Out of Sight, Yes, Out of Mind, NEVER

I received one of those ‘getting to know your friends’ emails this morning. Odd, right, not really. I generally get at least 5 per month, from my friends who know me better than I know myself most of the time. The one I got today was from a friend of mine who recently moved to China and is going to be there for another 32 months. I have known Holly since high school, we really got to be friends at OU, and even better friends since we have entered the wonderful world of adulthood, and to be more explicit, motherhood.

Holly’s answer to the “do you want your friends to send this back” question was a bit troubling. She said yes (don’t we all want our friends to send them back?) and that her email was drying up. OK, we all go through dry spells in communication, but it was the editorial after the drying up email that hit me in the gut. Holly made the “out of sight, out of mind, right?” seem as though it was the way life is.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the way life goes. How many times have a couple days gone by without sending an email? How often have a few weeks passed without a phone call? It’s not that you have forgotten, it is just that sometimes day to day activities take you from sunup to sundown and days go by without being able to do things you really want to do!

Trust me when I say, Holly, you may be out of sight, but you aren’t out of mind. Every time we have pizza, we are reminded that Kady was supposed to go to Connor’s pizza party. She hears the word China and we are all lectured on how her “friend moved there for a long time”. (Oh, man, we are grateful to hear that there is pizza in China, tho, there’d be some serious 4 year old consequences if there wasn’t!)…I personally miss our “playdates” which most of the time were more for us than for the kids.

Take time to tell someone who’s away from you that they may be out of sight but not out of mind. You never know how even the smallest of gestures like an email or a phone call may make their day.

Monkey in the Middle

Marsha! Marsha! Marsha!

The quote that any child of the 1970's or early 1980's is sure to know the origin of. For those followers of the blog who may or may not have sisters, Jan Brady came up with that after feeling as though she was constantly in the shadow of her older sister. Why is it always, Marsha, Marsha, Marsha?????

Camden will hopefully not have to live in Kady's shadow, but our little monkey in the middle sure is a handful. Yes, there is a difference between boys and girls, and yes, he is the second child (which I am now POSITIVE there is a disease called "second child syndrome"), and yes, he is still a baby. But now that we have our 3rd child at home, Cam now gets to have both "second child syndrome" and "middle child syndrome".

Is he going to be the quiet, "LOST" one? Is he going to be the athlete of the family with the schedule that we can't keep up with? Is he going to be the rebel?

Only time will tell. We'll let him be anything he wants. Well, just about anything.

Another Week Down

Here we are 7 weeks after Carly decided to join us and we are all now used to the utter chaos of being a family of 5 and sometimes 6. Mornings take just a little bit longer and evenings take a lot more patience and a much stricter schedule...BUT...we have adjusted and Carly is now a constant companion to one of us, not to mention one more adorable face to smooch.