I blinked and everything changed again

I don't recognize either of my children this week.

Julia, as I've alluded to in earlier entries, is in a phase that could politely be described as "trying." I'm not polite, but I'm also way too exhausted from trying to deal with her to summon up more appropriate adjectives. So let's just leave it at "trying" and move on. (I wish it were that simple to get her to move on right now...)

Evan, on the other hand, has been full of delightful surprises this week. This afternoon, I watched him walking around our backyard, waving to our friends next door and calling "bye bye" when they went inside, and I realized that I have a completely different child than I had a week ago. The walking thing is disorienting enough, but on top of that, he seems to be in the midst of a language explosion -- on top of "bye bye," he's added "Willow" (our cat's name), "Cookie" (the monster, not the food) and "good" to his vocabulary just in the past few days and his receptive language has accelerated dramatically, too. Last week, he crawled and babbled. This week, he walks and talks. The mind boggles.

If Julia had been an only child, this week would have been as crappy as they come. But the joy we all shared in Evan's accomplishments kept me more "up" than "down" this week. I had a long list of reasons why I wanted 2 children -- the valued sibling relationship, childhood companionship, support and friendship in the adult years. But those reasons were really all about what my kids would gain. This week, I've discovered an unexpected benefit to me -- with 2 kids, the odds are better that someone will be making this parenting thing worth my while at any given time.

Of course, you could look at it the opposite way, too, I suppose. I choose not to. And that, as Evan would say, is why my week was "guut."