His neck, my heart: laid bare.

(First haircuts will do that. Sigh!)

Our topic this week was suggested by Sasha: BARE. Bare trees, bared teeth, barely there? Bare your soul. In six words.

Add your own in the comments, or on your blog. Then link up, below!

Wonder what we’re doing, or just want me to email you our next topic? Check out this page for all the info you need.

Over the weekend I thought: tomorrow I shall take pictures of our day! and then do a “day in the life” sort of post! that will be fun!

So I took pictures. But not of everything, because that would be the world’s longest post and we’d still be sitting here next Tuesday, reading and reading. (Or else we would scroll through the first two pictures and then give up and click away. One or the other.)

But taking a whole bunch of pictures is exhausting, so you got one tooth picture and that is all. I will do the rest Tuesday! I thought. And then: or Wednesday! I thought. And here it is almost THURSDAY, and if I keep writing it will be LATER STILL, so now I shall just throw up some pictures and you will be left to believe our days are exactly as weird as they look.

Some of us are super into identifying shells in a Shell Compendium. (Also in a field guide and a Shell Encyclopedia, but how many shell pictures do we really need here?)

Reading. Always reading. So much reading.

One sickly girl, playing dollhouse castle.

… until one toddler brother comes through the room a minute later. The castle has fallen, m’lady.

Plus woodworking. Because why WOULDN’T you give an eight-year-old a saw?

And give the five-year-old a drill, for good measure. (This drill is kid-powered, not electric, and is awesome.)

There was other stuff, some involving pencils, and lunch, and my friend Heather dropping off a bag full of doilies from the thrift store. I AM SURE YOU CAN IMAGINE. THE END.

 
This week’s Six Word Fridays topic was suggested by Sasha: BARE. Bare yard? Barely hanging on? Bare your soul for us, in six words, this Friday.

Our third First Lost Tooth.

Camera fixed! (Only a temporary fix, but whatever! I got my picture.) First lost tooth, documented. Guilt, addressed. I love when things work out.

First lost tooth. My camera? Broken.

Our topic this week was suggested by Jen: GUILT. Have it? Relinquish it? Spill it. In six words.

Add your own in the comments, or on your blog. Then link up, below!

Wonder what we’re doing, or just want me to email you our next topic? Check out this page for all the info you need.

There was tea. So that's something.

ME: grr I am trying to do a craft but it’s not working
ME: and eli was awoken crankily from his nap
ME: and sadie is still (also crankily) not feeling well.
ME: this afternoon is mildly crummy.
ME: I think I’m going to have to break out the glue gun.

DANE: sounds drastic…

ME: IT’S ONLY FOR THE CRAFT PORTION OF THE PROBLEM MAN.

I have no magic bullet for the rest of it. But hey, the glue gun totally fixed the craft thing.

We have this convo... every day.

Our topic this week was suggested by Adrienne: CHAT. Online? In person? Are you chatty, or not so much? Chat us up, in six words.

Add your own in the comments, or on your blog. Then link up, below!

Wonder what we’re doing, or just want me to email you our next topic? Check out this page for all the info you need.

My five-year-old, my Audrey, is very almost six. Less than a month. SIX. Five is a big number, but six is pretty much the fast track to ten, and from there you blink twice and they’re fully grown. (I assume. My oldest is eleven, so I just try not to blink. Ever.)

It’s a weird teeter-tottering place, I think, when you’re parenting kids on the brink of the Next Stage, whatever stage that is. Little kid parenting one minute, big kid the next. Or baby parenting, then toddler parenting.

Do you need this or this or this, little one? Are you asking me to reassure you of where the boundaries are, or are you telling me you’re ready for more independence? I get the calculations right one minute, but I’m off the next, and it’s an ongoing adjustment. Some days the balance is a little tricky.

Other days it’s like having one foot on each side: we’re still here, now, but we’re getting a glimpse into there, the next place, as we push through the door between the worlds, and the view is amazing.

Using your words? Thanks for sharing.*

*The photo’s unrelated, but come on. How could I not share?

Our topic this week: SHARE. Overshare? Need to share? Share your wisdom.

Add your own in the comments, or on your blog. Then link up, below!

Wonder what we’re doing, or just want me to email you our next topic? Check out this page for all the info you need.

ME: Sadie? Are you done with your castle?

SADIE: What?

ME: Are you done with your castle.

HER: What?

ME: Are you DONE with your CASTLE?

HER: WHAT?!

ME: oh, I meant chair.

DANE: And you can’t even blame that one on autocorrect.

Well. I could try.

Sometimes when we start a project, we have more ambition than energy. Things start off great, we leap right in, but then we’re derailed by meals and trips to the potty and need for sleep and–you know how it is.

We end up with a tray of salt dough ornaments on the counter for weeks, waiting to be used to decorate something. Anything. Or we’ll have a stack of photos in frames waiting to be hung up. Or a stack of neatly-cut paper squares, waiting to be origamied into a tiny village. Or rolls of ribbon waiting to be braided into something, I don’t even remember what.

So you will understand my excitement when I say: woohoo, we actually hid the rocks! Hiding them may have taken just as long as painting them. Hard to say for sure.

The kids first hid one (not pictured) on the sidewalk in front of our house, and then checked on it 84,752 times per day until it disappeared.

After that we decided that if we just kept putting more rocks in that one spot, eventually passersby would catch on, and it wouldn’t really be anonymous anymore. So we took a batch out into the wider world.

Finding places to hide rocks where they will be found, but are not too obvious, and where they don’t look like someone left them there as decorations, and also are not too close together a la an Easter egg hunt? Is kind of hard.

About halfway through our outing, the kids decided to start hiding them in the front yards of people we know. (Hi friends! Hope you weren’t freaked out by the anonymous rock delivery and/or the small children darting in and out of your shrubbery!)

So pretty! Almost as though it just grew there…