summer again

So.  It has been awhile.  We have been busying ourselves camping and bike-car-ing and ice-cream-eating, and music-festival-attending, garden-watering and watching, and other sundry summer joys.  Maya has learned to ride her two-wheeled bike, has moved to her own bed in her own room, has not stopped talking since sometime in October.  Casal is learning fantastically endearing phrases like “I lub you mommy” (which he says with the most fantastic and un-translatable-to-type inflection), and teeeeeeeeeeeny nuh-nee (which, in fact means he wants to nurse for a short amount of time), and also has learned to ride his two wheeled bike *with* training wheels.  His face is full of freckles and his eyes are little mirth-windows.  His right eyebrow is white– always has been, but it’s more noticeable against his tan skin.  I love it.  Elinor is getting fat.  The rolls are spreading out from on her like…um…the delicious squishy baby rolls that they are.  We have noticed that her eyes have a ring of brown around the pupil, and I wonder if they will change.   They are growing too fast, too fast…I love every minute (even the screaming, hair-pulling-out ones), and I am simultaneously excited about seeing what kind of grown-up they turn in to, terrified that I will screw them up beyond repair, and so very desperate to stop the growing and changing and just gather them too me and keep them always 5,2, and baby.  Sometimes the sight of that eyebrow just makes me cry.

My emotions, it seems, run just under the surface these days.

I was walking through Albertson’s alone yesterday, and found myself dissolving in to tears when a certain smell caught me and transported me to the Cynthiana grocery store I visited with my Mammaw.  She has been gone two years now, and I miss her.  Despite the fact that I spoke with her rarely, and saw her more rarely still, I carry her presence with me.  I hope that there are sparks of her strength and sense of humor and poetry in me– I am perhaps unreasonably proud of my love of both onions and cookbooks, affections that we shared.

Tim and I are coming up on 10 years of knowing each other.  Crazy.  I will try to wax more eloquent on this subject later, but for now, this is what I’ve got.