With an entire week off from school ahead, our holiday starts when I pick up Lainey from school today. I have grand visions of movies and baking and hopefully our first fire in the fireplace, so today my work is cut out for me.

Small things we’ve been enjoying lately:

This gargantuan fall leaf I found outside of Jefferson Memorial last week.

The way he enthusiastically greets everyone he sees. Hi, Man! Hi, Lady!

Opening Season for our little village, always the first thing we put out every holiday. I want to crawl up in the Village Inn, drop my mail off at the little Post Office, sing Christmas hymns in the old church with the stained glass windows and the broken steeple. This village makes us so happy every year. I should add that the Village newspaper has their headlines laid out for them this season with Dash: Missing Caroler at the Depot; Villagers Flee Nutcracker, Afraid for Their Lives; Ballerina Found Wedged in Church’s Broken Steeple.

The most perfect twirly dress ever, her new favorite.

Couch shadows.

Her getting-ready-for-school routine, no longer needing an ounce of my help. Hair, clothes, backpack–she’s got this.

Easily sneaking up on Sophie for a close-up sleeping pic because our girl is getting old and can’t hear a darn thing anymore.

This T-Rex that makes his rounds. I find him on the nightstand, in the bathtub, in the car, under the dining room table. I hardly see Dash playing with him, but still he moves. I swear, he comes alive at night and roams the house.

Keeping Nella and Dash home from school yesterday for runny noses and a gracious thought to the other kids in their classrooms when really their noses weren’t that bad. We had fun.

“Beekia,” her favorite Barbie to play with as of late and Paquel’s best friend. I don’t know how she can tell them all apart, but God forbid you mix up Grocery Store with Beekia. She’ll set you straight.

These fluffy little green things. Our hotel bar in D.C. had vases of them displayed and I loved them, so I found some at Whole Foods when we got home, shoved some berries in them and voila–a centerpiece that doesn’t block our vision.

Her teenager pose.

The way Dash plays with Barbies.

After school frozen yogurt.

Getting our countdown calendar ready–going with little envelopes and simple notes/kind acts, stickers and temporary tattoos this year.

Growing up, this one is.

Happy Weekending!

Last week, I was trapped in car line grid lock to pick up Lainey with fifteen minutes left before the bell rang. Dash was tired and hungry, and I hadn’t thought to grab anything when I frantically swept up the little ones and ran out the door. Try telling a two-year-old that there’s nothing for him to eat while he’s strapped in a car seat of a parked car. People in other cars started looking over, his screams transferring from window glass to window glass, and I did what any self-respecting mom would do. I smiled the famous nothing-to-see-here mom grin while desperately scanning the floor for a rogue piece of Halloween candy, a stale Fruit Loop, a leftover Goldfish cracker that may have escaped an old lunch box. On any other given day, I could have scraped together a Thanksgiving feast from the floor of my car, but my dad surprised me and cleaned it when he watched my kids. Nothing. Not even a petrified nugget. If crash dummy trials test a car for its strength, then this! This is the patience trial for motherhood. Thinking of having kids? Think you can dance? Foodless minivan. Hungry kid. Stopped traffic. 15 minutes on the stop watch. Ready, go.

Sanity a bare thread from snapping, I thought to look in my purse, hoping for at least a too-minty piece of gum that would possibly buy me 30 seconds of distraction before the too-minty part set in. Mom time is like dog years: 30 seconds equals 4 hours, I’ll take it. I dug around for a bit, past the crumpled receipts, under the tangled mess of airplane headphone cords and four pairs of cheap sunglasses and there. Behold. Was the savior. Like literally the saver of my soul: a bag of Go Organically® Fruit Snacks. Sanity in a bag. I heard the chorus of angels, my heart slipped out of tachycardia, a calm seemed to settle over the car line.

“Hey buddy!” as if I knew I had them all along, “Look! Fruit snacks.”

Below the snot stream…a smile. And all was right with the world.

So here’s what I’m thinking. I went to a baby shower a couple weeks ago where we all left bits of advice on index cards for the expecting mom, and I wrote something about trusting that your kids only need you–just as you are, in the moment–nothing else. I take it all back now.

Do over. New card. New advice.

Dear New Moms,

Listen up, here’s what you do. Buy a box of fruit snacks. Head to your car and hide them, one at a time. Shove one in the glove compartment, the back seat pocket of the driver’s seat, put one in your purse. Tuck one under the floor mat, wedge one under the spare tire. Got an umbrella? Cram one up in there too. Sunglass holder, front console, side door pocket, hell–duct tape one under the fender. This won’t make any sense now, but it will all come together later. Trust me and you’re welcome. Oh and while you’re in there, slip a diaper under the car jack. Doesn’t matter what size, you’ll make it fit when you’re desperate.

The folks at Go Organically® are helping you out for this mission by providing yummy better-for-you USDA-certified organic fruit snacks that are made with real fruit and are preservative-free. They come in three varieties – Fruit Medley, Mixed Berry and Tropical – and my kids love them.

And since practical motherhood advice should involve double uses of things (strap a diaper over your camera to protect the lens!), let me tell you what else you can use Go Organically® Fruit Snacks for: learning.

We use fruit snacks with Nella and Dash to practice counting…

…patterns…

…and sorting.

And if your Hi-Ho Cherry-O game is missing all the cherries? Switch them out for fruit snacks, and winner eats them all.

To find Go Organically® at a store near you, visit the store locator and be sure to follow them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.

Thank you Go Organically® for sponsoring this post and for providing better-for-you fruit snacks for lunches, treats and car line meltdowns.

I gained a year of life this weekend.

Brett and I joined part of his family for a weekend in Washington D.C., without kids—a first ever for us. And while it might make sense that three days away from the hectic life of kids could actually add a year of life, that’s not where I gained my year. Huddled over martinis in a cozy hotel bar the other night, the topic of age came up when I laughed and said something about being 37.

“You mean 36,” Brett corrected.

“No, I’m 37,” I answered.

“No, you’re not. You’re 36, Kelle.”

Absolutely convinced I was 37—I’ve told several people that was my age, wrote it on forms this year, believed it to the core—I started verbally doing the math, anxious to prove him wrong.

“Let’s see, if you were born in ’78,” my mother-in-law said, “then ’88, ’98, ’08—that’s thirty…”

“Plus December of ’09, ’10—” I smirked and counted with my fingers, my know-it-all tone swelling as I got closer to the part where I was proven right. “—’11, ’12, ’13, ’14…” I stopped, confused. “Oh my God, I’m 36.”

Everyone at the table laughed while I sat bewildered for a bit, unable to decide if I was happy that I wasn’t as old as I thought I was or disheartened by the fact that I’m old enough not to remember anymore. I said yes to another cocktail, splurged on the parmesan fries and joked “it’s not every day you find out you gained a whole year of life.”

I guess somewhere this year, I just lost track, so caught up in the current of daily routines, the needs of our kids that pulse louder now, work, hobbies, stresses—that one day I woke up and forgot how old I was.

What else gets swallowed up in that current?

I don’t blog a lot about marriage because it’s tricky to fairly handle its complexities on a blog, but I can—with Brett’s permission, who read this before I published it—say that our marriage easily and frequently gets swallowed up in that current. The thrill of the little family we were merging and growing ten years ago has been joined by a multitude of differences we didn’t realize would be so prominent, and the swoony baby years are quickly fading, heading into the hard stuff—the weathering years—where the sight of Brett rocking our babies to sleep, their tiny hands curled around his finger is no longer available for a defibrillating “Oh my God, I’m so in love with him” (and I’m sure he can the same about me).

“More alike than different” has become my mantra—for my daughter, for women, for the dire need our society bleeds with all this fighting and comparing and inequality—and yet what our marriage often feels like is “more different than alike.”

This story doesn’t tidy up with a cute little bow, and our weekend without the kids doesn’t end in some cliché rekindled romance. We didn’t make out like teenagers even though we had our own hotel room, he still slept in on mornings while I woke up early and ran, and our interests didn’t magically suddenly align. But we did walk. A lot. Together, holding hands, up K Street, through busy Georgetown crowds, touring the Smithsonian, together feeling small standing below the enormity of the Lincoln Memorial. And among all those differences, all the changes and challenges our marriage has endured over the past several years, the fact that we were there, walking, holding hands, bound by our stories, our family, our deep friendship and a love that is messily evolving—felt enough.

Our marriage is not one of those sweet relationships you see on Facebook where couples write sappy things to each other, so smitten by love that it oozes onto the screen. That’s just not us. And while I believe there are many things we can do to strengthen our marriage, I also believe that there are lots of different ways to be married and show love, and that withstanding the less-than-thrilling parts with someone you truly love and want to stay married to means expanding your perception of marriage, beyond swoony baby scenes and movie romance and poetic proclamations posted on Facebook. Sometimes, lots of times, for us it looks like holding hands on a long walk through chilly streets. There is still lots of room to grow. I’m only 36 after all.

*Note: Marriage and relationships look and function differently for so many people. I continue to learn so much about relationships and love, both for my husband & family and for myself, through the strong women I’m lucky to know in real life–some single, some in loving relationships, some who left marriages for a much more love-filled life.

I’m eager to have more conversations about marriage, and I know many of you are too. I love learning from others’ stories and appreciate different viewpoints, but please refrain from condemning marriage advice in the comments. Feel free to talk about your own marriages though!

Thinking is difficult. That’s why most people judge. ~Carl Jung

 

******************

Also, I must add that the real reason we were in Washington D.C. was to celebrate Brett’s dad who had the tremendous honor of being recognized at the Smithsonian for his nature photography. His photo, Lion, Okavanga Delta in Botswana, is currently hanging in the Nature’s Best Photography Windland Smith Rice Award Gallery at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. We are so proud of his work and this accomplishment and are grateful we had the opportunity of sharing it with him.