Home again

You know things are pretty good when you don't dread the end of vacations, when you look forward to getting home again, when that last 2 hours of the road trip that brings you back to your town and your neighbourhood and your house and the return to the everyday isn't a huge, depressing drag.

So, life is sweet. We had a great vacation, and we're happy to be home.

I came back to a pile of unexpected work in my inbox, so lots of what I want to write will have to wait.

My big hopes for some one-on-one time with my notebook were foiled by my inability to find a pen, despite my truly excellent packing job. And remembering to buy one any one of the times that I bought water, ice, fruit or bread turned out to be too much for me.

Here are a few highlights from the trip, though:

• Monster waking up every morning by himself, finding a pair of shorts and a t-shirt (yes, pretty much the same ones for the entire week), PUTTING THEM ON ALL BY HIMSELF without even waking us up, grabbing his bicycle and asking me quietly if he could go and see if his cousin was awake yet to play.

• Cousins spending hours playing together, dirty, sweaty, laughing, making up crazy shit. 

• Monkey saying Monster's name for the first time, clearly and perfectly, and over and over again.

• Two blissful afternoons when the kids' naps coincided and Macondo Papa and I had two whole hours to sit and drink maté and laugh and be together. To re-connect. And talk about the future.

• Watching the Monster stop his cousin before they crossed the "road" in the campground to explain how to cross the road properly - look both ways, look again. He had soon gathered a small crowd of little munchkins, and they had what looked like a mini-conference on the subject, featuring the Monster himself as keynote speaker.

• Interesting adult conversations! Yay for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law - not only the best aunt and uncle for the kids, but wonderful people and friends - and yay for kids that entertained each other for hours without needing us.

It's nice to come back here, to my little blog-world. The automatic posting thing was pretty cool for not missing my friend's birthday, but I also apparently posted a 'postcard' of a cow's butt, which was not my intention. I've now resized the photo so you can see the cow and its surroundings in all their glory.