedule an Etsy Update too close to bedtime! Rowan requested that I read him his books last night, which he NEVER does. Chris puts Rowan to bed 99% of the time, so I jumped at the opportunity! I read him 2 books and then he asked if I would sleep with him for just a minute and of course I said yes because no matter how busy I am I can always spare 5 minutes of snuggles for my 4 year old. I completely lost track of time and was 15 minutes late listing the palettes for last night's update. I know that many of you set alarms and rearrange your own kid's bedtime routines in order to try and snag one, so I feel really awful about it. I know that you understand, but I'm going to try hard to not over schedule myself.
We're heading into another period of change for TFA, I'll fill you in on all the details soon, its nothing drastic and you probably won't notice a difference. Through it all I'm going to keep reminding myself that enjoying my time with these guys is all that really maters. My work matters to me too, it maters to me a lot! and if I don't feel motivated, challenged and successful in work than I won't be able to truly enjoy my time with the boys away from work. It's all connected. The happier I am in my personal life, the more motivated I am to work, and the better I feel about my work, the happier I am about taking precious time away from it. It's a constant struggle, but it's something that I feel is definitely worth the effort.