In September

Inches of rain in 24 hours and a break from triple digit temperatures feels like we moved states in the course of a day. Everything is both different and exactly the same.

So many snuggles and kisses with this sweet girl.

So much struggling to keep up with this high-energy gal.

Math and phonics and language and chemistry (fun!) fill much of our days. We are finishing up the end of this last school year which means some intensive weeks of school between now and mid-October.

But rain means a shot at a garden this fall. So the boys prepared beds for us in anticipation of rain percentages. Two beds of greens and radishes and a broadcasting of beets and turnips in a field full of freshly-picked weeds happened this morning, thanks to a baby that actually takes naps.

That field full of weeds was a sweet potato field in June, filled with green leaves, Texas clay, and a whole lot of pie-in-the-sky on my part. That I would be able to finish out this pregnancy in the heat of Texas and keep up a garden while educating four of our six children was a pipe dream of the most obvious kind.

Most of you are probably wondering what else is new.

In July, when it was clear the field had dried up and Mama was never going to get that thing weeded, we let the livestock in and they ate up the weeds and what remained of the sweet potatoes and somehow it was just all okay. Or maybe it was those blurry two weeks after she came, when I was mostly in bed and Daddy was home doing everything else…

In either case, the sweet potatoes are no longer, the weeds were mostly pulled, and the field contains a broadcasting of turnips and beets. And this little sweet potato, my seventh and such a mellow bean has just captured all of our hearts.

And not a million sweet potatoes in a billion fields would I trade for holding this sweet babe and waking up to this little face. Not ever and definitely not here, in the month of September.