We've lived in this (new to us) old log house, in a little cup of a valley, surrounded by jack pines and juniper and red willow and wind, for 4 months already.

I think of all the places I've lived for even less time; moved in, looked around, saw the sites, and said, Okay! Time to shove off! Basement apartments in college, a rickety old pink house with a hole in the floorboards in graduate school. Nicer places, too: a condo high on an aspen-covered hillside in Breckenridge, Colorado, or any vacation, when you reach the point where the sun and the sand and the surf all seem so, I don't know, Ho-hum. Time to be going!

But here, 4 months feels as if we're just beginning. Green shoots are poking up through last year's dry yellow grass and soon the hillsides will be a carpet of color. Everything is waking up--the lilacs, full of thick buds; the rhubarb behind the fuel oil tank; the wild strawberries on the hill behind the house; the naturalized poppies, a riot of orange right out the front door

From the kitchen window I can see these things and more: fat, red-breasted Robins and dark-hooded Juncos and Bluebirds flitting from the tops of fence posts to willow branches to a single blade of tall grass. Never before have I seen such a blue: unexpected, unbelievable. So blue your mind can't take it in, but there it is. The bluest of blue.

It's exactly the way it is with my children. I used to think I wanted to race through all the stages that I wasn't particularly good at: the sleeplessness, the near-constant feedings. Or the teething and the fussing. Or the No! Stage, which some people call the Terrific Twos but I'm not one of those people; for us, it began at 18 months and really, who am I kidding, it's still going on with the little boys, depending upon the mood of the day.

I don't feel that way, anymore. I want everything to stay a little longer. Like this new country that we're in: it seems as if just when I get to know my way around, something changes. Always, change.

I'm terrible at laundry. It's an unfortunate combination of lack of focus and bad luck that can't be helped. I washed a brown crayon once, and it melted in the dryer so that all the clothes came out with brown streaks across them. But I didn't realize this, of course, until my children were actually wearing the brown-streaked clothes and we'd already driven to town. I kept apologizing everywhere we went, saying, "They're clean clothes, really!"

Most recently, everything turned blue. Blue sheets, blue towels, blue socks. Blue, in my load of whites. It wasn't what I was hoping for. The blue wasn't the thing we were after. The blue wasn't white, or fresh, or clean. The blue was the last straw.

Carter, my oldest son, said, "Mom, my underwear is blue."

"I see that," I said.

"They're really blue! And so are my socks!"

"I know," I said, preparing myself for the worst--the recrimination, the blame. I was ready with my excuses; about the long hours I spent doing laundry--about the unfairness of how a single blue flannel pillowcase tossed, inexplicably, in the wash could ruin everything--but I didn't need them.

"I love it! " he said. "They're my lucky underpants!"

And just like that, I'm reminded of why I love 9--the power of a 9-year-old to see the good in everything. I want to stay here. I want to have a 9-year-old for at least 10 more years. And even as I wish this and know it's impossible, I realize that all I really want is for our lives to slow down.

I don't know why I used to be in such a hurry; why I wanted to pass through my life as quickly as possible. Couldn't I see what I was missing?

Here's more proof of why I love 9: Carter explained to me the best way to climb a tree. This is exactly what he said: "Begin at the broken branch. Try to find the pathway. Look ahead, so you can see where you're going, but look back too, so you know where you've been. Go until you reach a clearing, an open spot where you can see blue sky. Then you know you're there. Settle in, and enjoy the view."