New 'Dos

All three kiddos got end-of-summer haircuts today.

It was Keller's first cut since the end of April, I believe. Sad to see his Fabio-locks gone, but it looks good. (Originally posted "end of July" which was a ginormous typ-o!!)

Marley cried, again. When they all her name, she acts like she's at the doctor. I had to hold her on my lap this time. Oye.

Casey asked for a mohawk, as usual, then complained the whole way home about the amount of gel used, and promptly shampooed it out.

Huffman Highlights

I wish I had something profound ready to pour out of my head and onto the screen, but life is busy, especially now that I am officially a working mom. I find that clear thoughts, worthy of sharing, are few and far between these days! Our summer has also been a bit "unusual"--with too many doctors' visits and not enough pleasant weather, but we're managing to squeeze in as much fun as humanly possible. A few highlights from the past two weeks. . .

Our trip to PA:

Riding rides at Idlewild Park:





Hiking at Linn Run:



Swimming at Gramma Dot and Pappy George's pool:


Children's Museum in J-town:





Back at home last week:
Our library display, which the librarian said just might be her all-time favorite:


Breezy Point Beach with the Driggers family:

Perspective, cont'd.. . .

In keeping with the "perspective" theme, Dave and I have spent many hours over the years talking about all of the things we'd do if we just had someone to keep the kids for a week for us, all of the trips we'll take with/without them when they're older, etc. We love to spend time with them outside, but hiking with 3 kids is quite different than our days of blazing the trails as newlyweds in Colorado. Beach trips no longer involve lounging on a blanket with a book and a bottle of water. Camping has mutated from it's true form (back country, slinging food from a bag in the trees, digging a hole when nature calls!) to it's life-with-three-under-8 form (air conditioned cabin, blowing quarters at the campground arcade, bribing with ice cream). We worry about the challenges on the trails, in the water, etc. enough that sometimes we abandon fun ideas before we even give it a try.

So, we both need to work on our perspective surrounding this issue. We have three healthy, able-bodied kids who are incredibly hardy in the outdoors. They are pretty much always up for an adventure. Keller has enough steam in his engine to literally go all day long, and then beg for more when everyone else is dropping from exhaustion. Marley cannot stand the thought of being left out of pretty much anything (she's been known to yell "No, Marley!" several hundred times/day when she hears anyone mention anything they are planning to do, as in "I'm going to take the trash out to the curb" "No, Marley!"). Casey's a tough kid who does not want to ever be told that Keller can do things he can't just because of their 2 1/2 year age difference. He sprained his ankle on Friday (jumped from the top of a playground set on a day trip to the beach). The doctor put an ace wrap on it, told me to keep him off of it as much as possible, but to said follow his lead if he felt up to doing more. His ankle is swollen and painful, but he came home from the doctor and went directly out to the monkey bars.

Yesterday we took the kids down to Jack's Boat House in DC and kayaked with them on the Potomac. We rowed over to Roosevelt Island, where we hopped off and hiked around the island. We kayaked back and then decided we all still had fuel in our tanks, so we drove up to Riverbend Park (near Great Falls) and hiked back along the river for some exploring, wading, and a little "accidental swimming" by both boys. Even though I had to carry his 51.5 pounds of boy on my back quite a bit, Casey did not want to slow down or miss out on anything yesterday. Marley had so much dirt and grit in the bottom of her swim suit when we got home that I'm not sure how she was able to walk--but didn't complain of it once on our adventure. And Keller, well Keller wasn't done yet. Dave had to take him down to the stream after dinner to finish practicing skipping stones on the water.

So even though it's not the big dream (Dave's might be mountainbiking Moab, kayaking the Boundary Waters; mine might be heading back down to Guatemala for a longer stay, trekking in Peru)---it's a little piece of a different big dream; to foster a wanderlust in our kids that will someday take them all of the places they dream of.

Perspective

The past three weeks have given me many opportunities to ponder the topic of perspective and how it changes. Between Keller's tonsil surgery (followed by the recovery from hell), high temps and humidity that can make even the happiest mom turn into a psycho b*tch, and an overflowing plate of family/work/volunteer responsibilities--I've found myself brewing up some serious "stinkin' thinkin'" lately. But last weekend, just when I needed it, a reality check jumped in my path and set my perspective on a healthier course.

Last Saturday we spent the afternoon at a party to celebrate our friends' son's 3rd anniversary of being leukemia-free. He is 4 years old. He had a bone marrow transplant the day before his first birthday. His parents are fun and funky, the kid is a sweetheart who Marley loves, and they have a baby girl on the way. They've been to a place no one wants to go and have come out the other side.

So yeah, it sucked that Keller fell into the small percentage of kids who was still not ingesting a damn thing 5 days post-surgery. No, it was not fun to take him to the ER and help two nurses hold him while a third put an IV in his bony little arm. And sure, keeping Captain Active contained for two weeks just about had me packing my bags. Okay, I actually did pack them at one point. Dave just wouldn't let me out the door.

But even as I stare down the barrel of Marley's next palate surgery on September 1st, I know that my kids are healthy, their recoveries will be relatively short-lived, and I've never had to sit down and hear the "c" word being said about one of them.

The problem I've been mulling over lately is that sometimes the kick in the pants doesn't arrive and I need to find a way to put on my proverbial steel-toed work boots and give myself a well-aimed kick in the rear so that I can look at issues/people/senseless worries through a better lens. It won't be easy, but I take this parenting job pretty seriously and I am constantly trying to figure out how I can keep my kids from spending their adult years laying on pleather psychiatrist's sofas.

I'm trying to remind myself that although it drives me to the brink of insanity when Marley does something I've just asked her not to do and then says "hee hee" and gives me an obnoxious grin about it--I need to be grateful for her spunk and zeal. If she hadn't been such a tough little cookie, her first two years of life before we met her could so easily have broken her.

I'm trying to figure out how to help Casey bring his millions of schemes to life while protecting him from hurt. He recently wrote out tickets for all of his friends to come see his band that he wants to start some day, which is so adorable and ambitious. The hard part came when I had to find a supportive way to tell him that I wasn't going to drive him to his friends' houses so he could deliver their tickets and charge them each $1 :) I'm in awe of his incredible imagination and need to do a better job of letting him run wild with it.

And Keller, well, I could write a book on all of the ways I fear I've failed him. My first baby, my toughest baby . . .my most intensely challenging "baby." I need to laugh more and allow myself to truly appreciate his humor. Even when he busts out some inappropriate gyrations in public, repeats teen language that he picks up from who-knows-where, or comes down from a 30 foot tree climb covered in sap--he's really freakin' funny. He is capable of so much in just about every aspect of life, I sometimes forget that he's still a seven year old boy who needs to be allowed to make mistakes, be offensive (worst table manners ever!) and ruffle some feathers 'round here.

My last perspective pep talk for the day--I need to work harder to stop apologizing for my kids. It is a bad habit of mine that I often feel obligated to apologize if one of my kiddos crosses some imaginary line that someone else has drawn for them. I see the look change on someone's face and realize they aren't comfortable--and rather than letting it pass, I find myself trying to stop my kids from doing something that would otherwise be just fine with me. Climbing a fence, stretching the five-second-rule by a few extra seconds, complaining when a friend won't share or excludes them. Things I tolerate or even encourage can become things I find myself apologizing for or disciplining them for depending on the "audience."

They are who they are--spirited, assertive, clever, funny, capable, intense little beings who need to know that although I try to contain them somewhat (and mostly fail at it), I am grateful for their individuality, their willingness and ability to express themselves so freely, and their unquenchable curiosity. And frankly, I get a bit creeped out by kids who never push the limits or bend the rules ;) What fun is that? Aren't those the kids you end up reading about in the paper twenty years from now? The kids who save up years or decades of rule-breaking and blow it all out in one massive binge? I don't wanna be the mom who deals with that mess.

I'll close with a few photos of my kids at their best--being themselves.

Huffman Family Vacation 2010

What do you get when you put five family members in a one-room cabin, then crank the exterior heat up to 95+ for a week straight? Huffman Family Vacation 2010, that's what you get! We just got back from spending a fun week on the eastern shore of Virginia, and despite the heat and close quarters, we had a blast! We played and partied with three families we're close buds with, and soaked up the sunshine paired with a little low-key living.

Hanging out at the Gustafson's shore escape:
















Playing and exploring at Kiptopeke State Park:













Sweatin' at the campground (I was going to say "Chillin'", but that just wasn't the case with the 95-100 temps all week!):



Sunset Dolphin Cruise on our last night of vacation. We got much closer than my pictures show, but by that point Casey had clogged the toilet on the boat, Keller was running circles around the whole deck, and Marley was being full-on Marley-ish: