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We got back from vacation yesterday, we had a good time but are very glad to be back home.  I haven’t been this thankful for the dry heat of Colorado for a long time!  I grew up in the humid Indiana summer but always hated being hot and sticky and never really did get used to it.  I hate opening the door and feeling like I’m wading through the atmosphere.    Mexico was fun, but I’m not sure why the country won’t invest in making its drinking water safe, especially for a place that is so dependent on tourism.  I think the environmentalists should get on that, I know we went through a lot of bottled water while we were there!

This has been the first real vacation we’ve had since Ethan was born.  I don’t count trips to see family because to me those aren’t technically vacations.  It was definitely different from previous vacations for a couple of reasons.  First, as a mom you don’t really ever get a vacation, unless maybe you leave the kids with the grandparents (which we may just do next time, just a warning!) because the kids are still there and still need naps, to be fed, bathed, watched, etc. and though dad is there, you are still mom and still the primary caregiver. Second, I’m not working anywhere but at home right now so I don’t have an office to escape from.  You could say I took my office with me.  Except it wasn’t baby proofed so I had to watch Ethan even more than usual.  Third, we went with friends which we’ve never done before.  That was fun though it made us even more indecisive.    But we got to share costs which was nice, and we got extra babysitting which was fabulous!  We owe them big time in the future.  Would we go back there?  Maybe.  The pirate ship was fun and I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the neighboring towns.  But we’ll plan our next trip to Mexico at a slightly cooler time of year.

I love it when Ryan gets up first and gets Ethan up and dressed, but sometimes I end up redoing what he’s done. You know what I mean when I say that men don’t really have the same sense of style as women. Not that I’m a fashion guru, but I can tell what matches and what doesn’t. Ryan doesn’t always know. For instance, if you are talking about green clothes a women will tell you there are many different shades of green – kelly, olive, forest, etc. but a man will say green is green and mix the shades which isn’t always a bad thing but can lead you places you don’t want to go. They also have a thing for mixing opposing patterns, not a good idea most of the time even if the patterns are similar. So when I came downstairs on Sunday, this is what I saw. I couldn’t even look at Ethan because he was making me dizzy! I went right back upstairs, got him a new shirt and changed him. But I really appreciated the effort.

There’s a new billboard in downtown Denver sponsored by a freedom from religion group that reads “Imagine No Religion” so let’s just do that for a moment.  The first images that pop into my head are of darkness – a dark time of no morality, no love, no sacrifice, just personal enjoyment at any cost.  I see, well I don’t even know what I see because all I can see is the dark nothing of everyone going their own way, “looking out for number one”.

Then I imagine freedom from the current religion of self-idolatry, self-worship, and self-gratification and the picture is so much brighter! I see people helping others in spite of the personal cost, parents raising children not to love themselves (which is not the greatest love of all, sorry Whitney!) but to love other people regardless of their differences, teaching that sex is a beautiful thing in the context of marriage, and that God not Hollywood should be our guiding source of morality. Maybe you think I’m preaching, but then you probably think I’m talking about religion, which I’m not. I’m talking about faith in more than me, because I know me and I know that I’m not good enough to have faith in.

So I guess we should imagine no religion and instead imagine faith – faith in something bigger than us that inspires us to be more than ourselves. I’ve always thought that one of the commonalities of all people is the need to have something to believe in. Some people choose God, some nature, some chaos, some themselves, but everyone believes in something, even those who claim to believe in nothing fervently adhere to that. I just wish, no I just pray, that we could all believe in the right thing, because only God deserves that.

I guess I haven’t been a mom for all that long now, either that or it just takes me a really long time to get used to things (more on that later). Maybe both, but it still surprises me how much you have to teach a child without them just knowing it. I think for all the life you can remember, there are just certain things you don’t recall having to learn. Like walking, sitting, clapping, waving, talking, understanding your language, etc. I can remember learning to read so I’m not really talking about those kinds of things. And I can remember learning a bunch of stuff I’ve forgotten so I don’t mean that either. Ethan finally learned how to clap yesterday. I say finally, but we really haven’t been teaching him for that long. I guess since it doesn’t occur to me that you would have to learn a skill like that, it doesn’t necessarily occur to me that I have to teach him a skill like that. But teach him we did and now he can do it on his own, though not really on command (I guess he’s not a dog after all!) So now I have to think about all those other things I know how to do that I take for granted and try to teach those. I guess that is one of the reasons we are all just like our mothers because they are the ones (mostly) who teach us how to do things.

It hasn’t really taken me that long to get used to being a mom, though it still surprises me how much that entails. I think part of it is because I’m staying home with Ethan and pretty much mom 24/7. It took me a surprisingly long time to get used to being a “wife” though not long at all to being “Dr. Melton” probably because I was called that multiple times each day for years. I’m still not used to being “Mrs. Melton,” again because I hardly ever hear that and still look for Ryan’s mom when I do. It still surprises me some days that this house is actually mine, though you would think with as much time as I spend cleaning it that would have sunk in by now! Maybe it’s just that I’m surprised that I’m getting older and gaining more responsibility as that happens. I’m not sure, maybe I’m just rambling and really need more sleep. Or chocolate.