Anniversaries

My blogging anniversary, October 2, came and went quietly. I knew it was around this time that I started blogging, but I didn't have time to check. Ironically.

October 2, 2007, I had an infant, a three-year-old, and a five-year-old Kindergartner. I was still sporting the porn star boobs of a nursing mom and I was juggling a lot of balls in the air. I can still remember the nights of bathing small children, my creaky knees on the floor, while wearing a newborn in a wrap on my chest and hoping to get dinner made on time.

Now I am the mother of an incredibly leggy (seriously, sometimes I just stare and marvel that a child of mine has such long, thin sticks!), ridiculously wise-ass eight-year-old third grader, a somewhat gigantic Ferdinand the Bull of a six-year-old (who sports his mother's less lengthy, more substantial thighs, unfortunately), and a crazy, mostly naked three-year-old.

The past three years have seen us move, change schools, gain promotions, lose very little weight (*grumble*), and learn so very, very much about ourselves and the world. They were a big three years, and not just for the little people. Going from thirty-three to thirty-six -- that is a bigger leap than I would have imagined.

In a few weeks, Husband and I will be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary as well. And while the past three years of parenting have seemed to fly by in many ways, the past ten years seem like they should have been much longer. Was it really only ten years ago that we were round-cheeked 26- and 25-year-old babies in grown-up clothes, standing before a bankruptcy judge (fittingly) and reciting Whitman's "Song of the Open Road" as our wedding vows, surrounded by our dear college friends? It certainly has been an adventure, a journey, a very open road. Neither of us would have ever guessed on that November day that we would be here, doing this, now.

The air has changed, and the temperatures have dipped just enough to give sweet relief from the unrelenting heat and humidity of summer. My beloved college football is on the television set in the background, full of emotion and passion and heroes and underdogs. I love the stories of college football. I broke out the pumpkin this morning and baked my first loaves of the season, and the house smells like a home to me now. I never expected ten years ago to be here, and I never expected three years ago that I would still be writing now, but here I am. And it is good.

The words of Whitman still stir and soothe me at the same time. There is still an Open Road; life is still an adventure. Therefore, Allons!

The earth never tires,

The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,

Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,

I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.