Mobile Babies

A first time mom reads all the baby handbooks, questions her friends, scans the internet parenting sites ALL to find out how soon her little bamboosa will start to crawl.

The picture of a cute scuttling infant merrily scooting around a room, content now to reach his toys on his own, or bring his smiling self over to his momma.......it just can't happen soon enough!

A fourth time mom knows better. She knows that a mobile baby means she must constantly scan the floor for chokables, pencils, wads of dog hair that her baby will get to and eat. She knows that she now must haul the baby on her hip, set him down in the center of the room and get the necessary work done in timed increments of about 7 seconds. She then will pause, stop the baby from pulling up to a standing position by his hands and newly cut teeth, and move him again to a safe area and get her second, third and fourth 7 second installments in.

So Baby Benjamin is now the mobile baby. His preference is the army crawl, but he also does this funny hopping thing where he starts on his hands and knees and then pushes by his arms, lifts both knees off the floor and gets a little forward hop. He is also pulling up on everything, letting go with one hand......screams with glee.....lets go with two hands and then topples to the ground.

Mobile babies are cute, but oh so much trouble!

my lovely friends and family

Yes, a new post will be coming so very soon.....
Really, it will.
Please come back tomorrow evening and find something delightful.

When it is hard to homeschool

• When you have 6 loads of laundry heaped like hay stacks in the family room.
• When the pots and pans from the night before are not yet washed and you forgot to run a full dishwasher.
• When the baby woke you up three times and another kid woke you up an additional time from a nightmare.
• When it is raining and gloomy outside for the 6th day in a row.
• When the dog came in from being let outside and obviously rolled in something so disgusting that a bath is required.
• When you are out of peanut butter, bread, and apples.

When all these apply on a Monday? Forget it. These are the days where I either see it as an opportunity to develop perseverence, or a day to scrap most of the day and do laundry and play risk. Making that decision is not taken lightly, as I do not want to still have school days and things to be learned into June. I compromised: We did everything but history and science, we went to the grocery store over lunch hour, I took a nap during baby's nap and kid's independent work, the dog spent lots of time outside and I had a dose of caffine.

If Audrey was a captain of a pirate ship

This would be her Pirate Code:

1. No outside food allowed in the captain's room

2. Never go overboard

3. Never go to battle without the captain

4. Don't fight the crew

5. No girl friends

6. Never bring a girl on the ship

Here lies the code of conduct as laid out by Audrey. This document she created after our studies this afternoon regarding piracy during the time of exploration~

Old toys can make the rainy week a little sunnier.

A week ago Chloe went in the basement and brought up her old fisher price big doll house.
She cleaned it up and it is now in the living room serving as a hotel for all of the 63 or so pet shop toys. It has been a rainy week, but hardly noticed by Audrey (and Chloe and even Jackson -- what a brother!) who have all had some "fun" playing pet shops. Even Benjamin likes to take the bunny out of the mini van and turn it over and spin the wheels. Yeah for Chloe for making old toys feel like new again!
13 and 11 year olds put quite a creative spin on the game with their interesting imagination...but Audrey outdoes them all with her zany-ness and we all have to sit back, laugh and wonder where she got it from......

Halloweeen Fun!

Baby scarecrow

Fairy Godmother

Super girl

what?!?

Oh. Garbage Bag Super Hero