Oil Life, Happy Wife

I keep hearing other parents say that one must cherish every day in our children's lives because time goes by so fast. They act like if you blink you are going to miss their childhood entirely. And I get it. Time is strange. If you look into the future things seems very far away. If you look into the past, it's quite the opposite.  I have been with my husband for over 16 years, and I can remember the day we met like it was yesterday. Someone asked me the other day where we are planning to send my Kindergartener to middle school. I thought wow, that seems so far away. But when it gets here it will seem like no time has passed at all. So I understand time can be a mysterious, fickle thing.  But I keep thinking that I must be telling time by a different clock than most people. Each day of parenthood feels like it lasts for 100 years. I have been a mom for 12 years, and it seems like the parenting portion of this ride has lasted wayyyy longer than the before time. And there is sti...

We have come so far from where we were a year ago, but things are still hard. I can't imagine a time when they won't be true. In some ways, the more things change the more they stay the same. For every challenge we overcome there is one waiting in the wings to take its place. Does it really ever get easier or do circumstances just change?  Don't get me wrong, Leland's speech is an absolute gift. And we are not stuck in that hell that consumed everything. But from where we are now, is it just a sea of strife? The tide comes in and goes out, and it comes in and goes out. Our life just constantly trading one struggle for another?  I'm hoping that one day we will start to move forward to a life where everyone isn't always stressed out. I am so proud of my little man. I just want to make things easier for him. It's not fair. I want to charge ahead and clear a path. But instead we must hold his hand and walk through it together... As a family... At his pace. 

I just read this hilariously funny post about messy kids and frog guts. In the story, the mom went to put down the book she was reading and folded the page down to mark her spot. When I had finished reading the post I browsed the comments section, chuckling to myself in amusement. Her kids are really funny. I was a little surprised to find most of the comments were about her folding the page down instead of using a bookmark. People were losing their shit over this book page.  Now personally, I use bookmarks (read: store receipts). But it got me thinking. I haven't always done that. I used to fold my pages down when I was younger. So what was it that changed the way I do the things? Here is the best answer I can come up with. I now consider the life of an object, when at one time I did not.  When I was younger, say in my teens and early 20's, things that I owned were mine. They were going to stay mine. I took care of my things because I wanted them to last, but ultimately the b...