Full

It's kind of hard to imagine how I fill those so many hours of so many days that stretch out on either side of my existence as a stay-at-home (again, misnomer, nobody staying home around here) mom.

Our days are filled with trips to the beach:





Sewing cool pants (one of several pairs accomplished that day):



Trips to the flower garden (Tony took these first two):






Hiking (here at Point Defiance):





Not to mention piano lessons, Art Club, and playdates. Feeding the kids, and feeding them again. Nursing the littlest one, and nursing her again. Reading my way through the hearty stack of fiction novels that threatens to topple off my bedside table. Some mama friends and I have been talking about how when you are a mom, there are precious few things in your life that you get to be FINISHED with. Maybe this is why so many of us are drawn to crafting in some way or another. I can finish sewing a pair of pants, and be done with it. I will never, ever, ever finish the dishes; not for real, anyway, when another is sure to appear 5 minutes later.

Is it any wonder that I haven't had the time to fold my own laundry yet this week?

Still, the last little bit of paperwork that I finally took time to complete and send in to the Department of Health bore its intended fruit, and I can turn my head as I type and see my active Midwife License, neat and official in a frame I picked up from Goodwill - all we can really bother with these days - just for the occasion.

Hot!

Two days ago we washed the deck. And we didn't just wash it a little, oh no, we spent 6 hours pressure washing and scrubbing on hands and knees (my fingers still hurt). It was so clean when we were finished that it was probably cleaner than the floors inside the house. OK, certainly cleaner - it's been about a week since we vacuumed last. And then yesterday rolled around, all 90 degrees and ridiculously hot even in the shade (rare for Washington), and it was SO worth it.




It is much nicer to lay about in the shade reading than it is to swelter, right? I also got some spray paint (for the wicker furniture) and refinishing supplies for the tables, but those projects weren't done yet when I ran out of materials. It turned out to be pretty nice on the deck without the furniture there, maybe when we put stuff back some of it will live down in the yard instead - at least until winter rolls around.

Girliness has been reading chapter books aloud to BittyPrincess. I am extremely proud that this was their own idea and I'm also very glad that there's someone willing to read aloud, because I hate doing it. This may or may not make me a bad homeschooling parent. You want to read it? Then YOU read it.



And Chubble was, of course, very cute.



She's the first of my kids to enjoy hanging out on her tummy - the infamous "tummy time" that I think is such a crock of shit. I did a little (not too very heavy) research and basically concluded that "tummy time" is only really necessary if you're not holding the babies enough for them to get used to activating their core muscles to keep their balance. You don't need to go through the whole baby rotisserie (sleep on the back! tummy time! look, fun stuff overhead! play blankets!) if you're carrying them around. It sounds funny to say it like that, but yeah; I think it's easier to carry the baby around than it is to worry about whether they're developing properly as they're wiggling about on some surface somewhere. ANYWAY...baby feet!



Check out the eyebrows:



It's supposed to be high 90s today. I'm going to try to set up the tent before it gets too hot out there, so that we can sleep outside - it will be 70 degrees out there overnight, but potentially stifling in here.

Finished Voyager by Diana Gabaldon. I enjoyed it, certainly, but I'm finding the level of coincidence in the character reappearances to really stretch things to the point of scoffability, and I usually have a pretty high tolerance for that sort of thing (I love coincidentally running into previous characters as I read along! But many of them halfway across the world, independent from each other and for different reasons? I think you need to explain this one, Ms Gabaldon). Still, good book, and the next two in the series are sitting on my night stand waiting for me to finish Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which finally made it to my library reservation shelf. I'm only a few chapters in but I'm liking it; the proposed year is in the 1990s, but I can imagine this as being the future-as-imagined-today, too, which is some pretty serious staying power for a book written in the 1960s.