King of the backseat

The boy upgraded from a carseat to a high-back booster in my car this week. The carseat, which latched into the metal hooks of the car structure between the seat and back of the car's cushions, was essentially a fixed feature. Moving it was so awful that I just wouldn't.

Booster seats go anywhere, though, particularly when one boy owns the whole car because his sisters are off at their own school. He flings his sisters' chairs to the floor and positions his new throne in a different seat for every ride. This is his new privilege: center view, behind Mommy, or the coveted previously unattainable passenger side. His delight is so emanating that I find the patience for threading the seatbelt through the holster again and again and again.
I started a new job this week. It's been weeks in transitioning and it's very different from what I was doing before (although I am still at the same agency). It's all writing and talking and meeting. It's planning and dreaming and connecting. It's thrilling. It's unrecognizable to the eight-hour days where I might not have talked to anyone, just weeks ago. It's using all my brain and for the first time in six years, I find it hard to come here. I've used all my day's words. I feel like the boy, every day testing a new way of doing.
He and I, we'll both settle in.