Haircut – Before and After

  

Smoothies for breakfast

7 Quick Takes

I’m not linking up on this one today, although Jen’s blog is excellent.  It’s just that I’m stealing the theme because I’ve been having a hard time coming up with blog posts lately, even though there’s plenty happening.  So I’m working with other people’s ideas, which seems to work well right now.

1.  Sometimes my life is distracting.  I’ll give you an example. I worked on a brain dump yesterday – the kind of thing wherein one takes all the things floating around in one’s brain and puts them on paper – or wherever one’s list happens to be – and then they no longer keep one awake at night as one finds oneself planning the crazy garden thing one wants to do…instead of sleeping.  Or maybe this is all just me. 

But yesterday I was doing my brain dump.  I started to write a note on my list, and got interrupted by something that needed my attention – something related (you’ll be shocked!) to my kids.  When I’d finished dealing with the attention-needing thing, which took all of 45 seconds, I looked at my list.  “Determine,” it said.  Determine…It had been about 45 seconds, and I could NOT remember what I was supposed to write down about determining.  I STILL can’t remember what I was supposed to determine.  So if you have a conversation with me and I don’t make sense, that’s the normal state of things. 

2.  I thought we were coming out of the woods, but yesterday Sim crawled onto the couch with a blanket at 5:30 p.m. and sacked out.  This is a sure sign of illness, because he naps for two reasons:  1.) he’s sick, or 2.) we’ve had a crazy-busy morning after he went to bed too late at night and he made the mistake of lying quietly in his bed listening to something at Quiet Time and accidentally fell asleep.  It wasn’t 2.  So we’re back on the fever list.  We weren’t actually off the sick list, really, because all of us except Michael still have coughs. 

3.  Tess has developed some interesting habits about clothes.  She doesn’t like having socks on…ever.  No problem, Tess, it’s only 28 degrees out!  No need for superfluous clothing like SOCKS!  She also knows about the laundry chute, so when she removes her socks, she’ll helpfully put them into the laundry.  This means that some days we go through several pairs of socks.  It helps if I can get slippers on her, but I have to trick her into that.  So fun.

She also adores putting on  Naomi’s underwear, and if she can also put on other clothes of Naomi’s, she couldn’t be happier.  My other kids usually put the dress-ups on over their clothes, but Tess removes all of her clothes first and then – yes, that’s right – puts them down the laundry.  Then she puts on the chosen outfit.  In the picture above, she doesn’t have socks or pants, just a lovely skirt.

4.  I forgot to mention that Tess is also obsessed with hoods.  The fleece she has on below is Naomi’s.  She recently found a jacket hood that had been unsnapped from its jacket, and she wore that the rest of the day.  Just the hood. 

Nobody can argue that she’s darn cute while indulging her obsessions, though.  Which is more than can be said for many of us…

5.  Have you seen Librivox?  They’re on a mission to make audio recordings of books that are in the public domain.  And then people can download them for free.  This is totally awesome, and there are several books that I’ve found so far on there that I want to use for the kids’ history program.  Now I just have to figure out how to get them onto our MP3 player without Michael’s help.  Maybe that was the “determine” thing I wrote down – determine how to work the Librivox download thing.  Or maybe not.  Anyway, if you like audio books, you should definitely poke around and find some there.

Since the kids were all down for the count earlier in the week, I downloaded The Adventures of Buster Bear, by Thornton Burgess, for them to enjoy.  It’s always good to have a distraction from one’s illness. 

6.  Having kids who watched football and possibly understood it is funny.  We saw one of the kids’ friends yesterday, and he and Sim had a great time talking about the game.  Very funny.

7.  I have two kids who – at least right now – are morning people and two who are night people.  Hannah and Sim pop up and are cheerful, chatty, and raring to go, but once the evening hits, they’re cranky and need to go to bed.  Naomi and Tess are the opposite – the mornings are tough, but then they’re the life of the bedtime party when it comes around. 

 

Sim and Hannah love to go up and see Tess when she just wakes up, but it’s definitely hit or miss as to whether she’ll be happy to see them.  Some mornings are like the one above, and she’ll snuggle with them for a little while in her bed.  Other mornings, high pitched noises of annoyance issue forth from the bedroom the minute she sees anyone, Mom and Dad included.

I’ll be interested to see if they continue with their morning/night habits as they get older.  Truthfully, since I’m certainly not a morning person, I find the morning children in my life somewhat easier to deal with in the mornings, although I understand the night people better.   

{pretty, happy, funny, real} We survived

This past week has been illness week here.  Everyone except Michael got a nasty cough, the kids all ran fevers, and I had some stomach bug.  But we’ll attempt the pretty, happy, and funny to go with the real…

{Pretty}

You bet she’s pretty.  She’s also usually happy and funny, but this week that’s been somewhat overshadowed by whiny and uncomfortable.  She’s now feeling better (although still coughing up a storm), and is returning to her normal cheerful, mischievous self.

{Happy}

The ultrasound was technically before the illness set in, so last week.  But I haven’t had a chance to put these up, so here they are!  It’s amazing how much clearer the pictures are now than they were 11 years ago when we were doing this with Hannah.  Our baby looks just fine, and was good and active to boot.  Michael was able to come to the appointment, too, so we got to have the same, weird, “There’s a baby in there!” reaction that we’ve had every time together.  Of course there’s a baby in there, but seeing him or her on the screen certainly underscores that point. 

The kids were somewhat disappointed that we didn’t see twins – or triplets – on the screen…

{Funny}

I’m forming a theory that the original still life concept was developed by a mom.  You can’t really come up with a more random assortment of things than kids can put together in one place…for reasons that are unclear.  But just look at the assortments of shapes, textures, and shadows!  I can just hear my art teacher admonishing us to try to capture it all. 

Actually, this week has been less messy than usual, because my kids have spent large amounts of time lying on the couch or in their beds. 

{Real}

 

We’ll leave it at that.

 

Take a look at other {pretty, happy, funny, real} at Like Mother, Like Daughter. 

Five Favorites Garden Dreams edition

I’m joining Hallie, whose Five Favorites are always fun.  And since it’s February and I live in an area of the country that doesn’t get blanketed by snow all winter, I’m starting to garden.  And since I’m already thinking about all these things, I thought I’d share them.  Of course, it being gardening, there are many more things that are favorites, but here’s a start. 

1.

Territorial Seed

These seeds are tested and grow in our area, the maritime Northwest.  That might not seem especially important, but seeds that grow other areas of the country don’t necessarily do well here – our climate is too different.

 

2.

Raintree Nursery

The dreams I dream when looking at this catalog!  So many different berries!  So many different fruits!  It’s somewhat dangerous.

 

3.

Cedar Grove Booster Blend

I love getting this stuff in bulk and filling my planter boxes, top dressing my beds, and basically spreading rich compost goodness around.  Michael doesn’t love getting it in bulk, because that means a pile that we have to deal with.

 

4.

David Austin Roses

Oh, please.  Please don’t make me choose.  But I have my eye on two climbing roses, one for my new pea trellis and one for our pergola.  That might satisfy me for this year.  Maybe.

 

5.

The good-looking guy right here

We do a lot of the gardening together and I love it.  Michael is fine with it.  But he does it with me because he loves me.  And I couldn’t do it without him, so he’s really my gardening favorite. 

Wallbed

A bit belated, but we installed a long-awaited wallbed a couple of weeks ago.  We had hoped to have this in place for Christmas – that didn’t work out, but now it’s available for guests. 

Some in-progress photos:

The bunnies had to move slightly to make room for the bed.  Hannah was a huge help with this.

Part of the fun is hiding behind mattresses …

… or in cardboard-box tents …

The bed was pretty heavy – it was a relief to get it bolted to the studs:

Simeon tests the new bed for stability:

The bed has a folding table on the front, which is *very* exciting, as you can see.

All done and dusted!

Seahawks Victory

The Seattle Bees salute the Seattle Seahawks on their Super Bowl Championship!