Life as Miscellany

So many thoughts are on my mind.  I sit here, while Avram is at a Young Men/Young Women's pool party (being my husband, he went neither in pool clothes, and complete with only the most envied of pool party accessories - Greek and Hebrew bibles and a backpack full of books).  The girls are all in bed, if not asleep upstairs.  We have our own growing Nanny McPhee nursery upstairs, with two twins and a crib back to back along our cap cod's upstairs room.  Next year sometime we'll add a toddler bed that sits, awaiting its next moment of glory in our overcrowded basement, so that then we'll have all four children upstairs, minus only the magically inclined Nanny to bring order to our family.  Enoch lies asleep in our room currently, unaware of his future sleeping quarters.

Yes, we had a son - I truly did not mean to leave the Internets-at-large in baited breath for five months, but we did have a boy, born August 20th, and named him Enoch Bleys. I would put a picture in, but then that would ruin all my moments of writing - ask to be my facebook friend if you want pictures.

Four children.  I keep finding myself surprised when I catch sight of our family - six people.  All living under the same roof.  And I brought four of them into the world.  I keep saying that only old people have four children, and I don't mean that as an insult, or degrading comment.  I just can't imagine that I have been alive long enough (almost thirty years), or have been married long enough (almost seven and a half years) to have brought another four souls into mortal bodies.  I do love them, though.

Lydia is in first grade, and is slowly growing accustomed to homework, new this year.  Elisheva is beyond excited to begin a ballet class, a once a week offering from the local recreation center.  It's our first foray into extra-curricular activities, along with a once a week gymnastics class for Lydia starting at the same time. They are only for six weeks, and are anything but intensive, which is just fine with me - I am not the kind of mother that Olympians are forged from, neither in pocketbook, but more importantly in dedication.  I fully subscribe to the belief that free play time is more important than all the planned activities with which we can 'enrich' our children's lives.  Guinevere has remembered that she is, in fact, potty trained, which moving back across the country from Utah and the arrival of a baby brother a week and a half later gave her temporary amnesia on.  I was counting on this regressment, and we had a handy system of skittles to encourage going, plus a regular routine of parent-led visits to the bathroom to counteract life's obstacles.  And now there is Enoch. I have wondered what being the mother of a son will, would, be like.  So far the greatest male development Enoch has personally accomplished was urinating on his own face.  Otherwise he has been much as my babies of the female persuasion were - cute and cuddly, newborn for far too short a time. Especially because he was born at 8 lbs and 8 oz, and already weighs about 10 lbs. On the positive side, although the delightful wrinkled knees are going away (my absolute favorite part of a newborn), we were able to move Enoch into the cloth diapers we have at two weeks old, since he grew so large, so we can officially begin saving money.  Although since I never scheduled money into the budget for diapers, it wasn't so exciting to stop buying them (the one package we bought). It was much more fun when I started cloth diapering Elisheva and Guinevere on that front.

Now Enoch has awoken, and since it's much harder typing with a babe in arms, I'll close this for now.