Ten Ten Ten

Wow, it's been warm- nay HOT- here the past few days. Highs in the 80's is definitely a treat this time of year, even if it leaves us a bit confused by the calendar date. Well, and those tiny black biting bugs? Noo-see-um or some such? NOT A TREAT.

I know many people make a big deal out of dates like today's (10-10-10!!), and I have to be honest: I like cool dates like this. I would especially love to have a baby on a "cool" date. My own birthday is 7-7 but I was born two years too early to be 7-7-77. How cool would THAT have been?

Anyway, I took a bunch of photos of the girls today, playing outside in this summer's last hurrah. It was too nice not to take advantage of all that natural light.

Marin and her dollie have matching dresses thanks to my mom. It was probably too hot to wear a black, long-sleeved dress, but she insisted. And while we walked to church, she rode along in her stroller like the royal highness that she is, pointing out any bit of garbage that she saw, insisting that we trot all over and pick it up, and admonishing us "We don't want garbage around our world, right guys?"

Bless her little environmental-bleeding heart... I guess? Even if it means being on garbage duty on our way to church.

This is our old fashioned door bell that David installed at kid-height. I love it, so much. That's all I have to say about that.

Aw, my twinnies. For some reason, this photo reminds me of their baby-selves.

Ha, ha, Marin pulling Posie in her toy wagon. Special place in heaven for this cat, there is.

Our elementary school does a fall and spring can drive. We collect cans all year for it, and when it's time to turn them in, David and the girls have devised quite a system for counting them, including the ever-accurate tallying with sidewalk chalk.

And of course, because David is David, he's also devised a... pulley???... system to weigh the cans so they don't actually have to count each one. I think they had about 900 today. I'm married to a tinkerer, you guys. All he needs is a jump rope and some wood and he'll McGyver up just about anything. Add in duct tape, and he can build an entire motor vehicle.

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Things are better around here; my husband and I are now talking again. We've "made up" so to speak, and more than just the "bow chicka bow bow" kind of making up, in case you were wondering. I feel so much better.

But I also feel so much worse because we still cannot agree, and this whole thing is just sad. I feel like now it's either have a baby by twisting David's arm into it (which feels gross) or NOT have a baby and feel empty and sad. I honestly don't even KNOW what I want anymore. But I'm glad to have my husband back; not that he ever really left, of course, but it's nice to not feel alone in my own life.

Sometimes I have hope- heart-bursting, joyous hope- that he will change his mind in a way that feels like we could go forth and have a child with integrity. Other times that very hope seems so utterly, well, hopeless that I never want to feel it- and all of it's stupid delusional promises- again. Hope is tricky that way, I guess.

And I also have this fear that David is right. That we can't afford another child, that this is our family and adding another will fuck it all up and I'll be forever sorry for not being able to SEE that before it was too late. And this fear does not jive at all with the desires of my heart, which still wants a baby, of course. And so I'm confused.

But we're talking, and we're listening. If nothing else, at least he knows how important this is for me.