Open your picture folders, close your eyes and pick a random photo to share and write about.
This is from the crazy summer before we went to Germany. This is from the summer that was filled with panic attacks, late nights at cafes, and too little time with Andy. It was the summer of Tali working as our part time nanny, and Mayzie saying her name before she said Mama. It was the summer that I crammed in my qualifying exams as quickly as humanly possible. It was the summer of Mayzie's diaper rash from HELL! We made plans and more plans that summer, and it actually all came together in the end. We had no air-conditioning, save for the window units in our bedrooms. But it was great. Looking back I spent glorious amounts of time in the backyard watching our girls scamper through the sprinkler and dunk themselves in the kiddie pool. We had a swing that hung from a high branch and the girls would fly through the air as fast as I could push them. Annika was 3 and Mayzie was 1, and I was trying so very hard not to take my stress out on them during the days we had together. We took too many trips to the zoo to count, and found every cool spray park in a 20 mile radius. It was a summer that I want to 1/2 remember and 1/2 forget. I'd definitely like to forget the part when my last living grandparent died and my advisor chastised me for missing a deadline because I was attending her funeral. (Yeah, that really happened.)
This picture is from the part I want to remember. I want to remember the good times we had together. I want to remember how this was the summer that my girls really started to discover each other. I love their faces in this picture. Don't they just look like they are conspiring something? Now they really do conspire together, and it usually has to do with waking me up or trying to get away with something. Here they were still so young. Mayzie only had a few words and Annika was still sputtering her sentences. I loved and hated that summer in the same breath sometimes, and spent far too many afternoons crying on the floor in my office instead of enjoying my time. I felt guilty for wanting to work when I was with my kids and for thinking about my kids while I was working. (Isn't that the paradox of every working mother?) It was a summer study in contrasts, and my girls went through it all with me. I'm so very thankful that they didn't have any long-term memories at that point!
