Seeking Order in a Haphazard Way

As I reported in my previous post... I had a sick kiddo (or four) on my hands last week. Not fun. Not fun at all.
But not too bad, as sickies go. We have a lot to be thankful for.
Everyone is back on top of the weather.
And what weather we're having.  Thunderstorms? In November?  The booms were so loud the few pictures I actually have on my walls rattled.  Seriously.

This is not what I was going to write about. This distraction-while-typing thing happens to me a lot, even when the kridlets are in bed. Kridlets. I made that word up.  Then I joined urbandictionary.com just so I could add it and try to get a movement going.  The problem is, too many other people are all trying to introduce new words into our vocabulary and they probably get more chances to write because they don't distract themselves with utter nonsense!

WARNING: I'm about to present a picture of everyday life.  It isn't pretty.  Well, except for the serious baby and singing toddler.  Thanks to my Nine-year-old son, we have a permanent record of un-posed life.

 Me: surrounded by chaos and kridlets.

Anyway.

I am finding myself drawn to order and schedule lately, although my housework begs to differ.  But really, I am. Maddened by the "what to fix for dinner" chaos that haunts my 4:30 afternoon, I established a meal chart. Nothing new, nothing fancy, it is certainly nothing original.  But it helps.  That wasn't enough, because soon I found myself frustrated with the "what to put on our meal planning chart" problem.  So I almost-randomly decided that we will always eat specific food on specific days of the week. 

• Monday nights we always eat pasta.  Because I love pasta. And because The Father of My Children plays basketball every blessed Monday night.  I'd hate for him to be burdened down with a heavy meal. 
• Wednesday nights are Soup-and-Sandwich nights because it's also a "Church Night" and I thought soup would be a quick meal.  Only, it isn't always.  But oh well. Now my kridlets (see? I'm using it!) are learning to like different kinds of soup. 
•  Thursdays we have TexMex-style food because I haven't recovered from the taco obsession I had while carrying GBaby. 
• Sunday nights are cook-free nights and we have Nachos (made with leftovers from Thursday) and/or Popcorn.

Of course, I am without guidance for Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evenings but that's just because I haven't come up with specific foods to assign to those days. I'm sure I will, and I am hoping it involves The Father of My Children making some of his rather famous (at least as far as the kridlets - score extra points - and I are concerned) forays into the kitchen.

Here we are enjoying his delicious wings. I would never make wings from scratch.  I would have bought them pre-cooked in a bag from the grocer's freezer. But he's much more adventurous than I.

Why am I telling the World Wide Webfolks all this? Well, because. It's Monday night. I've decided that's the night I will write... and not feel one bit guilty about the housework.

Unplanned Treasure

So today I'm not doing what I wanted to.
Sickie-poo baby leaves me sitting with her in my arms.
We're watching youtube videos because it keeps her from crying.
And I resent that my projects were interrupted.
We watch this short music video from an artist I would never had called my favorite.
And now I'm crying.
And now I'm loving every minute "wasted" with my little ones.

Not a Real Blog Mommy

I feel as though each time I actually do click "PUBLISH POST" I must re-introduce myself since such great amounts of time lapse between entries. [Hi, My name is Honour, I have a lot of kids in a big house. My kids say funny things and entertain us endlessly. My house is old and a constant source of work.]

What keeps me from writing? There is no shortage of inspiration around here. There's this cute little Lover of Standing...

Can you see the delight on her face? Doesn't it make you want to go find an ottoman and hold on to it? I had no idea furniture-assisted standing was such a wonderful thing. Imagine what she'll think when she can be up without help! And how about that helpful boy in the background? I have no idea what I would do without him around. He makes me smile.

We've also had a slew of Birthdayness going on lately.

Someone is always celebrating around here. More cupcakes coming later this month.

We also have been watching a LOT of this:

I'm sure that my esteemed readers (thanks, Mom & Dad) will recognize this activity. All three of my oldest children have chosen to play parks & rec sports this season. So four afternoons out of the week find us watching soccer, soccer and flag football. I'm ready for it to end. Very ready.

So I'm not lacking inspiration, just time. What is it that takes up most of my time?

Life.
Messy.
Silly.
Sometimes Irritating.
Always with lots of Laundry.

Let's walk through this picture, the one that "Real Blog Mommys" never show.

Upper left hand corner: a Fall Dress I made for G.Baby. I am so proud of this dress, since I got all creative-and-adaptive with it, only loosely following a pattern and adding touches of my own. Full of vanity, I love every compliment that she receives while wearing it. If I were a Real Blog Mommy, I would have already posted a charmingly upbeat tutorial with lovely pictures of each vintage button (really vintage - rescued from the trash!) and a link to my etsy shop where you can purchase one for your own darling infant!
Is anyone picking up on my little burst of jealousy here?
Moving on.

Middle background, behind Baby's head: a Stack of games for the "Family Game Night" we never had. [Sorry kids.] A Real Blog Mommy would have not only held "Family Game Night," she would have coordinated clever snacks and had a meaningful lesson to go with each game. And invited the neighbors.
And taken great pictures.
And posted about it the next day.
Let's keep going.
Center of picture: Four baskets of laundry, in various stages of folding. Real Blog Mommys do not mention laundry. Their children are clothed at all times in adorable, hand-crafted togs that never become soiled.

Foreground: Playdough. Not homemade (as a Real Blog Mommy would have) but a true obsession of the green-dressed beauty. We take playdough to soccer games. To the grocery store (it stays inside the diaper bag there). To Grammy's house. She loves playdough. I hate it; it is messy and the colors are always mixing themselves up.

Foreground: The Boxcar Children. One of my favorite bits of children's literature. A Real Blog Mommy reads to her children nightly. I am just thrilled that my children are independant readers so they can fulfill their reading requirements for school with minimal involvement on my part. I just approve their books, initial their charts and smile... And then scramble at the end of each month because I remember that my kindergarten student isn't actually reading yet (although she interprets the pictures wonderfully and provides much more interesting dialogue than the authors provide) and we have to read 30 books before bedtime so that she can get her reward from her teacher tomorrow.

Center: Much-cuddled (if diaper-neglected just the teeniest bit) Baby. Caring for my children and trying to make our home a clean, loving environment for growing those children up takes up the majority of my time. I do not have a "real" job and I have absolutely no idea how "working mothers" actually hold their lives together. I seem to struggle just to find my way out of a grungy t-shirt. Our home is constantly messy and always enduring one improvement or another. We know from pictures that Real Blog Mommys have lovely homes, white teeth, well-behaved children and sew, cook, homeschool, publish books, run an etsy business, volunteer, and photograph their every perfect moment.

I suspect that they also have maids and nannys hidden outside the edges of each photograph. This suspicion maintains my feeble grasp on sanity. That and the fact that I absolutely love my life, messy, silly, sometime irritating and full of laundry.

PS -- for those of you that are worried, G.Baby spends almost no time on top of the dining room table. She is the only part of this picture that was posed. W.Beans and the various props happened to be there already and I just plopped the baby in there and snapped a few pictures. I promise.

Been Busy Much?

Life has continued to move along since I last updated my little spread here. Anecdotes and witticisms worthy of sharing with the World Wide Web are constantly popping into my brain, but time is not free around here. I know, I know; you make time to do what you want to do. This is slightly true.
Only slightly.
Some of us are busy enough making time for what we must do right now (can or freeze the produce that is ready right now and will not be available next week) that what we would really like to do (sleep, read, write, socialize) is put on layaway.
Do stores do layaway anymore? Or does everyone just use credit cards?

So maybe later this week I will write.

Or maybe in the winter. When the garden is not bursting with tomatoes.