I just realized that I didn’t take a single photo of the cupcakes Annalie decorated for her birthday party today. I took the photo above of one of the unfrosted cupcakes, because happy cupcake is happy, and that’s kinda neat. I took a few shots of the kids eating cupcakes at the party, but the decorations probably aren’t very visible, and who knows when I’ll get around to downloading those photos off the memory card anyway.

I’m bummed that I don’t have a picture of the cupcakes, because she really had fun decorating them. But I also think, “Eh. Whatever.” And that indifference bums me out a little bit too.

There was a reason I was kind of distracted today, though. Sonja—one of my favorite people on this or any other planet—was busy having her baby yesterday and today, and I was checking my phone every time I even imagined it might have beeped or buzzed, anxious for news. From the little I’ve heard, the day was far more exciting than they would have liked, but everyone is fine. Whew. Also, yay! Baby!

I was going to try to blog every day this month. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to make a big thing of it, I just wanted to set myself the goal and see if I could reach it. I did great for nine days. Maybe I should just be thankful I got that many posts written, and work on keeping myself afloat until there’s another calm week when I can write a post every day. Maybe intermittent blogging is all I can do right now.

I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that it’s impossible for me to do all the things I need to do in my daily life (homeschool an 8-year-old and parent a toddler, be a halfway decent wife/daughter/sister, keep the clutter and dishes and laundry from taking over the house, cook the occasional meal, crochet baby blankets and golden snitches, keep up email correspondence with friends, sleep more than four hours a night) AND ALSO blog on a regular basis. At least not like I used to, with lots of photos and thoughtfully composed paragraphs.

I just…can’t. And that makes me really sad. I don’t know what else could possibly give at this point. I guess I could give up reading and TV. I’ve already basically given up painting, and am trying to find a way to cram exercising back in there somewhere.

Sigh.

Me at 1 year old, in 1976.

There are so many violets in our backyard in the spring that it looks almost completely purple for a couple of weeks. It’s one of the reasons Elliora’s middle name is Violet, because our backyard looked like this around the time we found out we were pregnant. It was actually even more violet-covered a week before this, believe it or not. It’s almost the end of violet season around here.

Here’s an alternate Day 7 shot. Our LED twinkle lights (they’re not Christmas lights because we keep them up year-round) cast interesting pools of light and shadow on the ceiling and walls around them. I was inspired by Bex’s shot of her grandparents’ vintage bunch-of-grapes lamp and the cool shadows it cast.

Hey, look! I am actually done blogging every single one of my 7 Days photos from the run that was only a couple of weeks ago! Not only that, but…I MADE IT THROUGH THE WHOLE WEEK WITHOUT GETTING SICK. IT WAS A 7 DAYS MIRACLE! *cue angelic choirs*

I expect to come down with the plague shortly, now that I said that. (Although I originally wrote that almost two weeks ago and I’m still not sick.) I guess there was that toothache I had that week—really that I had had on and off since around my birthday almost a month ago. It was finally resolved on Day 6 when I went to the dentist. It turned out the problem was a cavity in one of my remaining wisdom teeth. The solution was easy: pull the tooth. It was done and I was driving home less than 30 minutes later, much relieved. I don’t really count that as being sick.

While I’m blogging, a couple of quick things:

• Up until a few days ago, I was more than a month behind on uploading photos to Flickr. I’m still taking photos every day, I just don’t get around to doing anything with them. I’m starting to catch up and am hoping to be caught up before I leave for Omaha. Wish me luck.
• Instagram finally released an app for Android phones, just a few days before Facebook bought Instagram. So I’m enjoying using Instagram as a new, easy way to share photos from my phone on Twitter and Facebook. Or you can see my photos here.
• Elliora has a new favorite all-purpose word, suitable for all sentiments and occasions: MINE. Her dad’s laptop? “Mine!” Annalie’s jacket? “Mine!” My frosted mini-wheats? “Mine mine mine!” Lily the cat? “MIIIIIINE!”
• We’re heading to Omaha on Friday, just me and the girls. (Poor Troy, he has to stay here and work, and have the house to himself for a week and a half.) When we come home, my mom and my niece are coming with us. They’re going to stay and visit for three whole weeks and will be here to celebrate Annalie’s eighth birthday. We’re all pretty excited about that.
• Party plans for Annalie’s birthday were on hold for a while, because we weren’t sure if my mom was going to be able to come here, or if she’d have to stay in Omaha because of some family obligations. Now that we know, I have sorted out the party plans and I think it’s gonna be really fun. It’s a big relief to finally have a plan.
• Chris wrote something great about blogging with two small children that expressed perfectly how I feel, so I’m just going to quote her:
  

  Well, I’d still love to have an awesome, regularly-updated website. That endeavour is sitting on a back burner, as our time and energy are all earmarked for other stuff for a while.

  In my mind I have an enormous stovetop with quite a lot of burners, especially at the back.

• I started a page to keep track of all the words Elliora says. She’s adding about three or four new ones every day. There’s a button for it over on the sidebar. —>

How on earth did it get to be mid-April already!?

On Day 6 of 7 Days, I asked Annalie to go outside on the deck and play with Elliora for a bit while I cleaned up the kitchen. She didn’t really want to, but she did it anyway, wrapping up in her blanket and grouching her way out there. Despite her reluctance, I thanked her politely. (I’d gotten my way, after all, which makes it easier to be polite!)

I saw her pick up a piece of sidewalk chalk and brightly suggested I could give her some sentences to write for handwriting practice. “How about, ‘My mom is awesome’? Or maybe ‘I love my mom! She’s the best ever!’”

Annalie gave me a dirty look and said, “How do you spell ‘stupid’? I laughed, said she could figure that one out on her own, and went back to cleaning the kitchen.

A few minutes later, Annalie called out, “Mom, can you please come and see what I drew?” I went out on the deck to see her sitting next to this drawing, fighting a grin.

She drew me scolding her, and herself imagining blowing a raspberry at me. See the little tongue in the thought bubble? I cracked up and told her that was very smart, because blowing raspberries in her head is much less likely to get her into trouble than doing it in someone’s face. She laughed, all hostility gone.

I love that Annalie can pour her anger or frustration into creating something–a drawing, a dance, a puppet show–and the negative feelings seem to evaporate in the process, leaving only the art.

Then, even though I had another idea planned for that day’s photo, I took a picture of the drawing and all our feet for my 7 Days self-portrait. How could I not?

These two. They’re such stinkers sometimes, but they make life so very fun.

Last week, we made an impromptu trip down to Southern Virgina to see Karyl and her girls.

Karyl and I are both Navy wives. We’re accustomed to our husbands being gone for weeks or months at a time, and working long hours when they’re not gone. Most of the time, we deal with it just fine.

Once in a while, we struggle. It just happens that last week, we were both struggling a little bit. That made it seem like the perfect time for a 7 Days meet-up.

And you know what? It was. We arrived on Tuesday and had a great time hanging out, eating good food, playing outside, talking and laughing together. Grace and Annalie immediately jumped right back into the friendship they established when Karyl and her girls visited us last summer, when Sonja and Noah were visiting. And Mary Ellen loved Elliora. She seemed to think she was a living doll, and Elliora didn’t seem to mind that at all. Anytime we walked anywhere, Elliora walked straight to ME and grabbed her hand.

I dragged everyone all the way to Virginia Beach, to my favorite Greek restaurant, Elia’s. The hummus and pita there are to die for, and the rest of the food is delicious too. We were regulars at Elia’s when we lived in Virginia Beach over a decade ago, and just like every other time we’ve been there since we moved away—even when years have gone by between visits—Elia remembered us as soon as we walked in the door.

We sat in a booth right next to a high wall. On the other side of that wall was the grill, and Annalie and Grace amused themselves by occasionally standing on the seat and peeking over to chat with Elia and the other people working that day, all of whom seemed to get a kick out of it. Everyone enjoyed the food, especially Elliora. She took bites out of a lemon, rind and all; ate the hummus by the fingerful after we ran out of pita; and gnawed a kabob full of chicken clean. Annalie even branched out from her usual chicken nuggets, and thought the chicken kabobs and rice were really tasty.

The next morning, we all walked Grace to school and got to see her classroom and meet her lovely teacher.

Walking back to Karyl’s, I spotted this heart-shaped rock in the dirt path. I love finding random hearts in the world like this.

We stopped at the playground to let the kids blow off some steam, and so we could get our 7 Days shots.

The theme for Day 5 was FRESH. Karyl’s had the idea that we could be getting some fresh air, which we certainly got playing on the swings. But even more than the air, the time spent with a friend refreshed me. Thanks again, Karyl! We went home with lighter hearts, already looking forward to the next visit.

Isn’t it amazing how the internet makes neighbors and friends of people who live across the globe from each other? Lauren and I had a bit of fun with our Day 4 photos, uploaded as she was getting ready for bed in Australia and I was waking up and having breakfast in the U.S. (When my photo is viewed here in the 7 Days pool [look to the thumbnails at the right] we are waving at each other.)

If you’re in the U.S. and you’ve been to a Target store recently, you might recognize the rainbow in my 7 Days photo. I wish I’d taken a picture of it from another perspective, but I was in a hurry to get Elliora home because it was past her naptime and she was getting very crabby, so I just grabbed this shot very quickly on our way out. It’s a big mobile, for lack of a better word, of strips of colored cardboard in a wave pattern, hanging from the ceiling just inside the entrance.

Coincidentally, I’m doing a book giveaway right now for my friend Rainbow‘s first book Attachments. (See what I did there?) There’s also a review of the book and an interview. Go check it out and leave a comment to win a copy of the book!

Since the 7 Days theme for Day 2 is LIGHT, I decided to play with the Color Flashlight app on my phone. It does all kinds of trippy things like strobe light, police light, disco, even a photo of a flickering lighter for holding up at concerts. For this photo, I used the rainbow effect and a slow shutter speed. I drew a star because stars are one of my favorite things to doodle, in any medium.

You can just see that I’m wearing my TeeFury WHOVIAN t-shirt. That’s the one that I accidentally ordered two of, thanks to a glitch with the first order. Rather than returning it, I decided that was the universe’s way of telling me that it wanted Bonnie to have a WHOVIAN t-shirt, too. And she wore it to Disneyland on her birthday and it got her a free extra ride on Star Tours thanks to the Time Lord in disguise who was working there.

Can anyone tell where in my house I’m sitting? Clues: this location has featured in one of Annalie’s 7 Days photos before. It’s one of the darkest spots in our house during daytime, and a rather unique thing to find in a residential home.

*Suggested music for reading this post: “Starlight” by Muse. Coincidentally, Bonnie introduced me to this song when she gave me a mix CD a while back. This has been a very Bonnie-tastic post.

It’s 7 Days time again! That quarterly time of year when a group of some of the funnest, nicest, most creative people on Flickr spend a week taking self-portraits and then commenting on each other’s photos. I was on my way to bed when I realized it was technically Saturday and I could take my Day 1 photo. Here it is: me, being a big ol’ nerd with Photo Booth in the dark dining room at 2am.

I took this shot first, but decided it was too creepy for Day 1, even though it made me laugh.

On a side note, it’s come to my attention that I have not been keeping very good track of the various dottery mugs and crocheted whatsits that I’ve promised people. If you’ve discussed a custom order of some kind with me but have not heard a peep from me about it since, could you check my crafting queue and see if you’re on it? If you’re not, please shoot me an email or leave me a comment, letting me know. Thanks.

B: Oh, nothing. The usual.

T: You do remember that I don’t have to go to work tomorrow, right?

B: What!? I didn’t know that!

T: Yeah, I texted you about that, on Wednesday, I think.

B: *searches texts on phone, does not find any mention of Friday*

T: Give me your phone. *searches, finds text that mentioned day off Friday got cut off*

B: Didn’t you wonder why I didn’t reply to that part?

T: I thought maybe you didn’t want to believe it was true!

B: I guess this explains why you’re still up at 1am, reading Harry Potter.