Rhythms of Life right now

Homeschool Journal is down, for reasons that Andrea explains here, so my little daily journal everywakinghour is inactive. Perhaps that is just as well since I have been spending so much time doing home-blessing type stuff and blogging about it over here. I don't think I could actively maintain three blogs plus have a life.

The past couple of weeks have been busy, even aside from that. On Mother's Day we drove down to Liam's college to help him pack and bring him home. Can that really have been only 10 days ago? The following weekend was my niece's wedding -- so, LOTS of driving into town (120 mile trip) since Clare and Paddy were part of the cast of characters, and there were also relatives coming from out of town to reunite with. Clare handed out programs and Patrick was a ring-bearer along with his little cousin. I was proud of both of them.

T-ball season is over, which makes things a bit calmer; but football season is starting, and there have been a rush of specialist appointments and therapist end-of-year type meetings. Almost every day we have somewhere to go, and sometimes for half or more of the day.

On the home front, some little habits have been forming, which I hope will resolve into customs as the summer continues:

• Playing card or board games after dinner. Now that Liam is back, we have another participant, which makes it more fun. We have played chess, Touche, Swap, Hit the Deck, Monopoly, and... what else? Seems there was something.
• Daily walk -- the little ones are getting better at going longer distances, and our national forest is beautiful this time of year.
• One I just started -- getting up early to go for a walk by myself. Believe it or not, this is a first. My small children have radar. When I get up, they get up, much of the time. And until last year, Aidan and Patrick couldn't take stairs. So I was simply too cautious to leave them alone in a sleeping house even for a few minutes -- too scary to think of them wandering blindly around the house. So I am discovering our forest surroundings basically for the first time since we moved here. Now that they are older, the little ones sleep fine.
  
• As for academic things, we have phased back to Ambleside/Mater Amabilis reading twice a week, some seatwork (outlining, grammar, Latin grammar and Greek) twice a week, and daily maintenance level Latin and Math. That leaves more open time to do things in a slower paced way.
  

It's a transition time. For twenty years I always had a baby or toddler in my arms. Now I don't. I don't change diapers anymore. Aidan puts on his own night pull off and in the morning, puts it in the trash himself. For many years I had two in diapers, and now I don't have any. My youngest weaned a few months ago, so I don't have a nursing little one. That is a first too. My oldest will turn twenty-one in less than a month. He is halfway through his undergraduate years. Aidan's medical needs have telescoped into morning and nighttime medications, regular therapy and occasional specialist visits which are summed up by: "everything still looks good." The oxygen canister and the feeding pump go unused.

Everything has changed; if I had been transferred here abruptly from two years ago, I would be blinking in bewilderment. It is taking a while for my spirit to catch up with the exterior differences. It is hard for me to rejoice about the little freedoms -- no diapers, no clinging toddler, time for walks by myself, no midnight runs to the ER -- because the freedoms come by way of deprivations. There is such joy and newness in the life of a baby -- even and especially in the life of a medically challenged baby -- and we no longer have that element in our family lives. The season seemed short; even though it lasted twenty years, I could have wished it would have lasted longer.