Comparisons

I’ve been working on putting together my family photo book for 2011. This requires me to skim through the blog entries from that year so I can pull snippets of family stuff to put into the book. I found it very interesting that everything before August 2011 felt like it happened long ago. The kids were all needier, younger, less self-sufficient. Once we hit that August, when my two youngest switched schools, when Kiki started hitting her stride with responsibility, when Link started taking control of his homework, that is when it starts feeling like recent history. It really highlights for me all the little shifts we’ve made in our family culture. Each shift was small, but the accumulation makes everything feel very different. I like things now. Kiki is almost ready to fly out on her own, a thing I despaired of in early 2011. Link is daily maturing, making realizations, deciding who he wants to be, and telling me about his thoughts and feelings. We have conversations now, all the time. Real conversations about friends, school, and plans for the future. Gleek manages her own homework so effectively that I barely even know what the assignments are. Patch spent this evening sitting next to me and carefully applying stamps to post cards. “Don’t do any while I’m at school tomorrow. I want to help with all of them.” He said.

Obviously we have our bad days. Yesterday everyone was cranky and inclined to argue with everyone else over little things. But I still like these days better.