May and a new start

Well, it's May. I missed April entirely and you should be glad you missed it too. That was really a slog, as was the first part of May. But now it is mid-May, May 15th, and my classes are over and my teaching career is over (I hope -- there's always the fear that I might need to go back to it if I can't find anything else) and the twins are still in school for another week and a half, and life seems OK.

I'm still coughing and hacking from last week's cold, but it's easing off. Last night was my first night without cold medicine and I survived it. Slept, even. Cold medicine and sleeping pills are so seductive -- it's so delicious to sink into sleep so deep you can't get out of it, especially when coughing fits would otherwise make sleep impossible. But I'm very protective of my ability to sleep naturally, so it's important to let go of the drugs and go back to nature.

I've been looking through photos, wondering what I should stick in here to make up for what I missed. Can we skip Easter? Or maybe not. March 31st the twins went on their last egg hunt -- apparently 10 is the limit for the neighborhood hunt. That's one of the first things I can think of that we've aged out of. Maybe I'll include a picture because of that tragedy. Here are the boys waiting for the hunt to start -- standing by that "8-10" sign with the other big kids. It was a chilly morning, but of course Kid B is wearing flip flops. Later, Kid A actually won 2nd place in the water balloon toss (an 11-year-old we know beat him for 1st), and earned a prize. It was a little rubber ball that changes colors. It's probably lost by now.

Other springtime events included the 4th/5th grade concert on May 3rd, for which I had to purchase white shirts for the boys. The instructions from the music teacher said "white shirts, or possibly light blue or light green, but don't buy anything new." Well, we didn't own any white shirts, or light blue shirts, or whatever, so of course I had to go buy something new. I thought I'd get white polo shirts, but Target had plain white t-shirts for $5 each, so that's what we got. Kid A is in the middle row on the left, talking to his friend in the back row (this is the position he was in through most of the concert, head turned away), and Kid B is three students to the right of Kid A, looking shy. Neither one of them sang much, too busy being either distracted or nervous.

After the concert, Kid B played on the monkey bars and Kid A played soccer with a whole bunch of 4th and 5th graders. You can feel the 5th graders getting ready to leave elementary school, getting ready to launch into middle school, the beginning of growing up. Ugh, middle school. I'm glad we have one more year before that. Anyway, we finally dragged Kid A away from his game and we all walked home as the evening drew on and the storm clouds threatened but did not rain. You can see it's spring, the trees are that pretty light green, the lawns are filling up with dandelions. This was twelve days ago. Things are ten times greener now.

Another milestone achieved: we finally bought Kid B a big-kid bed ($75 from a nice lady in Louisville). Unfortunately its headboard is a little too wide for the space, so right now the headboard is still in Dad's old car while we try to figure out what to do. What I want to do is move the dresser over to the window in place of the loveseat and replace the loveseat with a single chair in between the two beds, but that would mean we couldn't snuggle up while reading, and the boys aren't ready to give that up. I would miss the snuggling too, but since the three of us really don't fit on the loveseat together anymore (there are cries of "I'm being squished!" and the need for at least one of them to perch on the edge) and also I think that's how we all ended up with lice (!!!), I think it's time to make the change. Maybe later this summer.

I was going to write about more things -- the looming job search, and how the end of my classes went, and the saga of the Downy woodpecker, the Flicker, and the squirrel, but it's almost 11 am and I have a lot of things to do. I'll come back in a few days and write more. There's no reason why I can't now get back into a normal routine of blogging, so maybe I'll try. I've missed blogging, but just haven't had the time or energy for it. Now, as I slowly recover from the semester, I'll see about starting again.