Dancing into 2006...

I'm such a mom. I know it. I claim it. I'm okay with it.

Now that I'm the owner of a video iPod, I spent all of last night playing in iMovie, converting several older home videos into a format that can be viewed on my iPod. Excellent! Now, when people ask if I have pictures of my kids, I can do even better-- I have videos! In the process, I came across last years much more carefully edited but equally freaky Christmas iMovie. If you could find the last one, you can find this one, too! Enjoy!

Watching it today on my iPod (while sitting at an auto shop waiting for them to remove the gigantic roofing screw from my tire), I realized how much we've all changed over the past year, and how much our lives have changed.

For starters, my babies are getting bigger. The freckles are the giveaway. For some reason, all the children in my family start out freckle-free. Then, right about the time that they start to lose their preschooler pudge, the freckles come out. Barely visible at first, but after a while of staring into their faces (the way that mothers either lovingly or firmly do on a regular basis), you see them. Reminders that these children are indeed descended from ME and not just their freckle-less father, but also reminders that the end is near. The end of those adorable, baby-ish mispronunciations... The end of make-believe escapades unhindered by social awareness (like mixing popcorn all over the kitchen with a whisk, or talking about "friends" who live in Chicago in a big white house who are all pro skateboarders who never eat vegetables and whose mommies never take away gamecube)... The freckles coming out on my baby's face, while cute and precious, are heralds of the end of me ever again being mommy to a baby or preschooler. Sure, I still have one preschool-age child left in the house, but that's only until August; and given how quickly the last 8 months has gone, August is only a few pages ahead in the calendar.

This past year has been marked with quite a few pretty awesome steps forward, a few tiny steps backward, and few instances of someone else on the dance floor rudely interrupting our family mojo by smashing drunkenly into our happiness. These things happen; our family is not immune to life. But we've done well; I feel good about where the coming year, however uncertain it seems, will take us. I've had faith in the past; I've seen what God has done for and through us, and I have no reason to believe we'd be abandoned in the year to come. Besides, we've learned a few new moves in response to the unkind intentions of others. Challenge? Bring it on. I think we're ready.

For too long, we've allowed ourselves to be tossed about the waves of others' ambitions and intentions. No more. I'm not one for making resolutions for the new year (I've gained back weight that had been lost and spent parts of what had been saved, and know how fickle annual resolutions can be). But I'm open and ready for growth through unexpected challenges, and and am pretty sure I'm over my wallflower, meek and mild-mannered, timid and wussy self. 30 is going to be good for me; 2006 is going to be good for my family.