The Boy was so tired this morning that I actually had to carry him downstairs, all fifty pounds of him resting limply against me. One of my friends is TINY – teeny! – this pretty 100 pound girl, and she has two heavy little boys who frequently want to be carried and I wonder how she manages. Luckily for me, I’m built sturdily and can heft any number of small children around. Yes. Luckily.
But he was SO tired – I hate having to wake up my sleeping children on school mornings, their long eyelashes curving down on their rounded cheeks, sleep returning them to their vulnerable infancy. And despite my fantasies of what breakfast SHOULD be like, weekday breakfasts are a pretty uninspired affair – bowls of cereal, perhaps a poached egg (the only kind that The Girl will eat, horrifyingly enough), toast. Then it’s rushing them into their clothes, making sure their hair and teeth are brushed and that their faces are reasonably clean, packing lunches and agendas and homework and then shoes, coats, hats, bookbags and out the door, with me barely able to remember that an hour ago, they were sleeping in their warm beds, sweet little children.
The Baby and I have been enjoying our days together, though – she’s been deliriously happy to have my uninterrupted attention, and we have a big day of baking ahead of us today, thanks to the over-abundance of my parent’s garden. My older kids, despite my O Woe! attitude towards school, LOVE heading off in the morning and come home in the afternoon tired but cheerful and chatty and hungry. And I’ve been able to do lots of writing and house-cleaning and organizing and baking (of course) and trying to ignore this autumnal yearning for a spring baby. My husband is busy with work and special projects. It’s a productive time of year for all of us.
I got an email a few minutes ago from a friend, talking about how much she loves autumn – loves the cool air and the red and gold leaves and the feeling of the year drawing gently to a close. Aesthetically, I find autumn very attractive and it DOES have its consolations – pumpkin bread pudding! chocolate zucchini cake! hot apple cider! (see above, re: my sturdiness) – but mostly I feel mournful in the fall, and all of the sweet things can’t entirely make up for autumn’s melancholy, the sure knowledge that leaves turn red right before they fall and that sleeping children are their sweetest right before we have to wake them up.