Changes, changes

Things are weird.

Not bad weird.  Just weird.

There is a significant amount of change happening around me, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about any of it.

We have decided to transition the two babies into daycare (no, I will not stop calling Gavin a "baby" no matter how much people around me insist he is not a baby any longer).  They will attend the same school Silas has been going to for the last year but at a campus that is closer to our house.

The decision was gut-wrenching.  You have to understand that I have been turning my kids over to the same person day in and day out for 5 years.  The woman has helped raise them.  Her whole family is like my family and my kids' family.  If Gavin is having a day where he misses me, they just FaceTime me so he can see me and hear my voice, and it's all better. If something is going on with one of them, I know I can trust her to keep an eye on it and give me an honest report.  She sends me adorable pictures of them and treats them like she would if they were her own.  It's kind of an amazing thing to have.

So, the impending transition is tortuous.  I dread getting them all adjusted.  Silas to new friends and teachers and the babies to the entirely new experience.  Handing Silas over to the school last year was hard enough, and he was able to talk better than any child I have ever met ever.  So, yeah, handing over my babies to total strangers knowing that they can't tell me if something goes wrong?  So much anxiety.

Nextly, my husband's job.  He's starting a whole new endeavor that is going to be significantly more money, but he has left the security of this huge corporation with benefits and retirement for the far-less secure world of working for a small business owner.  It's this whole leap of faith, and we feel at peace that it's the right thing to do.  But, hello, it's still scary.

Then there is some weirdness with my own employment situation as well.  There is the possibility of me taking my own leap of faith soon, and that leaves that familiar feeling of the brick sitting on my chest.  Every fiber of my being is screaming, "times up!" with regard to being where I am, but all of those pieces of me that hold me back are saying, "you can't leave your security blanket.  You can't leave a place you have been for 7 years.  You can't leave the insane amount of work you put in to get to where you are in this company.  You can't.  You can't.  You can't."  But if I have learned nothing else in the last three years, I have learned that it is unacceptable to settle for the status quo out of fear.  Sometimes you have to take that leap and see where you land.

What I'm trying to accomplish with all of these changes is a better life for my entire family.  Yes, more money would be nice, but that is not even what I'm seeking.  What I'm after is time.  I'm trying to get us all in the same (or at least adjacent) zip code so that I'm not trying to cram all of the things I have to accomplish plus quality time into the hour or hour and a half I have with them before I have to put them in bed so that I can drag them up and out of the house the next day to do it all again.  

I cannot even count the number of very serious conversations I have had with Silas in the car because the babies were asleep and I knew it was the only quiet time I was going to get with him that day. 

I have been praying and weighing and agonizing and trying to figure out what to do for so long.  All I kept thinking was, "I have to find a way to have more time for the important things."  And by important things I mean time to read them more stories and time to break the "no balls in the house" rule and play soccer with them in the front living room that no one uses anyway.  I already have to give the boys up every other weekend.  So, it just seems like a waste of time to me to be gone from my house and away from my family for 12 hours a day.  And for a paycheck.  I know that money is necessary to keep our world spinning, but there has got to be a better way.  The way I'm doing it now just isn't good enough for my kids.  And so, I have been seeking to find a better way.  And, maybe - and it really is just a maybe - that solution is drawing near.

My first class toward my master's degree is finished.  There is the grading of one paper standing between me and knowing my final grade.  As of right now, I have an "A".  Hopefully it remains an "A" once the final grade is added into the mix.  If not, I can absolutely still hold my head up high knowing that I gave it my very best.  There are 11 classes to go.  This journey - in case you haven't figured it out - is part of the trying to make a better way and more time for my children.  Broadening my knowledge base to make myself more marketable.

And of course, there are my children themselves.  

They change constantly.  

Vivian can walk.  Every time I see something that says, "Though she be but little, she is fierce" I smile and think of my girl.  She is this tiny, incredibly beautiful girl with the biggest personality.  She is all at once soft and sweet and angelic and at the very same time a total force to be reckoned with.  

Gavin's vocabulary is rapidly expanding.  And I thought the terrible twos were unbearable with Silas, but Gavin is making Silas' twos seem like a trip to Disneyland.  And, yet, he is somehow still an immense source of happiness in every one of my days.  There is so much sweetness and love oozing out of him that it more than overwhelms his tantrums.  

Silas is basically a grown up in a child's body.  He has the kindest heart and the most awe-inspiring imagination.  I love how creative he is.  The more I watch him the more I think, "he's probably going to spend a lot of my money pursuing a degree in the arts so that he can get a job making little to no money doing something he absolutely loves."  And I will be over the moon for him if that's the choice he makes.

There are literally no words to describe the amount of love I feel for them or the amount of joy they bring me.  Watching each of them grow up and noticing the areas where they are similar and the areas where they are fiercely different is fascinating to me.  I just want them to be happy.  I want them to look back on their childhoods fondly and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were so very loved.

The gist of all of this is I don't want to look back on my own life and realize I wasted it focusing on the wrong things or being afraid.  I want my choices to reflect what is truly important when it's all said and done.  My family and my friends and the time invested in making memories with them.