growing up fast

Sloane is TOO much. I have been SO attachment parenting good about holding her for 95% of her day and her life and she's been in a sling and I keep thinking 'at least she won't learn to crawl or walk because she never gets any practice nor has any reason to. Alas, she has been scooting in a not-true-crawl for some time now and then, out of no where, she suddenly can truck across a room in a proper crawl AND use her walker (any child-size chair will do in a pinch) to walk about the house. When she plods around it's as if she's stomping all over my feelings with no regard for my wishes that she remain a babe-in-arms for at least another year! Humph!
So, it's baby gates and constantly pulling her out of the kitchen cabinets, she stands and the armoire and takes out all her toys, she's pulling the books off the shelves...ugh. Yesterday marked a milestone: she knocked down the block castle Billie was working on. I know it's generally thought that babies impact the older sibling (how much can they impact when all they do is sleep and nurse for 3 months?) but up until this point she's just been there for them to cuddle and sing when the feeling takes them. Most of the time they are totally involved in their games or have their nose in a book and Sloane is just along for the ride- she's on their schedule, going in the sling or the backpack to their playgrounds. But now she's knocking down their castle...soon the grabbing will begin...and i think i've got to get ready for a whole new dynamic.
boxes of choclate do make me feel better- and i enjoy carrot cake a great deal.
and letterboxing is the coolest new thing ever. some random people hide a tupperware that contains a stamp, stamppad and a small notebook in the forest, along a trail. Then they post some cryptic directions on the internet (12 paces East of the quadruple tree) and we go round filling up our own little notebook with all the stamps we find. I've whittled a Solley5 stamp from an eraser and we've found 2 out of 3 on our first excursion (spotted one black snake as well)! We're addicted- it's a nice day of hiking for Bill and I (and Sloane gets a nap in the backpack) and the kids are motivated to keep walking through the woods in search of a treasure at the end of the clues.
More to write about unschoolers and meeting their free-spirited Moms and cape-clad children in the next post.

just pictures

It's a double blog day- because here's some more pictures- the house is getting together!!!


 

got skills?

Guess what we did two days ago? We learned to knit! I'm putting together an art closet with all sorts of activities so the kids can look it over and see what's enticing. Amoung the new items are some knitting looms and we just sat down for a couple hours and taught ourselves to knit. It was too cute. We made one little hat for Billie's baby 'Lola' and one little bag for batman. In other news Sloane is still unbelievably darling and people go WILD when they see her (just random strangers).



 

projects

We've been busy here- when we're not painting we're doing homeschool stuff and when we're not doing that - we're reading Captain Underpants books which the kids INSISTED we get from the library (which is awesome and we go 3 times a week) because Jackson saw an ad for that in one of his comic books. So...we're reading that and A Little Princess is collecting dust on Billie's nightstand. But when we're NOT reading Captain Underpants which is actually SO funny and all about oppressive teachers vying to crush any imaginative spirit in their classroom and general silliness. So...when we're not doing those things- we're putting on face paint and dressing up or the kids found this old building set and created these amazing inventions and you should just hear the list of the things these things are capable of. Jackson's system is a weather controller. Here is Sloane looking dubious about her sister's new face design- "a unicorn on each cheek and fancy swirls with glitter and really swirly all around the rest of my face."
This is how life used to be...but without friends- I miss you Tiff, Lucia, Nina, Jill, Emily, Megan, and the rest of you...
It's not the same hanging out with my friends that are cool (too cool to read blogs so that's why i can write about them here) who have pictures of boys bare bottoms on their cell phones and balk at the idea of riding in my mini-van. I remember being 19- sort of.