Thoughts on our new home, and being motherly

We moved into a new apartment the last weekend of June, although now it seems like ages since we've lived anywhere else!

We love our new place so far. I gave it a "10" our first week there. Mr. M says he's holding his judgment until we live there longer, that sensible guy =) But I love it. I love having extra space, I love our patio where I can eat breakfast before it gets hot (I only need to remember not to lock myself out!), I love that our bedroom has no windows, I love that Mr. M now has his own office/study to work on his dissertation. And so on.

Our apartment is a basement apartment, really half ground floor, half basement because of how the ground slopes. Only part of it is really underground, and the other part has nice big windows.

The family who lives above us are friends of ours. They own the house. They have two sons, ages 4 and 6. So far I'm loving that about our apartment too: getting to be around children.

Like the other night: I decided to make some phone calls on our patio at dusk, before the bugs started attacking. Soon our upstairs neighbors' sons come running down the steps (their deck is a floor above our patio with stairs into the backyard) shouting that they're going lightning bug catching and could I watch their bug catching jar?!?! Why, sure. Then for almost an hour, as I talked on the phone and wrote thank-you notes to the people who helped us move, they and the two neighbor boys next door run around the yard chasing lightning bugs, playing made-up games (one seemed to be something like food-chain tag, where the carnivore chases the herbivores, or something) and running to me to put another bug in the jar, asking how many where needed to use the bugs as a nightlight (I guessed 8?), and so on.



Not our jar - they didn't catch that many!

I loved every minute of it and stayed outside even after the mosquitos started getting bad.

Then yesterday, I got home from work to find very creative chalk drawings all over the patio: pigs and angry birds and other indecipherable creatures.

I loved that too.

I love being around kids. I guess maybe that's strange because I want so badly to have kids. And yes, being around babies can be a challenge. Especially babies that have been born since we started trying. (And I know exactly who they are.) But older kids, I usually don't have an emotional response at all. I just feel happy. Happy to be doing kind of motherly things, I guess. Happy to see the world through their eyes, to be close to their freshness and joy.

And even when it comes to babies, they're not all bad =) Several of our married friends have babies, with more on the way, so my option really is to learn to enjoy or at least tolerate being around their children or not see them much. (We still do stuff just us adults, but not all the time.) And for the most part, I enjoy being around their kids. I like holding them, playing with them, swinging them, etc. We offer to babysit. I even bought a baby-sized pool for our backyard!

I do get a little sad being around littler kids for a long time. I can only take so much. The wee ones remind me a lot more of our childlessness. But I still love being motherly with them, and I like thinking that just maybe we have something of a bond with them, me and Mr. M. I really appreciate when our friends let us be with their kids even though we have zero lived experience. It makes me feel less left out that way.

What is the point of this post? Not much, just some thoughts, I guess. Thinking about how much I want to be a mother - how I have chances even now to be motherly - how I can love the kids around me even if they're not mine - etc.

+EcceFiat+