Welcome to her world.

One of the risks of being super-skinny:

You find out, six hours into your day, that your underwear are on sideways.

It’s a dangerous wedgie of a proposition. Just ask Ruby.

Because this definitely does not happen to me.

Eau de ewww.

For the last three weeks, we’ve been raising  broiler chicks in the garage. For the last one week, I’ve been smelling the broiler chicks in my house.

It smells like a barn in here.

While two in diapers are other random children leaving messes in other random places, my house doesn’t always smell so rosy. It often smells like bleach (or Simple Green Lemon, my cleaner of choice) from cleaning up those messes.

I cannot bleach away the scent of the chicks. It is time for them to move to the barn, thankyouverymuch.

It took some convincing to get Blaine to believe me that it stinks in here. Then his stuffy nose unstuffed and I won that discussion, hands down.

When the eau de chick poop overpowers the eau de oil based paint I’m using on the bathroom vanity, something is desperately wrong.

Overboard.

I’ve been cleaning. Call it spring cleaning, or whatever you will, but I’m determined to find ways to organize better, clean things up, help this house maintain on it’s own.

Today, I was working in the bathroom. I touched up the paint on the walls, repainted the trim, and took all the doors off our ancient ugly vanity. Until the day comes that we can replace it, I’m painting it white. It’s the same style vanity that my parents had when I was a kid. Not so fancy anymore. I took everything apart and handed drawers and doors to Eden, Sterling, and Ruby to take up to the shop for me to sand and paint them up there.

Ruby took the drawer and looked at me with a confused look on her face.

“We don’t need these anymore either?”

Apparently I’ve gotten rid of enough things lately. Nothing is safe.

Copyingbird.

During a discussion regarding the mockingbirds that are taking up residence in our trees lately, Blaine told Sterling that they copy whatever they hear. He demonstrated with a whistle, and he and the mockingbird had quite the interlude.

Sterling, however, was confused.

“But how can they copy it? Do they have copy machines?”

My kids are rather technologically illiterate compared to most these days. I thought.

That was funny.

Butter.

Yesterday, we went grocery shopping. We needed bread – I buy that about every 5 weeks – and a week and a half worth of groceries. I hate taking all the kids these days, but that’s what yesterday needed to be.

Five hours in, ready to go home, worn out from dealing with kids and people and car seats and prices and hearing people say how full my hands were, I bought butter.

Thrilled that the price of butter, at $1.40 a pound, was cheaper than I’d seen it since fall of 2010, I bought butter.

I failed to remember the 20 loaves of bread sitting in the van that needed to hit the freezer too, thought I had plenty of freezer space, and bought butter.

32 pounds of butter.

Did I mention it was a good price?

Oh dear.

Time for some vocab. After I finish laughing.

Eden’s doing a report on Thomas Edison for our homeschool co-op. A voracious reader with a seven year old vocabulary, she was telling me about what she’d read.

“A bear he’d caught in town and tied to a tree broke loose, blundered into his lab, and wrecked hay-vock. What’s hay-vock mean anyway? And I don’t know what blundered means either.”

Wreaked. Havoc.

She’d read it a week earlier.

I need her memory. She needs a dictionary.

Happy half-birthday, Mr. Pierce.

These little toes,

these baby blues,

and this sweet smile

first made their appearance

six months and forty minutes ago.

Quite the little man he’s becoming.

He’s working hard to sit on his own, still all gums and no teeth, blond as can be, and quite opinionated. Nursing between two and six times, every night, growth has not been an issue. Rolling both ways, but, seeing no need to be on the floor long enough to try crawling, he’s still mostly immobile. Temper tantrums he’s perfected, drooling is his hobby, chewing on anything he can grab is his favorite past time. Other than, ahem, eating. He’s not tried anything besides milk thus far, but the end of that one is coming. He’s quite curious about all this eating he sees happening around him and feeling left out that he’s not involved.

Happy half-birthday, littlest man.

Love,

Momma