It did.  What can I say, I love great music.  And the Moses story is so incredible.  When that opening song came on and the Hebrew slaves sing, "Elohim, God on high, Can you hear your people cry?" I just started sobbing.  It was so moving.

Of course I really lost it when Jochabed starts singing to Moses.  Can you imagine sending your baby down a river on the chance that he might live?  Seriously.  The faith of that woman.  I can only imagine the angst she must have felt as she sent him down the Nile and I would guess she was just pleading with the Lord to let him live.  I know I would have been begging to see him again.  And I am totally touched by the tender mercies of the Lord toward Moses mother.  She sends him down the river and then the Lord, through Miriam and Pharaoh’s daughter, works it out so that she gets to be her son’s wet nurse. Not only does her baby live but she is blessed to be with him for a few more years.  What love!

Anyway.  I was crying.  I just love that song– Deliver Us.  Totally worth the dollar I spent.  

Engineer, a normally slow to dress himself child, bounded into my room this morning around 7:45 and exclaimed, "It’s the first day of kindergarten!"  By the time I rolled myself out of bed he was fully dressed and asked if we could get in the car.  For the next hour and a half all I heard from the child was, "Is it time to go yet?"

Kindergarten is going to so totally rock.

He met with his teacher today for 20 minutes and he couldn’t understand why he had to leave so soon.  He had a hard time answering the teacher’s questions because he was so distracted by all the letters and numbers around the room.  He kept looking around and making observations.  "Where’s the Z?  Oh, it fell down?  The U is going to fall down too…"  The child was in his element.  I don’t think he would have had a bigger high if he’d eaten cotton candy for breakfast.

While I was in the hall, another mom (realizing this was my first to go to school) asked me how I was doing.  I said I was great.  No qualms, no issues.  Feeling fine.  It wasn’t until (like Kathyrn) I was filling out some paperwork that I got a little fazed by it all.  The last question on the page was somewhat to the effect of, "what makes your child a special person?"  And how do you answer that?  I mean, he’s special because he’s mine?  He special because he’s my first born, chubby cheeked baby boy?  I wanted to write all about his sweetness and his brilliance.  How he calls me into his room when he can’t sleep and says, "Mommy, will you just talk to me?"  How he still gives me random hugs.  How even though his knowledge has increased, that nearly everything his teacher quizzed him on today he could have answered when he was still this boy: 

I can hardly believe my drinking milk from a straw cup, sleeping with his letters j & k, baby boy is entering the public school system.   Am I a little emotional?  No.  Nope, not really.  No.  Not at all.

Okay.  A bit.  Just a little bit. 

…than the feeling of tiny hands wrapped around your neck while you’re snuggling in bed.

I haven’t really posted anything lengthy or interesting for awhile so here goes….

I have been itching for spring lately.  Just wanting to get out of doors, do some gardening, get some sun in my face.  And my loving Heavenly Father has absolutely blessed me and many other folks here in the Northwest with some flat out gorgeous weather these past few days.  We have taken full advantage of this with going to the zoo yesterday and having a picnic lunch in our backyard today.

There is something about being outside in the sunshine that just allows me to take my life at a slower pace.

As we sat on our blanket in our backyard I just felt peaceful.  As Spider dumped upon the ground an entire bag of Craisins my first reaction was, ‘Seriously?’ and then as I watched the last bits fall, I thought, ‘that really does look kind of neat,’ and I suddenly understood why these people do some of the things that they do.

It really isn’t to make me angry, and it really isn’t always just to get my attention.  They do those things because they are fun, and interesting and they are just exploring their world.  When was the last time I dumped out a bag of quinoa to watch it waterfall down to the ground?  When was the last time I used a unique media combination to create a work of art such as marker on wall or pen on legs?  And when was the last time I used an eyeliner on my face to make angry eyes?  When was the last time my mom told me to clean up styrofoam and then in front of her eyes took a marker to the carpet to make "tracks" for them (the foam pieces)?  They call them children for a reason and I love that they are having the time of their life.

I love watching these people grow.  I love learning about them and seeing the choices that they make. I take pleasure in their funny little quirks and habits.  I love how Spider, my little Person Baby, loves to get under blankets, and today when I walked outside with our picnic, she was already all snuggled in.  I love walking in on her cozied up in my freshly made bed reading the Look (my Mary Kay catalog) and laughing.

It is the little unique day to day experiences that make life so worthwhile, don’t you think?  Rare things, like the moon not being in the sky tonight because of the eclipse or even freshly fallen snow.  Silly things like fourth of July parades.  Wonders of nature like deer showing up in our backyard or undpredictable animal things like this event that we witnessed at the zoo yesterday: (the large goat in the beginning was periodically breaking things up)

And just the wonder that children see in all of it, is so tender so precious, and so worth holding on to.  If we could just be more like them.  I think we’d be lot happier, don’t you?  Well, anyway, I think it is time for me to go take pleasure in bubbles or dumping rice on the ground or maybe even just snuggling in.

You know, one of the challenges of being a work-at-home mom (with a business, since ALL moms work-at-home moms) is switching back and forth between business woman and mommy.

I caught myself saying to Sugar today, "Yes I would love to read you stories.  I’ve just got to make a quick phone call, shoot a quick email out and then you and I can get together."

Whaaaa?

As in, "Yes, I would love to get together with you for some stories and a quick facial.  What’s better for you, evenings or weekends?"

Sheesh. 

I don’t know why the nursing is such a hot topic for me right now, but here’s another tale of the lactating bosoms.

So, I am sort of past the pumping stage with Spider.  Instead, when I need relief from engorgement and I have no baby nearby, I hand express.  I have found myself doing this in public bathroom stalls when the pain necessitates it, and this evening I did a little "expression" in our own bathroom.  Spider had decided she was finished, and there was no way I could go to bed in my current state.

In walks Engineer.  

Now, Engineer is 5 and a boy.  So maybe he shouldn’t see my bosoms, or maybe it’s okay.  I just figure that nursing is a part of life and if I don’t act all embarassed about it, that he will grow up with a healthy respect of the functioning female anatomy.  At the very least, he won’t freak out when his own wife decides to breastfeed their children.

The following conversation ensued.

E:(giggling) It squirts milk!
Me: Yep.  (Pause, as I think of a devilish question to lead the witness.)  Do yours squirt milk?
E: Nope, because I don’t have big ones like yours.  I just have little ones.  (Begins unzipping his footed pajamas.)  See?  (Points to his chest).  They’re just belly buttons. 
Me: (Suppressed laughter).
E: They only work with toy babies.

And then I run to the computer to blog it.  Because even if none of you think its funny, it’s going to make for some great embarassment come the teenage years.  And that kind of blackmail is always good to have around.

This morning my sweet, little Engineer was cuddling with me and I had flashbacks of his babyhood.  He was the best baby.  So easy, so beautiful, so good at sleeping…

And he is still such a sweet, sweet boy.  He definitely has his meltdowns about seeemingly silly stuff, and he can make a fuss that is for sure.  He experiences his  emotions so bigly, that you can’t help but love this sensitive and loving child.

And this morning as I held him like a baby and he started falling back asleep, I just kept thinking what a great man he’s going to be someday.  He’s the child that always comes up to me and says, "Mommy, you’re sooooo pretty."  He’s the child that loves babies.  "Spider is soooo cute."  He has a great interior decorating sense.  He is going to make a wonderful husband for someone elses daughter.  And he’s going to be an awesome Daddy. 

And I am going to have a hard time letting him go.

So I put him back to bed, because he seemed sleepy, he was saying he felt sick.  And when he came downstairs for breakfast he appeared sad.  I asked him what was wrong and he said, "Maybe, I didn’t eat enough vegetables."  (Some lucky woman will have a man who loves vegetables!)

So for breakfast, he ate carrots and dip.  And some cereal too, of course.

What a great kid. 

…those Disney Princesses.

And then I found out who dunnit:

But it was the boy who did this:

I guess there is a use for those leftover Halloween labels.  (That’s Ariel, up there, by the way.  Sugar can’t find the hair.) 

So this morning the children were watching a video about the birth of Jesus.  (No, I did not pay for this video, it was free from the mall, I would never pay $1 a minute for the crummy animation!)

Anyway, at the end of this particular "episode" they show baby Jesus escaping to Egypt and then they end the movie by showing him as a young man learning carpentry from Joseph.  In the previous scene, Herod’s men were pillaging the town looking to kill the infant Jesus, and Engineer was quite upset by this.  But then he saw that Jesus was okay at the end and wasn’t worried about that anymore.

And then he started to cry.

"He’s not a baby anymore!  Why did he have to grow up?"

Because, that’s what babies do.

"Oh Spider!  Spider is going to have to grow up and not be a baby anymore!  She’ll be a girl!  A girl like, Sugar!"

Bless his little baby-loving heart. 

I got the best phone message the other day.

My little sister who I had seen a week earlier called me and said, "Hi, I am calling because I missed you and want to hang out with you this weekend.  Call me back.  Bye."

THE BEST PHONE MESSAGE EVER.

It is soooo nice to be near family again.  It is so nice to be around people who not only want to hang out with me, but actually make the first move and call me first. Wow.  Amazing.

So today, Charming, Aunty Jessica, the kiddos and I piled in the car for a tour of a few of our local farms.  It was wonderful.  The weather was inconsistent, but it was sunny for our hayride where we enjoyed gorgeous views of the valley and only rained when we were in our car driving.

We ate corn and we saw pigs. 

A good day.

P.S.  Check out Sugar’s coat.  She put it on this morning and said, "Mmm.  Cozy."