Storm View

Today Severin had his first combination severe thunderstorm and tornado warning!

I left work an hour early to get ahead of the storms, which turned out to be a good move since they rolled in only minutes after we got in the house.

Sev and I sat by the slider to the deck. We watched the lightning, and the wind whipping through the trees, and listened to the thunder as it got closer and closer. I love a good thunderstorm and I was interested to see Sev's reaction to it all. I was very happy to watch him looking out on the storm, appearing fascinated at what was taking place outside. An occasional loud clap of thunder would send his gaze directly to me, but I'd smile and tell him it was okay and he'd say "uh-oh!" and smile and look back out the window. He's such a little love <3

The tornado threat was a little concerning. It went from a watch until 11, to a warning as of immediately before I even knew it had happened. But everything was fine. None of the potted herbs on the back deck even blew over. In all, it was a pretty sweet little fast-moving storm.

 

Sev, watching the storm blow through our neighborhood

Music Mornings

I am a lucky lady. I get to take the coolest little dude ever on a drive filled with music and giggles every day of the week.

Now that we're commuting in from North Attleboro, the distance to SeviSchool and work is longer, but we're leaving earlier in the morning to avoid the heaviest Providence traffic, so the actual commute time is usually only around 25-30 minutes.

This new schedule is great. If I get us out the door around 7:15, we get to school well before 8. This means we have time in the morning, and time in the morning is a fairly foreign concept still, so we are enjoying it very much. We can stop and get an iced coffee and share a treat. We can have a pleasant back-and-forth about the upcoming day's events, we can walk hand in hand to Sev's class, stopping along the way to say hi to anyone (everyone) Sev feels like visiting, and I don't even feel rushed when a random little girl from the older kids' room runs up to us and exclaims "hi, baby!" while giving Sev a big hug. There is a zen-like state that never before existed in our weekday mornings and it is wonderful.

One fairly consistent part of our mornings is music. When Sev starts staring out the window pensively, or even more so when I see his little brow furrow up as his face turns frowny, I know it's time to put on some music. Sev, like most kids his age, loves music. When he was just a tiny little baby I would sing entire albums to him as we played tummy time or just rocked back and forth in the comfy recliner. He's heard the entire Smiths library, most of the offerings of REM, Elysian Fields, the Ramones, Led Zeppelin, and selected works from the Beasties, Black Angels, Blackalicious, Fugazi, The Beatles, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Melvins, Neurosis, Isis, Mastodon, and a boatload of classical and holiday tunes. He's a well-rounded little dude.

This kid knows what he likes, and when he hears something that tickles his fancy, he bops his sweet little head up and down and rocks his body to the beat, "sings" along with the melody or moves his mouth like he's singing words, claps his hands and squeals with excitement, and by this point my heart has swollen to a size that feels like a warning of immanent explosion.

I love our morning drives.

No Date Night For You!

Mom and Dad came up last weekend to spend some time with us and have some hangout time with Sev while J and I continued our never-ending unpacking. My mom recommended that J and I take a date night Saturday night if we weren't too tired, since date nights are few and far between these days.

We had a productive Saturday and decided to take everyone out for dinner at one of my parents' favorite restaurants. Sev had a blast having dinner with all four of us, and by the time we got back he was tired out and ready for bed. We set my dad up with Super Troopers on Netflix and I introduced my mom to the wonders of Pinterest, once the little dude was asleep. J took the dogs for a long walk and by the time he was back we only had 20 minutes to get to the movie we were planning to see.

We decided to take the back way as we talked about our house and yard plans, and how cute Sev is at restaurants when he wants to do everything the adults do. We were so carried away in conversation that we neglected to take a rather important right turn. It was quite a bit later when I realized we'd gone too far down the wrong road. With less than 10 minutes until movie time, I opened my map app and found a quick save. We took the next right, which looked like it would drop us right in the parking lot of the theater. It would have, had it not been for the giant locked gate which is likely meant to keep people from using the street as a shortcut to the cinema (as we had just tried to do). Booo.

We made a quick re-route up the road a bit. We got out to the post road with 2 minutes till showtime. Police cars were everywhere. We wondered what was going on, since it didn't appear to be much of anything important. Impressed with our emergency navigation skills, we pulled into the parking lot as we noticed a surprising lack of cars for a Saturday night. A kid standing in front of the theater stepped forward as we slowly rolled by the building.  He said there was a power outage and the theater was closed for the night, though there seemed to be plenty of lights on inside the building. Either way, we were not going to see our movie. It seemed that the fates were pitted against our plan.

We refused to be completely beaten. We considered heading down to old Providence haunts, or maybe checking out the local brewhouse. Then, realizing our new proximity to things that we were once farther away from, we hopped on 295 and sped off (at a reasonable rate of speed) to Lincoln. Our original movie plan was traded in for the "what's playing soon" plan. But Mad Max was just a few minutes from starting and the theater was not crazy full, so we took it.
The movie was fun and we wound up having a pretty sweet date night after all.

I think the night sums up our partnership rather nicely. When curveballs come our way, we team up and pummel them into submission. We're a pretty good team, me and my sweet hubs.