While They Nap

Everyone does it at least one time in their blogging career. 

Come through to let everyone know why the heck they are doing so many sponsored posts and not so many personal ones. Or maybe they don’t. Either way, it’s my turn. The kids are down for a nap, and I have some time to actually WRITE. Nothing paid, nothing with a marketing theme (although there will be many because now we have a shiny new mortgage AND private school to pay for! YAY) and nothing in particular from a prompt. I’m going through photos and realizing just how FULL our lives are, and how the silence of nap time echoes that. I’m also reminded a lot of the crazy stuff that my sister, Jessica and I got into, and got my brothers to agree too. Well, mainly me. 

Basically, this post is going to be a lot of thought vomit. 

A lot has transpired this summer. We graduated a kid from 8th grade. I mean, seriously, he graduated, and was valedictorian at that. He’s already showing his parents up. We’re smart too! Yet he’s making strides long past the ones that we set a precedent for. We’ve done 500 hours of sweat equity with Windy City Habitat for Humanity, and dedicated a house (which I’ll be blogging later, I promise) which means that we’ve started to pack up a house. A house that *I* have lived in for at least 12 years, and a house that Mr. Houseful has lived in for at least 7. I’ve lived in this building for 17 years. It’s odd. To pack up memories, and stumble upon forgotten mementos. 

One of those is my sister’s high school planner. She used it as a scrapbook of sorts. Pictures taped brazenly across monthly planning pages, and little notes in each 2 inch square to remind her what was going on at that particular moment frozen in history. It was almost thrown away by Mr. Houseful who just looked at the outside of it, and the archaic date that was emblazoned in gold on the green plastic cover. 2000-2001. The last year of high school for her. 

Of course, lots of memories flood my brain, but I’m often left laughing at our shenanigans. Me coming to get her out of class early whenever I came home from college. Her calling me late after our parents had gone to bed to just chat about anything and nothing at all. Just being able to hang out in my apartment in Wisconsin, and be. 

I’m finding myself looking for more moments to just be. Like I was able to with my sister Jessica. It seems that no one gets me like she did. No matter how much they say that they do. Probably because we were the same bloodline, made up of the same portions of DNA. We were connected in a way that I will never be with anyone else. We would have been able to discuss everything that was going on in the world, and I would have been able to challenge her to the ice bucket charity donation craziness without as much as a self-righteous rant – AND she would have found a way to outdo me, and I would have laughed. 

This is what I’m reminded of when I sent the houseful of littles to take a nap. As I yell back into their room that they should be doing more sleeping and less talking, or laughing, or banging on drums, or jumping in beds. I’m reminded of all of those moments that I miss having with my sister. I’m reminded of dressing in the same get up, and having boys against girls – now it’s just boys against girl, and they’re bigger too. I’m reminded of our plotting on the bottom bed of our bunk beds how we were going to be famous for some random fact or another. I’m reminded how we would giggle and stop whenever Mor Mor would come walking into the room to give us that silent stare of warning, and then how we would giggle harder when she left. I’m reminded of just how many awesome memories I still have of my sister, deep down inside. I just have to see the reminders when they pop up.  

Because we didn’t nap.