As of two weeks ago our chickens are laying eggs - or at least three of them are laying eggs? maybe more?

After I spent two months checking the nesting boxes twice a day and underneath the tractor and the parked trailer and behind the crepe myrtles on one side of the house and the nandena on the other side of the house to no avail, Jacob found the first egg. Which he of course left there for a baby to find, because it just so happened to be our baby's birthday.

The freshly minted two year old came in mighty proud of himself and his "burday ugg. iss my burday ugg, mom!" and we promptly cracked it into his cupcake batter.

Worn out on his big day:

So the baby isn't so much of a baby anymore. He's two and he's in mother's day out two mornings a week along with his big sister and the big man's in Kindergarten,

Look at this coolio.

I feel like - in the course of a week - I graduated to a whole new phase of parenting - like I have one leg firmly out of the trenches. I don't know what to do with myself truly. I get to make annoying administrative phone calls in the calm of a morning instead of in stolen moments while locked in the bathroom hoping it doesn't sound too echoey on the other end. I don't have to overthink every single errand that needs to be run. I get to stop in at a coffee shop, stand patiently in line, and nestle in with my laptop...and blog!

So far I've loved it. I love the hectic mornings of making the lunches and watching people toddle into school with their backpacks. I've loved how they run to me when I pick them up. I love the alternate mornings of being home with just the little ones who are still content to simply dig in the garden and splash the watering can around. I've loved having a schedule that I have to work around, and times when I have to be out the door, and a reason to get out of my proverbial or literal yoga pants.

We'll see how long the high lasts. I've struggled with a weird narrative that I don't "deserve" to get breaks like this - even if I'm spending my "breaks" catching up on our business accounting, freelancing little jobs, or doing otherwise "worky" type things. I've become so accustomed to always feeling frazzled and behind on things and listening to my broken record of the "poor poor overworked overtired little mama." Now I drop little kids off and then get back into the empty van with sunglasses on and skinny jeans and ankle boots and I don't even know myself.

Having a schedule and seeing the week in chunks of time has really helped me find space. A few hours of personal space. Space in my week for laundry or for meal-planning or for reading a chapter book to the six year old during the opportune nap.

And more space in my heart for the same old shenanigans.

With that I must go. I'm at my town's beautiful old library which typically smells of equal parts  musty books and children's story hour, but someone has put on some potent and vaguely peach-scented lotion which is my cue.

Happy day and happy week to you!

:)

7QT - Little Things and BIG Thing

Throwing up a post this Friday morning! It's chilly here in Houston which puts me in SUCH a good mood. And my little sister is visiting this weekend (Right, Lil??) and my little brother who's been out of town all month is finally back and we're all having a pizza night tomorrow. So many good things big and little!

>><<

I read most of Gary Taube's new book The Case Against Sugar this week, and I'm sufficiently terrified of sucrose, fructose, and all the other -ose's. The book was actually pretty dry - and I LOVE reading about health and wellness books and food histories - but it's a pretty compelling look at the story of sugar consumption and the rise in chronic disease. Whenever I feel my healthful eating resolve starting to teeter, I check out a book like this.

When Jacob saw me reading the book, he sat next to me with a bowl of ice cream.

>><<

The kids and I went to the park yesterday morning. It was 55 degrees and when we were getting back in the car Jake asked if he had frost on his face.

>><<

The remodel is still trucking along. I'll try to get a post up about it next week. I'm no longer sleeping in a total construction site...it feels more like...a garage.

The kids are troopers about it all:

The suckers were from before I read the Taubes book.

>><<

Jake really likes to shorten words. Yesterday he called his Uncle Michael "Mikes." He thinks it's extra cool. Often he'll shorten words and we won't even know what he means. Like the other day when he asked for these:

bloobs

>><<

Jacob and I have been scrambling for a new show for both of us to watch. He has his kinds of shows (dry British or Australian humor) and I have mine (overdramatic period pieces), and we'll often find shows to watch together (Stranger Things, Poldark, The OA.) But we've been floundering for awhile to find a new one, so we picked up The Man in the High Castle. I didn't like the first half of season one but I'm really liking the second half.

>><<

I'm reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder's books with the kids. I love them all so much. Right now we're reading Farmer Boy. My favorite part is how much this nine year old boy thinks about food. At one point he was reflecting on how pretty his mother was and that she was never prettier than when she was carrying a ham to the kitchen table. #parentinggoals

A couple months ago we made butter tinted with carrot juice just like Ma Ingalls. I'm thinking next week we'll make Almanzo's favorite food: fried apples and onions.

(Disclaimer: I realize replicating Little House recipes sounds industrious. Let it be known that the only thing I'm really doing well is making it to the couch every night with a bowl of popcorn.)

>><<

The other day I was asking Jacob how one even begins the process of finding a good therapist...and then literally two days later we got an e-mail from a good friend of ours from college who has written an ebook about how to find a great therapist. You should definitely check it out or at least visit his website which has tons of information about therapy (cost, kinds, frequency, what to expect). This guy is basically the coolest, and I'm so excited for this initiative!

>><<

And now the BIG THING - which is NOT another baby. 

We're gearing up to move to my hometown in rural Texas this summer. I. can't. wait.

We'll rent my parents' house while they relocate to my grandmother's old house, and then we'll start the slow process of buying ten acres from them and building a house on it. It feels like a dream, and I'm so excited about it. (But Jake told me he likes being a city kid because he gets to drive on highways -_-)

We'll buy ten acres of unimproved land except that it has an acre of high fencing around a vineyard of Black Spanish grapes. 
It has a creek!

 And carpenter anthills the size of basketball courts!

It's basically a deer habitat and is totally overrun by wild mustang grapevines ten inches thick at the base, and we're totally in love.

We're thinking this for the backyard:

Then I'll be able to go seriously Ma Ingalls on everything. It's such an enormous dream come true to move home and read Wendell Berry and work the land and watch sunsets.

Visit Kelly for more quick takes! Happy Weekending!

More JakeTalk

Even though I posted some kiddo talk like five minutes ago, I just found these in my drafts, and had to share them before they got too dusty.

>> 1 <<

Jake: How old are you?
Me: 30
Jake: But Papa's 30 and he's a lot bigger than you.
Pauses
Jake: Is he 30 and a half?

>> 2 <<

While the kids were playing with their uncle who fell down lifeless on the couch for ten long seconds:
Jake: Oh shut, Lucy June. I think he's really dead.

>> 3 <<

After biting his cheek:
Jake: I accidentally ate myself.

>> 4 <<

Overheard from the other room:
Jake: OK, Lucy, this is gonna hurt a little bit.

>> 5 <<

Jake: It's deleeeeeeeeeecious.
Me: What's deleeecious?
Jake: Deleeeecious is so so happy it's Mary tickling Jesus in your heart.
(Hashtag catechesis)

>> 6 <<

After introducing him to his little brother, Roman John:
Jake: (disappointed)...oh...I thought we were going to name him El Tio.

>> 7 <<

Jake: The other day on Nana Suzie and Opie's porch, we heard a sound like a squeaky toy, so I went ta go see what it was. I said it was a snake, but Papa said snakes don't squeak. But it was a snake eating a frog whole. He was swallowing it. And there was another frog literally watching the scene while his brother got ate.

And that, my friends, is a true story. I can verify all of it except the family status of the frogs.

Pics from The Rock where Jacob took little Jake camping and fed him bacon, chocolate, and marshmallows for breakfast.

(Jake: But mostly just chocolate and marshmallows)

Linking up with Kelly for ole times sake.

Follow the Little Rhodes

In another attempt to break my blogging silence: we'll go with the old fashioned what the 4 year old and 2 year old have been dishing out lately.

>><<

At dinner when Jacob leaned in to tell little Jake something:

Jake: Dad, you're throwing beer smell in my face.

>><<

After Jake overheard me saying something would be a "life saver," he agreed:

Jake: Yeah...Such a light saber. 

>><<

Lucy June, say Everybody.

"Eddybuddy"

>><<

Lucy June, say Everybody.

"All de buddies"

>><<

Jake: Mom, what's R2D2 + C3PO?

>><<

The sewer line backed up, and Jacob said he was going to check the clean out. Jake hopped off his stool and ran to his room. He came back with a mask and snorkel.

>><<

Lucy June, what's your bday?

"Octumble twenty seconds"

>><<

Lucy June, what's your bday?

"October two toesies"

>><<

After I told him that a certain health food fed the "good guys in his body":

Jake: Mom! There's nothing in my body except blood and snot!

>><<

While sitting in the overflow room at Mass on Easter Sunday, Jake turned to me and whispered: "Mama, I love watching this TV show at Mass."

>><<

After we finished eating at a restaurant, I packed up the diaper bag, fished out my keys, slung the bag over my shoulder, hiked up my 25 pound six-month-old, and started the long walk to the car. Lucy June pounded both fists in the air and started yelling: 

"Go Mama Go! Go Mama Go!"

>><<

Overheard while Jake was playing in the bathtub:

Jake: Better settle in for the winter. You're not dead till you're warm and dead.

>><<

Lucy June, say Popsicle
"Popsi-tickle"

>><<

Lucy June, say Amen

"I'm a man"

7 Quick Takes Friday

- 1 -

Things are going smoothly enough at casa Rhodes. Just smoothly enough. We're making very slow progress on the remodel, but we're managing most of life's ordinaries: and by that I mean diapers (disposable) and meals. It's pretty much about the in-one-way, out-the-other, and repeat around here. 

- 2 -

Roman is a pretty delightful little baby. He was sleeping five hour stretches at night for his whole first week and has only gotten marginally worse. My difficult baby (Jake) wasn't very difficult till he was two weeks old, so I'm holding out till Tuesdsay before I declare Roman the best Rhodes infant ever.

- 3 -

He also inherited his mom's nostril flare...#meltmyheart

- 4 -

Do you of the Catholic mom variety follow Sanctanomina? She did a birth announcement for Roman and pretty much nailed our thought process about choosing Roman's name. Definitely clickworthy!

- 5 -

I've got two loaves of zucchini bread in the oven, and I'm heating milk up to make yogurt. (Remember pretty much the only tutorial I've ever put on the blog about making yogurt without dirtying a single solitary dish except a spoon?!? I didn't think so.)

It feels like I'm seriously overreaching. This is as adventurous as I've been in the kitchen in probably a month, and even though everything seems to be going fine and two kids are sleeping and the other is semi-quietly playing with legos, I'm positive it's going to devolve with no warning. So many times in the past eleven postpartum days, my life has gone from peaceful, idyllic, newborn-sleepy-smile loveliness to a baby wailing, toddler tantruming, bodily fluids flying, and mom crying, in a matter of seconds. So yes. Bread in the oven and milk steaming on the stove feels like a recipe for total chaos.

We shall see.

- 6 -

 I scored my first curated, thrifted good from Blythe and Noelle's instagram shop "The Haul." I'm not a jewelry person or any kind of accessory person really, but I've decided to become one in my thirties. So I'm starting with bangles.

- 7 -

What with all the upheaval in our lives recently, I wanted Jake to have some new special thing,  so we started him in soccer. He's a natural.

Happy Weekend! And visit Kelly for more quick takes!

Catch Up Catch Up

Just shy of two months later and she's attempting another blogging reentry.

My lands how I've missed this space.

I think about you all a lot, but every time I try to write I end up like...crying or something. I don't know. These last few months - or let's just call it 2015 - has been TOUGH. But I'm learning about myself as a wife and a mother and as a woman and all that, so I guess it's also been good. But I'm a little tired of learning hard lessons.

Where have we been and what have we done??

I think I left off in April right before we went to watch my dad run Boston. How cool is he?? (And at mile 26!)

My little sister graduated from my old alma mater.

The nephew and niece played their parts admirably.

   

I'm still pregnant. So pregnant. Pregnancy nausea hung on to a ripe 22 weeks, at which point it became very manageable, and now at 27 weeks is totally gone. I'm still a little shell-shocked but so grateful it let up. I also weigh right about what I did when I DELIVERED Jake so...that feels good.

Jacob's work finally started to slow down a bit in May, he's home most days before five and even gets a couple days off every week. This is a far cry better than working till 7 every night 6.5 days a week. We both agree that he's been working too much. He's a contractor, so the more he works the more he makes, and it's hard to say no to work. His work is seasonal, but the busy season (right along with my nausea) hung on about eight weeks longer than expected. So after that experience we were both pretty zonked and ready to life overhaul.

Or at least I was ready to life overhaul. Jacob is more of a "just live" person and I'm more of a "plan to live" person. So I've been reading Charles Duhigg and Gretchen Rubin and imagining all the ways we can paint a deliberate life for ourselves, and he's been shaking his head.

Houston flooded at the end of May. My brother and brother-in-law were stranded in central Houston all night long, homes north of our neighborhood got over a foot of water, and we...slept...woke up to the thunder a few times...and read about it online in the morning.

It looks like we lost our beehive, probably because of the rain. They're queenless, and if they can't manage to hatch a new one soon, we'll lose them. It probably means it's time for us to move. We always lose hives before a move. My brothers, who live with and own this house with us, are under contract on another place, so we're talking about transitioning this house into a rental property.

The kids are growing right along.

Jake turned four last week. We had an Octonauts party, and he loved it. His little friends came over and Jacob played carnie outside letting little people in and out of the treehouse.

I think he requested a Blue Octopod Reef Cake which I translated to a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting decorated with pipe cleaners and toys.

The cake inspired thievery which I took as a compliment.

The cute little girl in the green gingham got the "R" before we could say "make a wish." I have no idea who stole the Octonaut Penguin.

Throwing a four year old's birthday party was much more fun than I expected. He was SO. EXCITED. about everything.  

We bought Jake some big kid legos for his birthday, and now he plays legos all the time. I'm already mourning the day when moving Han Solo's head to an astronaut body no longer holds the magical quiet time charm that it has the past week.

Lucy June is 19 months of talking all the time. She snuggles and hugs and goes right down for naps, and - aside from the full body fits when I take away her beloved chapstick and the 6:05am wake up punctuated with her squeaky morning voice from the crib: "All DONE night night! All DONE sheeping!! Get OUTTA HERE!" - she's still as sweet as ever.

Like so sweet. Like she literally will walk up, wrap her arms around my legs, and say "Hug you wuv you, mama." Since Jake was about three before I got any spontaneous affection, I'm lapping it up. And praying that she doesn't turn on us in adolescence.

And that's mostly our story these days. I really hope summer inspires my blogging game. We shall see. We shall see. 

Some Jake Talk

Today I'm giving you a break from nauseatalk and instead we're gonna talk Jake.

Jake is a pretty awesome kid; he's also very challenging. His favorite games to play with people all involve things like roaring in people's faces and sitting on people's heads, so you can imagine how smoothly life goes now that he has a prissy sister hanging around all the time. They do like interacting with each other, but I'm nervous Lucy June is going to develop a major victim complex because she's pretty much always a victim.

Except she DID get mad and pull his ear today. I burst out laughing.

The other day I couldn't find Lucy June for a terrifying 45 seconds, but it turns out Jake had locked her in his closet while he went to the bathroom so she would still play with him when he got back. So sweet. So wrong. So Jake.

>><<

As we park the car for a playdate at a friend's house:

Jake: (takes a deep breath in) Dis time, I'm NOT gonna hit Thomas in the head with a hammer. 

Me:

>><<

Jake is spastically dancing in the hardware store, and I'm trying to practice some enlightened parenting and bring some self-awareness to his behavior.
Me: Jake, do you see anyone running crazy in Lowes?
Jake: Yes! Me!

>><<

Upon my asking what happened to one of the wise men in his play nativity set.
Jake: Umm. I think he turned into a cow.  

>><<

At the end of nightly prayers:
Jake: ...And God bless Uncle John and Uncle Michael and God bless Grandpa Keith and God bless taxi vans. (pauses for a couple seconds) I LOVE taxi vans.

>><<

After he'd been working in his preschool book:

Jake: I made an R like in Bunny. And a Q like in Cucumber.

>><<

After having drawn only one ladybug in his workbook, when he was supposed to have drawn five.
Me: Where are your other ladybugs?
Jake: (shaking his head. clicking his tongue.) They died.

>><<

Gosh. If I don't love him to the moon.

And he loves me back.

Or something...

The State of the Rhodes

Nothing like a good ole fashioned family update to jump back on the blogging scene.

(No promises that I'm back on the wagon for real. I'm 15 weeks in and nausea doesn't usually clear for me entirely until 18 weeks, but since it has consigned itself to the afternoons/evenings recently, I might actually find some time to write. We shall cross our fingers and see.)

So. The Lost Rhodes. Where are they now??

Lucy June

Lucy June is thinning out, if still a plumpster who would eat every half hour. Yesterday we confirmed that she is still allergic to avocados. Not deathly allergic, just the more she gets the more she throws up kind of allergic. Jacob finds the allergy absurd and now wants a paternity test.

She almost has hair, not enough to do anything with, but you can SEE it. I know I should probably do the whole headband thing. But I'm afraid I'll get a super cute little headband (like this one!!) and she'll just tear it off. How do you know if you've got a daughter who will keep pretty things on her head??


JakeBoy

Jake has given up his afternoon nap except for once in a blessed moon. Even though we haven't touched our preschool workbook in about two months, he proudly tells strangers that he homeschools. He still loves outerspace and makes me tell stories about the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.

He's all energy. Whenever anyone starts crying at playgroup, there's an 85% chance he's involved. If he didn't start someone crying, he arrives shortly after to make things worse. Mr. Moth to the flame of discord. I'm sure this is my fault.

Luckily, Lucy June is on her way to exonerating me as the The World's Worst Disciplinarian because she's a playdate angel. Today at a baby shower she was playing with a ten month old and desperately wanted the toy chicken he was holding. She could've easily overpowered him, but she didn't, and instead just pitifully repeated: "Chiten? Peez? Chiten? Peez?"

Jacob

Jacob is still working so so hard. His busy season allegedly comes to a close soon, but he's still booked solid through the beginning of next month. He took four days off in a row last weekend, so he could weather the stomach flu. It's the most I've seen him since Christmas. But before you cue all the violins, know that things should slow down drastically by the end of April, and so long as we don't do something stupid, like buy another house that needs remodeling, my husband should settle into working about 25 hours a week for a couple months.

He drives all over Houston for work and gluts on historical non-fiction audiobooks. One week it's all "Andrew Jackson" and then it's all "The Dustbowl" - and I think it's cute, and I act interested, and I glaze, and then he mentions the detail in the book about the baby, and I'm like "Hmm? What was that?"

And Me

(Sorry for all the greasy-haired, pale-faced, pit-stained T-shirt reality in this photo. It's not that I don't love you enough to put on eyeliner. It's just that I don't love anyone enough to put on eyeliner these days.)

I've probably been through the most physically and emotionally exhausting winter of my life. I don't really want to write about it. But after two months of crippling nausea crowned by a bout with the stomach flu. I just. I have a newfound empathy for people with chronic illness.

I know I'm not all the way through but in the last week I've had some nausea free mornings and one blessed nausea free day, so I'm riding pretty high.

Turns out the fetal position isn't so bad for reading, so I've done a fair amount of it over the past few months. I haven't been listening to presidential biographies, instead I've enjoyed the edifying tomes of literary masters like Rainbow Rowell.

I've cooked maybe twice since January. I think we subsisted on Eggo waffles for the whole month of February, but I honestly can't remember.

I'm super emotional. Like I heard someone quote Mary Poppins the other day - "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and - SNAP - the job's a game." - and I was a mess of tears.

I turned thirty. I feel thirty.

Baby Three is still reading much more beer gut than bump, but hopefully we'll get some definition in a few weeks.

I'm a bundle of aspirations whenever my nausea clears even for a moment. I want to make capsule wardrobes for the kids and cinch my summer maternity style and imbue every corner of our life with intentionality, but since Ms. Kondo is on hold at the library till doomsday, I probably will just settle for folding some laundry and remembering how to turn on the crockpot.

Tis all the nausea-gods will allow for today, but I'm excited to wake this space back up! 

The Temperaments God Gave My Kids

The other day, I was hanging out with this old friend and her sixteen month old. And this sixteen month old is such a boy. He got into everything. Climbing over boxes to get to chords. He dumped the bowl of goldfish crackers out on the coffee table and then proceeded to fling the goldfish to every corner of the room.

In short: awesome. He was awesome.

And Lucy June stood in the middle of the room, holding onto one plastic toy, and watched him very critically. Lucy June who reaches for something contraband and typically at my first "UhOh" will straighten up, smile, and go somewhere else. Lucy June who watches her hands as she signs for "more" and carefully taps her little fingers together. Lucy June who has recently started nodding when I ask "night night?"

If I had Lucy June first, I would have thought I was a pretty kick ass parent. I would've been positively insufferable.

But I didn't have Lucy June first. I had Jake.

When Jake was a baby and a toddler, I didn't have a real sense of his uniqueness. People would ask about his personality, and I would say: "Baby personality??" I had no concept of what was Him Being a Baby vs. Him Being Him. Now that I've known him a few years and had a second baby, I've clued in.

And my kids are so different. From the very beginning they've been so different. I know he's a boy and she's a girl and their differences really fall on gendered sides of the fence, but still I find it so interesting.

Several of my friends have recommended Art Bennett's The Temperament God Gave Your Kids - these are of course Catholic friends, Protestants don't talk about temperaments - which explores the idea of responding to your children according to their personalities. This seems pretty intuitive, but also essential. My parents certainly seemed to adjust according to my and my siblings' tendencies growing up. For example, my little brothers had curfews, I never did. I actually broke a window trying to sneak back IN the house after my parents forgot I wasn't home and locked me out.

So this is the face off in Casa Rhodes with regard to blossoming, burgeoning behaviors.

Jake vs. Lucy June

Jake fought sleep as a baby. Boy he fought it. But once he was asleep you couldn't wake him up if you tried.

Lucy June learned to sleep much more easily. She was a baby you could swaddle and look away and she would be asleep. But man was she light: she would wake up if I was typing in the next room.

>><<

When Jake was little he just went: he would take off and never look back. I once tested how far he would walk away from me. He walked for a quarter mile along the beach before I caught up with him. He hadn't looked for me once.

Lucy June has this invisible tether. She always knows where I am. When we're in public, I can set her down and let her wander because she will always stay where she can see me.

>><<

Jake fell off the bed probably eight times. (I thought this was my fault until:)

Lucy June fell off once.

>><<

Jake dumps bins out.

Lucy June fills the bins back up.

>><<

Jake would always rather be playing.

Lucy June would always rather be eating.

>><<

If Jake's hungry, he doesn't really notice what he's eating - with the exception of sweet peppers - he'll chomp right through it, tell me it's "delushous," and ask to be excused.

Lucy June will survey her food and, with eyebrows raised and chin tilted up, will carefully pick out that one exact bit.

>><<

Jake is the opposite of coy. When I'm out of the room, and I hear Lucy June cry, I can call and ask what happened. Jake won't skip a beat: "I hit her."

Lucy June has already grasped the concept of hiding things from me. She tried to sneak away with more ornaments off the Christmas tree than I could count.

>><<

Jake and I will play the nice little game of mistake/consequence/meltdown/timeout, and as soon as timeout is over he will skip away unfazed to the next moment's play. Jake's never held a grudge. And he's literally never grumpy.

Lucy June will trip on her socks and look around for who to blame. Her poutface is positively masterful.

>><<

Lucy June is a kisser and a cuddler.

When Jake was around her age, he snuggled with me approximately once. And that's how I figured out he had Roseola.

And that's all she wrote. Top of the Sunday to you, my friends!

On Preschool

So thanks to travel and illness and holidays and my laptop hard drive totally spazzing out, this blog has not been getting any attention.

Save yourself some grief and back up your hard drive right now. We had most of our really important stuff in the cloud, but we hadn't backed up our images since like mid 2013. Stupid stupid stupid. So now we're playing the lovely game of Just How Much is It Worth to You to Retrieve Those Baby Pics.

Blergh.

Instead of blogging and fretting about all my lost data, I've been working to build some structure into our days - A Mother's Rule of Life style. I read the book ages ago, when Jake was a few months old, and I could never get past any initial endeavors to schedule our day because I was too overwhelmed and Jake was too unpredictable.

My life isn't exactly a Caribbean sunset now, but I have more of a sense of what rhythms I can count on to build order around.

One of the things I'm doing is starting some preschool stuff with Jake.

I ordered this book after Rachael blogged about it, and two days in, it's going pretty well.

Jake LOVES it.

I never imagined doing any kind of preschoolery stuff with my kiddos. In my mind, Preschool = Overkill. I dreamed that their worlds would be wide with play and imagination, but instead, by 11am I was merely getting a stream of requests to play on Papa's iPad. So on days when the weather pushes us inside and I have no recourse to his primary teacher (mud), Jake needs more stimulation, and as much as I want to be this super creative mom, for now, we have a preschool workbook that we do during Lucy Juney's morning nap.

My husband is very sure I will homeschool our kids. I am very much NOT sure. This is very typical of my marriage.

Perhaps we will just wait for the fruits of my preschool labor. Because so far...

they're "hopeful" at best.

I'd love your thoughts on indoor activities I could do with a NOT laid-back three year old. Even shoot me a link to a Pinterest board, if you have one.

7 Quick Takes: Catch Up Catch Up

Hello hello, little blog, how I've missed you.

Life has been swimming along, and I've been swimming with it. Not drowning or anything, just not blogging. I meant to blog basically every day. . . just like I meant to finish our Christmas shopping before Advent. I'm planning to learn more self-discipline in my thirties, and how to meal plan, and how to shower regularly. It's going to be a sexy decade.

- 1 -

The house is still in various stages of done, and no single room is finished. We elected to get every room at least functioning before going back and finishing things up. We're pretty much there, except Jacob insists that the garage counts as a room and not a black hole of overflow and therefore insists on putting up shelving for all of his garage-y things before we put trim in the bathroom or finish the backsplash in the kitchen.

This and other stressors encouraged us to flee marital discord in favor of NOLA:

- 2 -

Jacob and I traipsed off to New Orleans to "get away" with some friends because that's what couples are supposed to do sometimes. We had the best time. We took basically zero pictures because all I wanted to do was eat. So I did.

One moment late Friday night, when all the cocktails had been drunk, I sat on a stoop eating fried chicken and Jacob was singing Iko Iko Wan Dey with a man wearing a washboard on a bicycle. And that pretty much sums up the trip.

- 3 -

Back at the ranch, my mother in law was watching the kiddos, and in a too exuberant moment promised to make Jake pie for every meal. My mother-in-law however is a hippy mama if ever there was one and spurns sugary desserts almost as zealously as she keeps promises to her grandchildren, and so began an onslaught of blueberry goatcheese pie, zucchini pie, chickpea pie.

Jake still dearly loves his Abu, but he is slightly more suspicious of pies.

- 4 -

We watched Sense and Sensibility last night, and I'm proud to say that it was the first time I watched it without falling in love with Willoughby. It helped that I'd just reread the book, but I also think I'm just getting older, more mature, and trading some of my Marianne for a bit more Elinor.

Emma Thomson's Sense and Sensibility is my favorite Jane Austen movie. I prefer it even to the BBC Pride and Prejudice. I haven't ventured very far into the world of Austen film adaptations, but I've seen my fair share. Where do your allegiances lie??

- 5 -

We put up our Christmas tree. It's a Norfolk Pine, and the very nice man at Home Depot told me it's also called a Hawaiian Christmas Tree.

Whenever Jacob describes my Christmas decoration efforts he uses words like "bayou". . . I should probably rethink the beads.

And please ignore the table in this photograph, I just recently retrieved it from my mother's house because its size was indispensable, but I painted it when I was fourteen and like the rest of my fourteen year old style decisions needs to go the way of a decade and a half ago. So repaint it I shall, as soon as. . . I don't know.

- 6 -

I never posted pics of the kiddos in their Halloween costumes. First time I ever dressed either of them up. I know it's December and I instagrammed it, but I never want to forget Lucy June's costume, so it has to go on the family blog, because excepting the time Grace dressed up Julia and Sebastian as Sebastian and Julia, it's my favorite Halloween costume ever.

I should probably Pinterest it. Ingredients: Six Pack Shiner Cheer & Paper Plate. Dispose of beer. (I find sisters-in-law are particularly good at this part. Inside joke! Love you, Jor! xoxo) Cut up packaging. Tape to Baby. Voila. A Baby Beer Bottle.

- 7 -

Jake was going to be a rocket, and in the eleventh hour a family friend called to let us know they had a Buzz costume if we wanted it. Score.

Jake still insists on wearing it about every three days. (He even wore it to a gathering at the house of our couple crush on Sunday. They hardly noticed because they're cool like that and their youngest son met us on the porch with nary a hello and said: "My pants are so so huge because I'm wearing shorts underneaf dem." So yeah. We're in like flynn.)

Linking up with Kelly!