Children

 Stephen's niece came to stay with us for a week and it was interesting... I have firmly realized that I am not very good with children. I think it stems from a lack of being around them in general. I just don't really know what to do with them. Rachael is a sweet girl and I think there is some lingering... trauma? or slight hole in her heart from having divorced parents and really never seeing her mom except for maybe 1 week of the year. And I, the now designated Aunt Rainbow Pancakes (a nickname I don't quite understand), am somehow one of the few older female figures she has in her life. It's unsettling. 

I had a lot of thoughts this week. Ranging from how spoiled would my kids be. How hard it is to say no. How I can worry about a kid's future that isn't technically mine. How Stephen is with kids. How to get a picky kid to eat different foods. How to entertain an 11 yo. How much technology is okay - and also how to model good behavior with technology.... I think, in the end, I do pretty well with responsibility. If there's something that needs to be done and I can do it, I generally can fulfill that role. But sometimes that role is a little ambiguous when it comes to kids.

I hope it really is different with my own kids in the future. I hope it gets more natural. 

blogging

out of nostalgia, I spent the last 30 min or so just rereading my blog. And I haven't even gotten to the end of all the words I've written. Accumulated over years (actually now I think it's officially at least a decade) of my life. And I am transported back to those memories. 

And the strangest, strangest thing is that rereading the words that I've written.... I've forgotten that I wrote some of those posts. And reading those words that I've written, it feels like my past self knew me more than I know myself sometimes. Those odd musings, those random thoughts, the strange epiphanies, they all become fleeting memories when the humdrum of life floods my brain and erases those moments. 

Perhaps I used to be more thoughtful back then. 

Do you ever feel like you change so much and so little all at the same time?