That light feeling inside when normally it's heavy

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Kids can say things in such quirky ways. Sometimes, when that happens, it makes you look at what they've said much like you would look at a house hanging upside down right in front of your face. It's still a house, but you don't feel at home with it so you are forced to take it in, freed from all the comfortable, pre-conceived notions you normally bring to it. Kids talking about almost anything really, is kind of like that.

I like this quirky perspective. Just today I learned that clouds are dark and shiny when they clap and crack open. Also that when you sacrifice something you wanted for the sake of another, it makes you feel "light inside" and not "heavy like normal. Almost like I was being asked to play for Major League baseball or something." That's quite a feeling, just for thinking of someone else over and instead of yourself. I do believe it's called joy, and yes it does seem intoxicating.

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I went for a run yesterday, along abandoned winding roads where weeds and crumbling brick have taken over the landscape. I saw a man on a bicycle, feet touching the road, arms folded and leaning against the handlebars, his head dipped down with his eyes pressed agains his forearms. He just stayed like that, in the middle of this abandoned road until after I had passed. I wondered at what made him bow over like that, and this curious and almost burdened feeling is one that happens often as  I walk among people here. Just beyond him, a few women combed a squatters garden for ears of corn and ripened gourds. It seemed a strange meeting place, the lot of us and our varied activities. Even now, the memory of it is strange to me.

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Our baby boy is 5 months now. He is a tumbling ball of blubber and drool and smiles. The other night, I couldn't stop snuggling him into the curve of my neck, feeling the scrunch of his cheeks as he smiled, hearing him coo and giggle. What a gift he is. How blessed we are. I mean, I don't even know how I can feel this way about him, being overwhelmed at the thought as I was before and being not very much a baby person in general. But he just bounced right in here, and snatched my heart completely.

In fact, I have felt this way about all my children recently, to some degree or another. And this is rare for me. I suppose it's just that it doesn't come natural, the whole enjoyment of the baby/toddler/demanding-young-children phase. I like to think that my years to shine will be the high school years. "Then," oh yes, I think, "I will bask in the Awesomeness of Motherhood."But now I find that recently I have had moments, many of them occurring in the same day and on multiple days in the week, where I find myself enjoy these charming, humorous, adorable, and smart little kids of mine. I can't imagine I ought to take this lightly, which is why I mention it here.

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