Here is Eamon. Mr. Cool. Since he thinks it’s hilarious to change my phone’s screen saver to photos of himself every chance he gets, I figure it’s only fair to let you all in on the joke.

Here’s Eamon. Mr. Cool.

Daniel turns five today.

He was up at dawn this morning, suffering with the beginnings of a cold. A runny nose with a sore throat. Poor birthday boy.

He woke me up to ask for a drink and some medicine, and I willed myself out of bed and down the stairs to get him what he needed.

Afterwards, I followed him back up the stairs and we stopped outside my bedroom door. Of course he would be coming back to bed with me. That’s what he does when he wakes in the early morning. He rests for a short while longer with me.

“Actually,” Daniel interrupted as I reached for the doorknob, “I will sleep in my bed.”

Oh.

“I don’t need you,” he explained cheerfully before marching toward his room.

I followed him there and tucked him in. I gave him a birthday kiss and left him there to sleep like a big boy, in his own bed.

When we got up this morning, he gave me his birthday cake request:

“I want it to be a big, tall cake — like a wedding cake — with a triceratops on the top, and decorated with lemons all around it.”

That much will be easy.

5 days till his birthday!

Many thanks to Jen Fulwiler over at NCRegister for her kind words about the work we do toward building Catholic community at Faith & Family Live.

— 1 —
Fitness Update

We have officially entered that season of the year where if I do not get up at the crack of dawn and force myself into workout clothes and push “play” before I can even open my eyes … the workouts just aren’t going to happen. I try to play the game for a while. You know, the one where I convince myself, while lying in bed in the early hours of morning, that this indeed is the day from which I will manage to painlessly squeeze 60 minutes for maternal fitness without feeling as though I am abandoning my offspring and/or husband in the process. No it isn’t. Today is not that day. And tomorrow isn’t either. I need to start getting up earlier.

— 2 —
Entertainment

Prison Break. You watch? You obsess? Yes? ME TOO!

— 3 —
Bragging Rights

My name is Danielle Bean and as of this moment, no member of my immediate family has overdue materials checked out from any library in the state of New Hampshire. The kids keep asking me to bring them to the library and I tell them no. Mommy’s basking in her clean record. Someone take a picture or something.

— 4 —
Age Report

My oldest daughter is now a contributing member of society. This week alone, she …

a. started a small job — training a horse! — at the stable where she rides.
b. went on her very first job interview.
c. got offered a part time position as a cashier at our local supermarket.

Her parents are very proud of her. And feeling very old. Small price to pay, though, for a daughter who will now find out the value of a dollar and might rethink her “need” for overpriced sneakers and feather hair extensions.

— 5 —
Awesome Recipe

Mixed greens + balsamic vinaigrette dressing + dried cranberries + toasted pecans + goat cheese crumbles = The Best Summer Salad (that I plan to keep eating through the fall)

— 6 —
Joy

My sister! She’s having a baby! Go tell her how awesome that is!

— 7 —
Reminder

I ran into a woman I know at the store today. I did not realize who she was until after we had passed each other, made eye contact, smiled awkwardly, and then kept walking. She might still be wondering who I am. I remembered later that we worked together at a restaurant years ago and were quite friendly at the time.

Once, when Dan called me at work to ask something, she picked up the phone and pretended to be me. She was a little bit goofy like that.

Dan didn’t suspect anything, she answered his question about when I would be coming home, and they hung up quickly. Then she turned me with tears in her eyes.

“Does he always say that?” she asked.

“What?”

“Does he always say ‘I love you’ when you hang up the phone?”

“Pretty much,” I shrugged.

“You are a lucky wife,” she told me.

I knew that I was, but I was grateful for the reminder. And today, I am grateful for it again.

Sometimes, happening upon an old photo of your 6-year-old son in shorter, chubbier days, is a gift.

You would think this would get old, but it doesn’t. Because it keeps changing.

At the start of each new school year, I worry, in varying degrees, about curricula, schedules, chores, time management, reading skills, math facts, socialization, sports, faith formation, state requirements, and educational philosophies.

But my biggest challenge this year is none of those.

Today, I dropped off my oldest daughter at the local public high school. Where she will be taking American Literature this semester. A first for us.

“Are you sure you know the way to the classroom?” I asked one last anxious time as we pulled up to the school.

“Up the stairs and to the right,” she rolled her eyes. But it was a gentle eye rolling. One that seemed to recognize an air of tender feelings and mercifully danced around them.

“So … you can call me if you need anything …” I stopped myself.

She was standing beside the car now, looking back at me with one eyebrow raised in amusement.

She wouldn’t be needing anything.

I watched her walk away — backpack slung over her shoulder and hair blowing in the wind — and she entered the school without turning back.

Of course she didn’t turn back.

I blinked back tears as I drove away. Stupid kindergarten tears. The ones most moms get out of the way the first time they wave goodbye to a 5-year-old at a bus stop in September.

But some of us save up those tears instead. We hold onto them for years and then spill them when our kids are 16. We cry then, not so much because of the letting go — though of course because of the letting go — but because we are hopeful for our kids’ futures and proud of what we’ve learned so far together. Only a little bit of it from books.

From the first moments of parenthood, we hold on. Our eyes meet and we lock on. Instinctively. It’s a painful struggle to establish a firm grip on ourselves, our children, and our family lives. Once we think we have it, we hold on with all our might.

Almost as immediately, though, life pulls back on our white-knuckled fingers. One small bit at a time, it loosens our hold on what we think is control. What we don’t pause often enough to appreciate, however, is that it’s an illusion we hold on to. So tightly sometimes it hurts.

The tears are stupid. But I will spill them anyway.

When I pulled into the driveway at home, my seven other children greeted me at the door with an assortment of wants and needs ranging from transportation to youth group to computer privileges to missing laundry items to scheduling parent meetings for the golf team.

I was all done crying now. And back again.