An Epic Shift

Taking a look at our calendar a few weeks ago, I realized that in a 2-3 month period we would be spending 1-3 weekends at home. In the midst of that, I had a business trip to Atlanta. We were offered great concert tickets for this weekend and I turned them down because I really just wanted to stay home, to give our boys a summer weekend to just play and do summer stuff. I was starting to worry that Jeremiah would start to ask where we were going on a weekly basis. Joking, but he has become a pretty good little bag packer!

Don't get me wrong. I love spending time with family and friends, and our boys are great travelers. I just really needed some time to feel like I had a grip at home. It worked! And I think the boys had a great day too!

John did make a trip away this weekend to play golf in an outing for my niece's soccer team. My BIL also went with and my sister asked if the boys and I wanted to come over for something to do. Eight months ago I would have taken that offer in a heartbeat, simply to not be alone in our new town. When I realized that I was purposely keeping a weekend with no plans, I realized that I have experienced an epic shift in my emotional relationship with my self and this location. I'm not going to hypothesize on a reason for the shift, if there even is one (or more). There are certainly still issues, but I feel progress not in my relationship with this place but in my relationship with myself to have found the ability to stay here with "nothing to do".

Looking at Life

When my husband comments about how long it's been since I last blogger, I know I'm well behind. Maybe I haven't had anything too exciting to blog about. Maybe I'm happy to just find time to update my kids' blog or maybe I spend too much time on Facebook instead of blogging. Since it has been a while there are 2 different things I want to address in this post.

Life as we know it
When we had our first child, we knew our life would never be the same. Our daily lives were altered to include taking care of and interacting with him. Then, our second child arrived and our life changed. We found a new "normal" routine. However, i can't say that I really noticed this change as much until we lived a week last week without Jeremiah. He spent the week at Grandma's. The first night, we put Andrew to bed and went on to sit, relax, do fun things, just for ourselves. Wow! It was just 7 months ago when one kid was our normal. How quickly we adjust and didn't even realize. Things were so much easier with one kind BUT I wouldn't trade either of them for the world.

Looking Around
Several instance over the past week have made me realize that I'm not taking enough time to slow down and look around, literally. I arrived in Atlanta around 9 a.m. Sunday after waking up around 3:30 to get myself to the airport. I partially blame exhaustion but I had walked quite some distance on my way to the baggage claim before I looked around and realized I had been walking past the tram stops to get me from the terminals to the baggage claim. It would have been a ridiculous walk if I had kept going.
Yesterday, I was late for a morning appointment because I was so intent on listening to my GPS and driving that I couldn't use my common sense to look across the street to see my destination. There was a similar incident on Wednesday. Perhaps I'm not only no looking around but also getting too dependent on my GPS.
The literal lesson to myself is clear but I'm also thinking there is a symbolic message. Perhaps I need to take some time to "look around" and who knows what I might realize.