in a matter of minutes...

phew! life is very busy when you are 8 months old! i took these over a very short period this afternoon while the older kids played outside (see her looking for them out the window? maybe under the rug?). so much to do and see and try to eat! so why is it i'm the one ready for a nap?

no naps for me (or her either for that matter). i am spending any spare moments i can grab working on a cake topper that needs finishing and mailing off. i got as far as setting up my desk in my new "studio" space and that is it. baby steps. too bad i'm not as effecient as my actual baby at getting things done.

kiai!...

walking home from the dojo

my kids started martial arts this week. sidney was so hesitant at first. we visited the class "just to watch" but she assured me she did not want to take one... until about half way through. i think the dressing room and outfits got her interested but truly she is such a little spit fire. she never lets her brother get the better of her. she is tough, and i think this is the perfect outlet for her to show that. her brother loves it too. he has been interested for quite some time and i'm glad we finally decided to do it. right now they are taking classes three days a week. it is a short walk from our house. the baby loves to watch too... and shout when she hears them yell "kiai"! if they keep it up just think how much she will know by the time she is old enough to take the class. watch out for my three little ninjas! kiai!

in the yard...

a little bit of our morning outside in the yard before the rain came (and still in pajamas). we discovered a yard full of violets, which tessa found fascinating. she carried this one around all morning and only occasionally tried to eat it. the children played on their balance beam/bridge that papa made... the chickens love it too and were playing follow the leader behind them! then the kids tried to see if chickens like to eat violets as much as babies (seems so). the baby was decorated with flowers from the pear tree and violets too. she seemed not to mind. charlie was chased, his favorite game. we cleared the path to the bridge and had several turns in the newly brought out hammock swing. everyone ended up muddy and we tromped back inside to spend the rest of the morning reading. our current favorite is 'the evolution of calpurnia tate' but we are also reading 'the mysterious benedict society... and a septimus heap book, it's amazing we keep them all straight!.

everything in its place...

                                                                                                                        carolhayesmanagement.co.uk via Cary on Pinterest

for me, one of the challenges of homeschooling is finding a balance between enjoying being at home and feeling a need to get housework done. we spend a lot of time at home (more so in winter) and we need to feel comfortable here, to enjoy this space and feel creative and inspired. the problem is i am also the one (mostly) in charge of keeping it clean. i do get a lot of help, but the brunt of it falls on me by default. i love having more space and a bigger house but i have to admit that this house has never been entirely clean all at the same time. never. not once. the upstairs has been clean. the downstairs has been clean. but never simultaneously. this is especially true since baby #3 came along. i have been trying to simplify the whole cleaning process by ever so slowly going through each room and ridding the house of excess clutter. i have a giant yard sale pile growing daily on my front porch (which i'm sure my neighbors appreciate!). i can't get rid of everything i want to but i'm trying to get down to what we really need and or love. it makes things so much easier at the end of the day to pick up for 5 minutes in a room and feel like it is manageable. of course that still leaves dusting (where does all that dust come from and does it ever really go away?), vacuuming (with two dogs and two cats i would hate to count how many hours i have wasted spent doing this), mopping, bathroom cleaning, laundry, and so on (and on). i admit that i am jealous whenever i see a cleaning company pull up to a neighbor's house. i hope no one ever sees me with my face pressed against the window glass, staring longingly like a kid in a candy store... remembering wistfully back to the time when i had that luxury.

after the birth of my second daughter my mother-in-law gifted us with a cleaning service. it was a lovely gift and really necessary. not only did i also have a toddler but a preemie born seven weeks early who then caught r.s.v. we spent nearly a month total in the hospital with her and then i was ordered to keep her inside until spring (she was born in october!). it was a long winter. maria, a wonderful woman came once a week and did the necessary deep cleaning. i still had the daily work to do but i never felt overwhelmed by it. i also rarely left the house that winter and usually spent the time talking to maria who became close to me and my little ones and was truly a sanity saver for me. so after the gift part ran out, i kept her on. at the time we lived in the upstairs apartment of a house and the owner lived downstairs. one day the landlady was doing work in my apartment and casually asked me how i got my tub so clean (it was one of those with jets that are impossible to keep nice). i praised my lovely house keeper for doing such a great job and she gave me an odd look. at the time i was embarrassed, assuming she was judging me. paying someone to clean for you can be such a taboo subject. people like to do it but not to admit to it. i thought maybe she thought i was lazy, since i was always home anyways. when you are a mother at home with young children people often make you feel like you aren't actually doing anything, or anything important (but don't get me started on that). i was wrong though, she wasn't judging me, or if she was it was along the lines of "why do i have a tenant who has a housekeeper and i don't?!" yep. she turned right around and upped our rent... the exact amount i was paying to have the house cleaned each week! did she call the service and ask how much they charged? i don't know but we either had to accept the rent increase (our lease was up for renewal) or move out. so, i had to give up my cleaning service and say goodbye to maria. you can probably guess the rest. my landlady hired a cleaning service herself, even though she had no children and was away from home everyday!!! but who am i to judge, right?

i do feel like it would be great to have more help or just not to care so much but in the meantime my yard sale pile keeps growing and you may catch me occasionally with my nose pressed against the window smudging up the glass. i should probably stop doing that though because it just makes one more thing i have to clean.

*p.s. has anyone read this book?

marching forward...

i was thinking today about last year at this time. last year i posted the picture above announcing i was pregnant. i was full of hope and a bit of fear about the future. my life had started down such a different path... one of older children in school everyday, of quiet hours to do as i liked and to do what needed to be done. i was figuring out what all that meant when suddenly it all went down another road. now here i am a year later. excuse the blurry camera picture of me and tess but that is where my life is at. that was me, today, making dinner with a baby on my back. one who curiously tries to peek around to see what i am doing and pulls my hair and giggles when i cry "ouch"! it is a familiar life, one i remember and one that is new. i don't have a toddler to chase around this time too. this morning i took a shower and dressed while my oldest gave the baby breakfast! it is a good life, one with kids home all day and no more quiet hours alone. it is a cranky baby and a cranky mama and sometimes cranky kids all at once, but also of many moments of giggling and just time spent... together. reading books, making art, doing experiments, playing together. i am no where near perfect and fret daily that i am even "good enough" but i get up and keep trying. hopefully that is what we will all remember.

scenes from the weekend...

1. started feeding herself
2. getting more interested in what she is wearing and asking me all the time if something makes her look like a "teenager"!
3. good friends and fun with fire
4. spendig lots of time outside
5. erupting the volcano and destroying dinosaurs

we had a lovely weekend. it was so warm we spent a lot of time outside... playing with friends, going to the zoo and on a hike. jack henry won his pinewood derby with a car shaped liked cheese! sid went to a birthdy party in the neighborhood. the house was located on two acres with chickens and goats. the neighbor had a pig. the ice cream truck came and everyone got a free treat. she also went on a "date" with papa to her first concert. it was a nice weekend that went by too fast.

this week i am pondering... how do you motivate yourself to do things you don't want to do? i am an avoider. are you good at getting things done that you need to do but really don't want to do? i need to figure out how to be better about this.

bower bird....

hello. good friday. sorry for the slow week. it has taken me all week to really recover from the stomach flu. i would feel great in the morning but by evening i was back to feeling terrible and completely wiped out. tess got like three new teeth this week too, which meant little napping and a few long nights. i discovered she really likes to fall asleep to gregorian chant music while i walk her around. she likes to sleep to it too. this one is lovely. it adds a soothing feel to nap time and the whole house! thanks to my aunt elaine for that little gift.

we are finally having a bit of spring like weather and i can't wait for this weekend. the kids were out all afternoon yesterday with the door open. heavenly. i've been doing a lot of rearranging in the house. i am such a bower bird. is there a name for the condition where you perpetually have to rearrange everything in your house? whatever it is called i have it. my family makes fun of me. i have looked back at old pictures of the children and realized that the house looks different in every single one of them. maybe it's because i don't really have the money to buy things i love so i am just perpetually trying to rearrange  what i have into the perfect configuration. i do it so often that my husband and kids rarely even comment or seem to notice if they come home and find the entire house rearranged. rooms swapped, furniture moved around, pictures taken down and rehung. i have even moved furniture eight months pregnant. i have a restless spirit i guess, and it always makes me feel refreshed. anyway, here are way too many random pictures of tess at the breakfast table. i don't know why, she is not doing anything special here, but it makes me happy to look at them. her little dimpled hands. her expression trying to find her toy. listening to her brother talk about gravity! just a lovely morning moment. i hope your weekend is filled with many of these!

8 months old...

tess is 8 months old! she is changing day by day now. everyday i feel like i wake up wondering what new things she will do. it is an exciting time and we are all trying to soak up every minute (while also trying to baby proof an entire house, which is much harder than a small brooklyn apartment). she is happiest when she moving around and exploring. she loves crawling all over. she especially loves crawling as quickly as possible towards something she thinks is off limits. luckily at this point she gives off the most gleeful naughty giggle in the process, which is a great warning device for me! when she is thwarted though, watch out! she already yells in frustration and throws a little mini tantrum on the floor. oh, boy. it is really cute right now though! she is hard to resist. even grumpy and fighting a nap or painful teething, or getting her diaper changed. even when she bites or pinches (oh boy is she trouble), she just has the most irresistible little personality... she melts us all. her love is fierce and we love her back the same!


i also wanted to add a thank you to elma, a very loyal follower, who sent the sweetest sweater this week for tess to grow into.... and luckily it fits sid now! she was so happy when she pulled it out of the box and found it fit her. i can't wait for the girls to share it. how special. thank you!

sickness caught up with me...

sorry for the absence again. i somehow managed to catch the stomach bug too and spent the day in bed. luckily, my husband was able to take a day off and care for he baby and the children had spent the night with their grandparents. maybe not an ideal way to get a break but i will take what i can get. it was nice to spend a quiet day in bed.

here are some things that happened before that... 

making a rocket with a balloon and learning about the laws of motion. we also learned the baby thinks the sound of the balloon is hilarious and will imitate it, blowing raspberries then laughing!

sidney had a play date with a friend and made some of our favorite lemon oatmeal muffins to take. cooking and baking with children is such a great way to learn important life skills, and a bit of math too!

the kids finished up their basketball season... very proudly for sid, who took home her first trophy. it was nice to see the kids go outside their comfort zone and challenge themselves to do something not always easy. we made some new friends too. i am looking forward to having our weekends back as we take a break from sports this spring. hopefully we will fill them up with some new family fun. we have a lot planned.

i'm working on cleaning out my current studio room to convert it to a children's room. i will take over the hall space upstairs, which first looked like this and then this. i'm excited to actually finish painting and making some other changes i will share when finished.

this is what tess is working on lately! trying to feed herself. she can pick up the food but can't quite get it into her mouth. she is all over the place crawling and standing. she tries to stand in the middle of the floor too. her second top tooth came in and is making her grouchy at times. she is saying mama, bubba, papa, nigh nigh when she is sleepy and mmmm when eating. very cute! 

still not much in the way of hair though!