A Week in the Life

The sun rises so ridiculously early in the Midwest in June, y'all.  By 4:30 AM, it's full-on daylight.

Al said last night, "We're going to get some of those black-out blinds like in Cameron Diaz's bedroom in the move The Holiday."

"Ooooh!  Can we get the bedside button to raise and lower them like she had too?" I thrilled.

"Absolutely, only your button's name will be Al, and you won't so much push it as just give it a gentle nudge."




When your whole family wakes up before 6 AM thanks to the full-on daylight in all the bedrooms, you get to take advantage of the farmer's market.

Where you lay around on a blanket in the shade and fervently wish you were still in your bed.



And when you're revived enough to get up and run around, your Mom will stick you up in a tree to keep you from getting too far away, and go back to napping on the blanket like a lazy Mama hippo in cut-off jeans and sunglasses.



Bean did a section in school this spring about butterflies, and she's been begging to plant a butterfly garden for weeks. Yesterday we picked up some pretty flowers at the local nursery and popped them into the black soil in a ring around the base of the butterfly bush I put in last fall.

While I was digging to soften up the earth so that the kids could make holes for the plants, we discovered a buried cache of "dinosaur bones!"  And after that, I finished planting the rest of the flowers by myself while my two wee archeologists carefully washed, examined and exclaimed over our finds.  And then we put those in the butterfly garden, too.  They look a lot like rocks, but don't be fooled.  Those are the spiny plates from a prehistoric stegosauraus's back, my friends.



Peabody and I are still taking our afternoon naps together, so Bean spends that time in her room reading and crafting. One afternoon she surprised me by finishing up this tiny raccoon buddy from an American Girl kit.  She has immeasurably more patience and stick-to-it-iveness than her Mama.  Which is pretty much any at all.



The weather's been brilliant here.  The kids had some friends over one afternoon to take a dip in the kiddie pool, and then spread out towels to let the sun warm and dry them.   They look like itty bitty teenagers here, don't they? They wanted music so I put on The Eagles for them and there was a fit of eye-rolling so violent I'm pretty sure the ground buckled.  I'm surprised you couldn't hear them groaning at me from your house. I don't have any Bieber, so we eventually agreed on silence.

Except for Peabody belting out a few hopeful bars of "Angelina Ballerina" here and there.

Poor kid just wants to be one of the girls.  Sadly, he does not yet understand the ever-shifting culture of the 7-year-old set.



I made a salad of chopped romaine, torn basil, mozzarella pearls and grape tomatoes with some balsamico and olive oil for lunch one day and sat out on the back porch to eat it.  That's just water with a lime in it,  not a gin and tonic.

 By mid-July? Can't make any promises.



That ice cream Bean is holding?  That's only two scoops.  She ate the whole thing.  And then she metabolized it before we were out the door of the ice cream shop and asked for a ham and cheese sandwich when we got home.



Where does someone with absolutely no body mass put that much food? In her top knot?

As I mentioned, Bean has her big annual dance recital this weekend. I took this picture before we left for dress rehearsal last night. It makes me all heart-clutchy to look at it.  After the dress rehearsal we ate pizza at one of our favorite restaurants. Peabody ate a LOT of pizza. And then? On the way home? In the car? He projectile vomited all of that pizza and also evidently the four previous days' meals as well right out onto the back of the seat and floor in front of him. I have never seen so much barf in my entire life.

That made me heart-clutchy in a totally different way.

(I didn't take an Instagram of the barf.)

(You're welcome.)



(God makes little kids this cute so you will feel sorry for them and not toss them out the window in disgust after they fill the entire floor of your car with pizza-and-lemonade vomit.)


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I've linked this post, featuring some of my favorite Instagram photos from the past week, to InstaFriday at Life Rearranged.


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