One photograph a day to make the world spin a little slower.
Is any birthday complete without the pure sugar high of a Mamele cake and wrapping paper ending up everywhere?
Meanwhile, when nobody was looking, S snuck back to polish off everyone’s pieces of cake. Aren’t you so confident in our babysitting skills, M & G?!!
Užgavėnės – everyone got into the spirit of scaring winter away in order to welcome spring to the land! This spring in particular has felt incredibly hard and long (mentally – not weather wise) and gosh I’m ready for hot days, warm evenings, and less wind. We live in a valley and the wind is truly intense in the spring. We’ve had a table flip over a fence, a flag ripped out of our flagpole so violently that the entire flag post is now hanging limply, we frequently find random objects in our yard that got pulled out of neighbors’ yards, and my kids’ cheeks, lips, and noses have been raw for weeks.
In E’s words: “Isn’t it Easter YET!?”
Cousin squad exploring new places together.
When video games and computer games are pretty nonexistent at home, this is what happen the second we walk into a library with the kids.
The perfect cousin combo. S comes up with the adventures and shenanigans (usually related to hunting for dinosaur fossils), E provides the enthusiastic backup support, and N keeps everyone in line (mostly), while trying to keep any real damage from happening (somewhat successfully).
M’s famous “Look” she gives Mom every time Mom a) tries turning the conversation from pleasant banalities to politics or b) says something that is factually unfounded – especially in the area of American civics or social studies.
When the kids were younger, I LOVED reading aloud. Then we hit the four-kid stage where it became a huge chore, primarily because the kids fought endlessly over who sat next to (or on top of. Or over.) me. Not just a “one and done” fight, but a “after every picture book” fight. I started reading less. Now I’m trying so hard to read more again, but we’ve entered a new phase. A “every time you ask them what they want me to read it’s a Minecraft book” phase. I try to pass that chore off to Vincas whenever I can.
She’s the Little Mama of our family: the one always desperate to be older than her actual age (five) and beyond excited the few times she gets to be in charge of anything. She’s usually pretty even keeled (except for when big brothers tease her one time too many) and incredibly responsible. She’s the kid who does school because she wants to (she’s five! I’m definitely not making her do school and would much rather she’d be off playing), is always down for earning a quarter by cleaning the living room for me, has ridden a two wheeler since she turned four, enjoys making her bed and arranging every stuffy on it, and helps cousin R with every coat that needs zippering. She loves twirly dresses, bows for Sunday mass, and all things unicorns and rainbows.
Our ladies are laying again! Thank goodness, seeing as egg prices just keep shooting up and up and up. We might finally start re-cooping (haha) some of our fowl-nancial investment!
Resist.
