This little monkey man is at the stage most would call “handful.”

How’s that?

Well, let’s just say I discovered this week that he has the amazing ability to turn a bottle of glue into a 35-ft trail across the house… in all of about 30 seconds.  Maybe he needed the trail to find his way back to the sink.  Maybe he was just trying to make it obvious that I really do live in a Family Circus cartoon.

Happily, I also discovered glue cleans up pretty quickly, even off couches.  Thank goodness for small miracles!

The little monkey stinker boy figured out how to climb out of the crib about… oh, 3 months ago, maybe.  This was bad news for bedtime, but good news for Freedom who had definitely outgrown the bassinet. 

My first two…

One fit well and was well-loved.  So well loved there came to be big holes over the knees.  The second and third pairs were cute – but didn’t fit so well.  Not really.  Not after four little heirs to the throne came along.

And so the Queen looked in her closet and sent out a proclamation.

“Enough is enough!” she said, “This is silly.  Let these useless old jeans be transformed into a beautiful skirt!”

The great necromancer, Google, was summoned and consulted, but -alas- the Queen was not satisfied.

“No, Google, I don’t want a short skirt!  Short skirts are all but useless with all the little princelings I must constantly chase down and carry.  Show me a pattern for a nice, long skirt.”

But, alas, Google came up empty handed.

Thus it happened that the Queen took matters…

Where it takes you fully 30 minutes to just wake up because you spent all night consoling a sick/in-pain colicy baby?

Where you’re still in your PJ’s at 9:30?  (Ugh!!!)

Where your oldest boy FINALLY follows directions to get dressed for the day… when he changes into his Tae Kwon Do uniform for the class at 3:45?

When it seems like you spend the entire day putting out fires, but get nothing done?

For example…

The kids come rushing into the bathroom (where you were hoping to at last find 30 seconds to yourself.  It is a bathroom, you know…) to let you know that the 2yo broke ALL the eggs.  (Except the hard-boiled ones, of course, they are careful to mention.  Thanks.)

And while you’re cleaning up the mess, the baby wakes up hungry.

And the big  kids are picking fights with…

<I s’pose I already mentioned it in Saturday’s post… but… oh well.  I wrote this first, actually.  And I took no pictures of the mountain we dropped off.  Sorry.>

Turns out, we had enough stuff to fill the back of the minivan to the top!   And you know what?  It was so invigorating, I have lots of energy for dejunking the rest of the house.  At least until the next drop-off.  Funny, how that works now.

Boy, have I come a long way since the nervous, “Oh, I just can’t bear to let all this go but I guess I will for the good of humanity and the sake of finding floor in the play room, but but but…”

Ha!

…

Ever determined to absolutely annihilate the clutter – not just shuffle it around like I used to do – I happily bring you another update.

What happened to the stuff when I cleaned out my hiding-junk-cupboard?

And the not-so-stealthily-hiding-junk shelf?

Well, the trash got trashed,

the give-away-stuff got given away (or is bagged for tomorrow’s dance-studio-fund-raising-garage-sale),

and the “keepers” have homes.

(There were very few keepers, in case you were wondering.)

The result was so beautiful I’m still riding this high.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, there was one “little” basket on one “little” counter in my kitchen,

mocking me.

Pointing its little finger of shame and keeping one little toe in the door, just to spite me.

Clever of me, though, to have all those leftovers in a basket.

• Baskets are pretty when they’re empty, so you can kind of pretend it’s pretty

…

In fact, he’s only really cried in the bath once, which is pretty amazing to me.

(Can’t blame him.  It was -ahem- slightly less than room temperature water.  Whoops!)

All my other babies hated baths when they were new.

Water birthing side-effects?  Maybe?

Spot Light child time!  Yay!

Everybody stands up, and a teacher reads from a simple bio-sheet the parents filled out previously.  We don’t have a huge Primary, so the teachers all fill them out to.

If what she reads applies to you, stay standing.  If it doesn’t match, sit down.  It’s always fun to guess who it is as more and more kids sit down.

“This person’s favorite hobby or activity is… blogging.”

Well, that did it.  Everrrrrrrrrrrrrybody sat down while the pianist -cough, cough- sheepishly stood up.  The kids all look around, puzzled, whispering to their friends, “What’s blogging?”

From a different teacher comes the confession,

“I don’t blog, but I like to read yours!” 

(?! She reads…

Confession: I haven’t written a post called “My New Best Friends – The Many Wonders of Baking Soda + Vingear” yet.  But maybe I won’t ever get to that post.  The desire to write something more fun here is going to usurp your need for context.  Oh well.  Try not to hold a grudge.  I know you would have loved it. 

Those of you who read The Lazy Organizer will be familiar with this household schedule plan thingamajig:

Morning:

Eat, Dress, WORK.

<Lunch>

Afternoon:

Free Time – for everyone, even Mom!

I like the idea.

• I like the idea that little kids work with mommy – they’ll learn how to do it and they’re still spending time with mommy, which all little children crave.
• I like the idea that Mom gets a nice chunk of “uninterrupted” free time every

…

Okay, it seems like just last week we were playing that game with Baby C.  And then a few days ago we were watching her, in her little toddler 2-ness, play it with Baby D.

Yesterday, I’m pretty sure, D was teaching it to E… And now today we have E tormenting teaching Baby F.  It’s such an amazing thing, time.

Cute, but what is the point here?

Um, yes.  Cinderella is now SIX.  Yep, more than one hand’s worth of fingers. Whoa.

I am very, very happy with how she’s growing up – which is a miraculous thing, since when she was three I had serious doubts about her living through another year, let alone turning into a charming, compassionate, understanding, vivacious little person.  Don’t you wish I was blogging back then?!  Me too.

But she is! The guinea pig child is turning…