seasons change

This post has been lingering in my draft folder for over a month and it speaks of a weather change that occurred weeks ago. But this is NaBloPoMo, and it's late, and I'm tired, and it fits in with today's prompt, and hey! Here's a cute picture of Silas eating a pumpkin. Enjoy!



We got the most wonderful gift here in Central Texas this past weekend: a cold front.

Summers here are so terribly, terribly hot, and drought conditions have prevailed over the last several years. After months of temperatures in the high 90s and low 100s, and hardly a drop of rain, by late August it starts to feel like cool, crisp days will never return. Then, all of a sudden, a day like last Friday comes. It pours hard and steady over an entire day, and instead of the usual post-rain humidity,

So this weekend found us doing things we hadn't, couldn't have done in a long, long while: sitting outside, mowing the lawn, jumping in puddles. Opening doors and windows and shutting off the AC. It's suddenly, eerily quiet in our home, but it also feels larger, more open. Nearly every Central Texan in my Facebook feed glories in the freshness of these days. On Sunday morning, I even pulled on some socks. SOCKS! I hadn't worn socks in probably six months.

All of a sudden, possibilities open up: we could go for walks. We can play outside. We can enjoy a dinner out under the trees with the kids and be perfectly comfortable and happy. Today I had lunch outside, sitting on the shaded grass in a park. You get this feeling that life from here on out will be different and--dare we hope?--better.

It all makes me think that parenting, like weather, cycles through its seasons. When our babies are small or when our toddlers are learning about boundaries by testing them, it may feel as hot and oppressive as July in Texas--and as endless. The hope of September and October and pumpkin spice lattes feels so distant as to be impossible. It's hard to remember that things can, in fact, change overnight. Parenting our first child, we are slow to learn this. But that is one of the great gifts of a second baby: this time, we know how quickly things can change. Our little one's tooth pierces through the painful gum, or that elusive roll-over maneuver is finally achieved, and suddenly he sleeps through the night. (For a while, anyway.) There comes the day when you discover you no longer need the Ergo infant insert and suddenly wearing baby feels a whole lot lighter and easier. You notice the 3-month clothes hardly fit anymore and realize you're well on your way to your baby's first half-birthday.

In these extreme seasons, in weather as in parenting, it may feel as though the changes are very slow in coming. But when they do come--because they do, always and inexorably, come--it's so surprising and refreshing to find ourselves on the other side of what feels like it happened overnight.

Just a reminder--for me, for you--that whatever season you might be finding yourself in, you can trust that changes will come, that nothing is static, that relief is on its way just as sure as the next cool blowing breeze.