A Season of Newness...

I've been neglectful of you, my faithful few, and my lonely little blog, and I admit it. Please forgive me, and try not to hold my gross avoidance of you against me. Life is just so full right now. And no, that's not an excuse, it's just a fact.

I'm in what I'll call, a "season of newness" right now. New things are happening all around me, and I'm hurtling toward them as if all the tomorrows have already happened and the next moment is going to push me into oblivion.

At least, that's how it feels sometimes.

KayKay had her first day of Second Grade yesterday. SECOND GRADE.

She turns seven in exactly two weeks. SEVEN.

And I can't figure out where, exactly, the last six-and-a-half of them went.

It's unbelievable to me.

And it's new. A new place for me to be in in my relationship with my daughter, a new place of learning how to deal with the challenges of what it means to be seven in this day and age, a new place of being a parent to a second-grader.

And then there's the fact that my just-turned-teen step-daughter, Kitty, recently came for her first extended visit EVER. Extended as in, more than a few hours. (Her mother is a bit of a control freak.) She was here for a week, and it was wonderful. And she's in that uncertain place fraught with the potential for disaster that all teenage girls must navigate. Which basically means that she desperately needs the Daddy right now, and wants to come live with us.

And that's fantastic and terrifying at the same time... To say the least. And totally and completely new. Talk about uncharted territory.

I'm still young enough to really empathize with a lot of the issues that she's dealing with right now. And I think that's a good thing.

I think.

But that also means a lot more newness. For starters, we'd have to find a new house. We live in a two-bedroom right now, that I love, but obviously we can't shove a teen, a seven-year-old, and a three-and-a-half-year-old in one room together.

So yeah. New house. Which involves moving. Yay.

I hate moving. Let me just say I have moved at least as many times as my years in age. Which is more than twenty-five and less than fourty.

I've moved a LOT.

But at the same time, I love change and have been feeling a bit restless where we are now. And we REALLY need a yard. And then Kitty could come be with us, and we could be a family of five. And every day I could see the Daddy's face shine with that special light of contentment that only shows when Kitty is with us. Because he doesn't say much, but he's not whole without her there.

But then there's the whole, "How prepared (or not) do I feel about being a mom to a teenager?" issue. Wow. Especially because I'm not REALLY "the mom," as much as I may want to be... And understand that I never will be "the mom" in this situation, and I'll never try to push myself into that place. I have step-parents, and I know what it can look like when it's unhappy. One thing I will do, so long as I am able, is not go to that place.

So I'm trying not to even think about all of that stuff yet. Breathe in. Breathe out. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. New, new, NEW.

I actually feel like a lot of my life is new or being renewed right now.

I even *almost* had a new job. That's a whole other story. So I was all into preparing for the insanity new-job-ness for over a week.

And I'm feeling this stir-crazy creativity just begging to be let free. Like my creative juices have been blended up in some sort of emotional-spiritual-life-filled smoothie to literally create something new inside of me that is needs an outlet. As if any of that makes any sense.

Fortunately, planning for birthday number seven has given my creatively stir-crazy hands something to do over the last days. This morning was spent painting and cutting and tracing and experimenting on some incredibly cute mermaid invitations for the mermaid party we're having at the end of the month. Pictures will follow, I promise.

But I have lots of other new butterfly things in my head that have nothing to do with mermaid parties, and I must let them fly free... And soon. Ideas and realities.

A new grade, a new year, another daughter, another house, so many, many things to be created. A season of newness. And I have no clue as to how it's all going to end up.

But that's all part of the adventure.