October Can't Get Here Fast Enough

I think the thing I like the least about motherhood is having sick kids. Especially when they have the stomach flu. Lola's barely 18 months old and she can't exactly communicate, so for the last 2 days we've been playing a little game of "What's Wrong With Lola". The poor girl has been attached to my body, crying to be held literally day and night. Once last night she let Mike pick her up and as soon as she looked back around and saw that she wasn't with me (even though she's the one who reached out to him) she started sobbing and diving toward me. 

It seems like September does this to my family. When the weather changes, we all get sick. We had the healthiest summer, allergies were our only ailment. I was feeling blessed, so fortunate and then I tore the August page out of my calendar and the word "SEPTEMBER" in big bold black letters hit me square in the face.  I love September for many reasons. It signals the end of a super hot summer, one in which it was too hot to take my new little Oskar out in for very long. September means the leaves will be changing colors. September means the kids are back in school. September means 3 holidays in the next 3 months are coming up! I truly love September except for the dang sickness we all get.

                                                     

I don't know if there's something to it, like if it's a real thing or if we're alone in this. Does this happen to your family too?  I also find that I am more worried, more depressed, more sad in September. Sometimes for no good reason at all. I'll lay in bed and tell myself "Why are you so sad?" Then I'll list all the things I have in my head, all the gifts I have, and then it always ends with me rolling over to my sweet sleeping husband and I'll put my arms around him and curl up to his back and he always, and I mean ALWAYS, will pull my arms around tighter and make a little "hmmm" sound, and it lets me know he's happy with "us". 

Fall means baking in my house. I'm trying to be good, trying not to eat garbage but really, how can I resist making cookies, or apple pies, or pumpkin bars?  Fall means General Conference for us LDS folks (and for everyone else in the world too!  It's free!  Tune in here!)  and I look forward to the Fall session the most. We have conference twice a year, once in April, once in October of every year. I love the spring one because the winter's almost over and there are flowers surrounding the conference center and the camera men always show a wide shot of all the gardens. But I think I like the one in the fall the best. We stay in our jammies all day on Saturday, doing our cleaning duties at our leisure. We make a big breakfast both on Saturday and on Sunday and I burn candles that smell like cinnamon or pumpkin bread. The kids seem to get along better and the ones who will watch with us will usually snuggle up to us on the couch or wherever we are. Most of the time we'll all end up taking short naps, but that's part of the charm. Thankfully, if we miss a talk, we can always watch it again on the DVR, and then it's also published online in a text version the week after it's broadcast. 

This last week, Mike and I decided to make a big move in our marriage. It's something that's very personal to us and it's actually a "re-attempt" at something we tried to do the winter of 2008. We were going to try again the winter of 2009 but there were some things that we felt we needed to wait for. This week we made a move toward that goal again. I'm nervous and I don't want to get my hopes up this time but I'm excited that Mike's finally ready to try again. We only had Harper last time, and this time we've got Lola and Oskar as well. It's time..it's time to try once more.  Hopefully by the time we know if it's a yes or a no, the world around us will look like this...

We made it through September and all I can say is "Hey October...bring it on!"

P.S., the thing that Mike and I are trying to do has nothing to do with having a baby. Just to clarify. ;)