Home Sweet Home

I had an absolutely wonderful time visiting my parents in Beaumont last week.  It’s amazing to have two homes – the house where I live now with my husband and children and pets that is constantly evolving into more and more of our home and the house where I grew up, which will always be home as well. 

Trent and I can’t think of the word for this, but I’m obsessed with it.  Is there a more specific word than geography?  I’m fascinated by how different two towns only about ninety miles apart can feel.  It’s hot in Pearland, but it’s HOT in Beaumont.  I love humidity (if I even go to Dallas I have to bring a tub of Vaseline to rub on my face because the air is so dry) but I didn’t realize until last week that the humidity here is mild in comparison.  And there are no locusts in the trees here, or if they are here somewhere, they’re quiet.  I didn’t realize I missed that sound until I was sitting in my parents’ backyard.

Rush and Tate got to spend time with all their grandparents and some of their aunts, so they came home fairly worn out.  Because overlapping naps continues to prove elusive, even with extra help it’s not easy to run around town these days.  We did make it to the Treasure  House, the resale store my mom managed for years, where I picked up a tablecloth with a coffee cup embroidered on it, and, even with all my new book sale books ready to be read, more books.

And speaking of books, my mom and I began cataloging all the books in my parents’ house.  It’s the first step to forming a library.  It was kind of an insane project, but now at least we’ll all know what they have.  Does it seem like over-doing it to have an excel file with all your books typed on it?  Are there cabinets in your house that you open and there are stacks and stacks inside?  Do you have a bookshelf crammed with books hidden behind a door?  It needed to be done.  I enjoyed it, but I did leave my mom to finish the typing and deal with the behind the door shelf.

I really love wandering their house and picking up things to read.  Rush had a hard time taking a nap one day (as in he did not take a nap) so I picked up Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction and read half of it while I sat with him.  I read that in high school (for fun) and while I didn’t remember one single thing about the book, I remember finishing it on an airplane, sitting on the left side near the back.  Thanks brain.

So we’re home and there’s really limited reading time.  Tate really wants to sit up and he’s getting so close.  He’s also an eating machine.  I don’t know if it’s a growth spurt or if he’s just really into eating solids, but he has demanded more and more food for the past few days.  Maybe he’s building up his energy for sitting.

Rush is so two.  Today he used the rest of my eyeliner to make a five o’clock shadow for himself.  Saturday he covered his room in baby powder. While I would have stopped both these activies before they began if I could have, let’s admit it, all these things sound fun.  I can see why he wants to do them.  He’s also really getting into sentences and hilarity:  “I’m a baby.  I’m Tate.” 

He picked out that outfit himself on Saturday morning, determined to get dressed even though the rest of us stayed in pajamas for the majority of the morning. 

I have no closing for this post.  If it were a paper for school, or a novel, or a short story, I would push through.  But I really need a shower, so…peace out.