May

I'm happy to announce that being almost 4 years old has brought me my child back again. Zachary is again a happy, likeable and sweet child. No longer are the screaming, hitting, biting crazy maniac sessions all. day. long. His teachers at school look forward to him coming. He gets along with the other kids. He sings and dances. I am in love again with him. I am thankful to have made it through the 3's. I will not look back at the time fondly but as more of a wistful memory.

Now that he is a delight again, he's been dancing and singing and creating. He's big into doing the robot dance. Seriously funny. He also adds in this whole hand rolling thing. His big physical movements have taken off too - he's climbing and jumping and hanging from everything and trying hard to act like one of the big guys. He's curious about those big boys too. He wants to know what is going on with Star Wars, guns and wrestling. He wants to be older than us and tells me he's 35 years old.

Now to Caleb. He's crawling everywhere. Perfect army crawl. He occasionally toys with pulling up and standing, but seems perfectly content with sitting and crawling around. He's got 8 teeth now and is still drooling fool. He's got his own swamp cooler system for the summer, aka wet shirt. He adores his big brother, has learned to clap when people say "yea" and wakes up at 3 am next to me clapping after he nurses. His smile lights a room and people call him a cherub. Or at least the lady in the elevator today called him that when he busted out that smile. He's one seriously happy kid.

Family stuff. We're still enjoying our neighborhood. A lot. I love that we head outside and see faces we know, friends playing, people enjoying each others company. We play in the alley with the other kids, riding cars and bikes and playing soccer. We walk to 3 fabulous parks in just a few minutes. Enjoy flowers in the greenway. Swimming at the pool is a new favorite as well. I'm looking forward to getting some time and deciding some paint colors for the walls and finishing hanging up things. We've been slowly adding to the flower beds outside and I'm sticking my vegetables in amongst the flowers and herbs. We built a rock box for the boys and two benches on the front porch.

I have been busy the past few weeks trying to tie down my education plans for the next year. At this point, I am planning on enrolling in midwifery school this summer and will take my first workshop in October. If I follow the schedule, I'll be done by December 2011. Somewhere in there I have to do an apprenticeship as well. I've been looking and asking around and found some hesitancy and resistance but hope to remedy that in time. It's hard being new to this field and basically having no experience other than my own births, my interest and my willingness and dedication. My midwife has apprentices for the next few years but has been gracious enough the past week to include me in a prenatal and make recommendations and referrals. I am also currently on call for a birth. I'm excited and trying to wait patiently for the mama to go into labor. But that's challenging to do when the support network for helping with the kids isn't in place yet and you have a 9 month old who doesn't really like the bottle. I'm hoping that being there at someone elses homebirth will help me decide if I am really ready to take the plunge and change career paths.