Four year old art

Big E took marker to paper and created the above artwork.  I'm kind of in love with it.  Then again, he translated for me.  Would you like insight into his creative little mind?!?!?

How awesome is he???  Love.

Cheers -
Mama H

First time skiing

This weekend we took our four year old skiing for the first time.  Prior to this Big E has skied in a park and our back yard - safe venues, if you're asking.  He's skied on little strap-to-your-snow-boots skis.  He's held onto a broom, pulled by his dad, to "go fast!"
He's never clicked his boots into his bindings, climbed on a magic carpet or up into a chair lift, coasted away from the earth, ridden up, then unloaded at the top of a run and braved the icy hill down to where the fun begins.
He was proud.
He was brave.
He was awesome.

I was lucky enough to learn how to ski from my dad, starting at the age of two.  He would drive me up to a nearby pass, carry our skis and me (!) up the hill, then get us all ready, hold me up on my skis, in between his own, and down we'd go.  That never meant that much to me - how young I was - how much work that was - until I had Big E.  And he turned two (too little!).  And then three (too nervous!).  And then four - and then? Then my firstborn got his own real, downhill skis.
When we got there, we signed him up for a private one hour lesson with, what turned out to be, an angel of a teacher.  She was so great that Big E was ready to follow her up the magic carpet, without even knowing her name.  He was high-fiving her, talking about his ski-prowess, and didn't need my encouragement to follow her over to their spot in line.  When I came back an hour later (sneakily skiing around the side to watch his progress), he was skiing into the line to await his next turn.  After a few minutes, he got out of line and sat down on the side.  I panicked, of course,and rushed over, thinking, "he's hurt!"
He was just tired.  And ready for hot cocoa.  His teacher had great things to say about his ability to "make a triangle" with his skis and his impressive balance.  We thanked her profusely for her lesson and headed down to the Lodge.  Once we'd deposited our skis outside, we headed in for lunch (and cocoa!) and talked about his runs.  And once we were finished eating?  He was ready to head back out!!

After a couple more runs down the magic carpet, Daddy M and Papa B couldn't resist asking if he wanted to ride a real chair lift...you'd have thought they'd never ask with the enthusiasm he answered that question with.  My heart was pounding, but I'm not willing to kill my kid's enthusiasm for skiing on his first day, so to the "big chair" we headed.
The first ride up was a little tricky - I mean, I've never held a tiny person on a chair lift, with skis dangling off his short, little, ski-boot laden legs before.  Daddy M and I both had a firm grip on him the whole time.  When we got to the top, we each scooped him up under one arm and helped him ski down the off-ramp.  I figured out that if I held my ski poles across the front of us, placing him in between my skis, and kind of holding them out in front of us like a handle bar, he could hold on, gain his own sense of balance and practice his "triangle" (but only if I skied with my skis REALLY REALLY far apart - see my aching glutes, shoulders, every part of my back and outer calves today...).
We spent the next two hours riding the chair up, scooping him off, getting him set up, and teaching him to ski.

I'm fairly early into this whole having-kids-thing.  My boys are four and two and a half years old.  And I have heard, more times than I can count, that being a parent doesn't necessarily get easier, but that it's different at every age.
And we have our moments - moments when I think, "damn, I should have called this blog, Struggle Like a Mama.  Cause today?  There's no juggling - these pieces flat out can't be caught, let alone launched back up into the air to juggle."
But those days seem to be getting fewer and farther between.  And now we're moving on to experiences like this weekend.  This weekend where I watched my baby boy (he will ALWAYS be my baby) hurtle his little body down a snow and ice covered slope, grin, and, scream, as he approached the chair lift for another go round, "RADICAL!"
The boy is a force to be reckoned with and he got both his Mama and Daddy's love for the speed, peace, joy, humility, grace, thrill and adventure that skiing offers.
Cheers to that -

Are you sure?

So I just had a realization: no matter what decision you make in life, someone, somewhere, sometime will ask, "are you sure?"
This might not be such an amazing revelation for some people, but it's right up there for me. I guess I thought that eventually, as I got older, decision-making would get easier. That there would clearly be a right decision and the polar-opposite wrong decision.
Man, was I wrong! The only thing that's become clearer to me in my wise old age of 33...ha....is that there are one thousand variations on the "right" decision.
I've made some big decisions in the past few years - mainly having to do with staying home with the kids or going back to work. And of course, everyone has an opinion on this topic. But it's funny because, depending on the decision, the same people have sometimes given me exactly opposite advice. As in, deciding to go back to work - someone looks at you at the bakery, with your two little ones, on a sunny Monday afternoon and says, "are you sure you want to give this up?"
Fast forward a year and a half. Same person, watching your children scream like banshees and run around you in circles: "are you sure you can handle this every single day without daycare?"
I have to say - in so many ways - the further I get into this life thing, the less sure I am. But what I've also discovered is that decisions made are not permanent, 100%, always-gonna-be-the-way-it-is-today (or even right this minute).
The world is so less black and white than I once thought. Time marches on and I'm trying to embrace the feeling of being unsure.
Cheers -