Fourth Race Around The Track

My youngest turned four today. 

I'm not sure how that happened so fast. All at once, it seems so recent that I was showing Ada her new baby brother lying in the crib in the hospital room, and that it was months and months ago that Connor was learning to use the potty. 

Connor has been an absolute light in our lives for four whole years. 

Of course, some mornings, the light needs to be turned down for an extra hour or three. Like this morning, Connor was up and out on the couch at 5am... Let me say that again. The little monster was awake at FIVE AY EMM!! Sitting on the couch, playing Switch... Claire found him when she gave up trying to stay in bed with the pains in her shoulder. 

I cooked pancakes and crispy bacon for his birthday breakfast, but made the critical error of not having it done before he unwrapped his birthday present. His visiting grandparents got him a set of Hot Wheels race cars, and Claire and I got him a Hot Wheels track set. Once he laid eyes on that, nothing else existed in the entire universe. 

The track set we got him has a launcher system and ramps and my entire morning and early afternoon was to the tune of *slap, shunk shunk, slap, shunk shunk, slap, shunk shunk, "Yay! I did it!" slap, shunk shunk, slap, shunk shunk, slap, shunk shunk...* Mistakes were made. I needed painkillers by noon. 

We picked up big sis at 3pm and went to a nearby activity center for some fun and play, and then went out for dinner together. The visiting grandparents joined us for all this too. Cake was just before bedtime, which could have been another mistake, but exhaustion soon over and the birthday boy was asleep as soon as his tired little head hit the pillow. 

It's hard to imagine that I'm signing Connor up for school this year. Next September, my youngest will be starting kindergarten. What am I going to do then? 

So much freedom...

The Tales Continue

November is done, and Christmas is on the way. Here's a little gift for you to start off the holiday season.

The Buck Fifty challenge is done, but I'm hoping that I'm not. I'd like to continue posting regularly, maybe not every day, and maybe not writing 150 words every post. With the freedom of...well, the rest of the year  that isn't November, I can write shorter posts, and I don't need to word count my first few paragraphs. 

I really enjoyed this year's Buck Fifty. Last year I was stressing about not writing a lot of just straight personal story stuff, trying to do more essays, or reviews or work that required more advanced planning and effort. This year, I quickly got into a flow of not having any idea what I was going to be sitting as I sat in front of my iPad and connected my keyboard. I'd start typing what I thought was a weak idea, and in a few moments I'd have a pretty good idea of what the post was going to be about. 

I think I'm going to be sticking with the "let it flow" life stories and updates for a bit, but I do have a list of non life stuff I want to write at some point, including the follow up to that world building thing I wrote last month. I am going to drop the Buck Fifty tag from the following posts, as I'd like to keep that for the November challenge posts. 

So all going well, I'll stick around for a bit. 

Let's look back at this post at the start of November 2022 and laugh at how little I ended up posting.