while daddy's gone

Mornings start early in our house. 

Zoey typically woke up early when she nursed, but after a little snack would sleep in another hour or so. Jack often wakes with the sun which is great, except when that sun pours into his bedroom window at 6am. Since John has returned Jack comes in as soon as his eyelids flicker open. I think he's half expecting his daddy to be gone or something.

if Zoey sees her dolly she has to join her for breakfast. Too cute.

I do love a sweet Jack-cuddle, but he is getting bigger and doesn't quite know his own strength. There's a lot of waking up to kicks or bonking heads or an arm suddenly across your face. 

I'm not a very kind morning person.

Unless I've had a bit of time. Ten, fifteen minutes is all I need to grab a cup of coffee, sit in silence and be ready to face the day, make the oatmeal and start in on sippy cups, bananas, and special vitamin juice to help move our three year old along.

But, like most kids, our's hit the ground runnin'. I will say, although I am not much of a morning person there's a certain someone who I love and married and he's even less of a morning person. We're talkin' it takes about 30 minutes for him to fully wake up. It used to really bother me, but now it just makes me laugh. Every morning. And I've learned the importance and beauty of giving him some space. And often handing the kid's over once breakfast is ready to escape into my room for a bit and read and listen to something inspiring. and try not to feel guilty for leaving a half-awake man with two little kids. John assures me he can handle it.

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While daddy was gone we played. The new favorite past time is removing each and every cushion and creating forts. It's really cute and Zoey gets into it too.

There isn't many places that this girl goes without her blanket. Unless I sneak them back to her room, she will find them and she will grab them for a quick cuddle. Oh, man. It's the cutest thing ever. She's not really partial to any blanket and in fact in the nursery on Sunday she was clinging to someone else's blanket most of the morning.

I love the light in our house right around 4pm. It's just perfect. I love capturing these little moments so that one day, when my hair has greyed and Zoey's has turned long and wavy that I can look back at these and smile. Those were some precious days.

While daddy was gone we did a lot of pretending. Jack has recently taken to "car play" and wants to have little car conversations all day long. This is something that's hard to balance for me, but something I always wanted to be for real intentional about. It's like you have this little person whose depth of imagination hasn't quite ignited yet and you get this amazing opportunity to foster it and encourage it along. So, we pretend, and I encourage him to pick names for his cars. The other day he looked long and hard at his airplane and finally said. "His name is...airplane." And so it goes. I tell him he can name it anything he wants, but he prefers their given names. Which is totally fine with me.

Today we were rescue airplanes and squelched forest fires. We got caught in the smoke and a friendly car came and saved us. His eyes were beaming the entire time.

Here he is towing this huge car with his little one.

Jack and Zoey also did a bit of playing. She really loves him and yet sometimes he doesn't know quite how big he is and how little she is. I try not to "rescue" her too much and let her set her limits, but it is necessary to referee. I think.

Here's Jack trying to show Zoey how to nurse her baby. I was doing the dishes and looked over to see him lift up his shirt and nurse her baby doll. It was so cute. I missed his moment, but was able to capture him trying to show Zoey how to. She was wearing a onesie so yeah, that didn't work.

oh, these two.