Charlotte at Almost 6

As I am writing this, it's August 1, and we are in transit on the way home from our road trip. We are in... (I just legit had to look at my maps app to see)... Washington Court House, Ohio, which is a thriving (no) metropolis (no) in the middle of a cornfield (yes). It's beautiful here and the hotel is so new it smells like construction (in a good way) and there is an indoor pool, where the kids are swimming. Because they've been cooped up in the car all day and I have no idea what time it is because I can't remember what time zone we are in, and all semblance of a schedule has flown straight out the window and not only do I not care, I sort of love it.

So.

Six years ago today was Charlotte's due date, but I harbored no illusions that I would be having a baby. I had a massage scheduled, and I hadn't even brought the other kids to their please-watch-my-babies-because-I'm-having-a-baby grandparent coverage. But it's still a date that stands out to me. I can only be who I am, yknow?

Charlotte has been less delightful at age five than the other two were, but she was also less horrifying at three, so maybe this is just how the world balances. She is feisty and spirited and defiant and playful and exuberant in ways that are new to our family (her Bumgarner is showing, I think), until I get her around a group of other kids her age and she seems the most calm and even-keeled child in the crowd. PERSPECTIVE, is what I'm saying.

So basically she IS a delight, and it's a whole different brand of delight than we have parented before, and she is the bright spot in our brightest days.

Charlotte at almost six is impossibly sunny (except when she's impossibly cloudy), is constantly in motion, has an imagination on fire, and isn't short on ideas or opinions (we don't know where she gets that).

She is likely our only extrovert child, yet she's also the best one at playing by herself for hours (literally) on end, talking out loud to herself and her multitude of toys and toy figurines and calico critters and toysies and paw patrol pups. She chatters constantly, either at whoever is in the room, or at herself when she's alone.

She did a half-day kindergarten this year, and she has done fine, but school isn't so much her jam that we are ready to scoot her on to first grade next year. So when she starts public school in a few weeks, it'll be in a full-day K class, which was a surprisingly uncomplicated decision for us. It feels right and we are super excited to see what she will do next year. (She is super excited to finally ride the bus with her siblings.) She is really respectful and compliant in class, and we get so many compliments from her teachers and her friends' parents about what a dream she is to have around, which is is always so nice to hear.

At home, she is less inclined to the rules and more inclined to sneak some privacy for breaking them - a few months ago she stole Anneliese's (righty!) scissors (Charlotte's had already been taken away because of a whole separate scissor incident) and cut her hair. Right in the front on her forehead. While standing on a stool. She GOT A STOOL and she STOLE SCISSORS which she KNEW she was NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE and she CUT HER HAIR. With her NON-DOMINANT HAND. And that's basically how Charlotte feels about rules she doesn't like. (She also can't walk by a mirror without admiring herself and preening, so the natural consequences of that one were punishment enough.)

She has big dreams for when she grows up, either to be a preacher or to be the president, although recently she's been saying the presidency sounds sort of hard and she doesn't feel like going to college so maybe she will choose a job that doesn't require a college degree, like cleaning houses. Which apparently she thinks she likes. And also is good at. (If you saw her room, you would understand my wide eyes at this.)

She loves running and the trampoline and she's an excellent artist (really! I'm not just saying that because I'm her mom!) and a beautiful singer. She is learning to spell and type and add and subtract. She is great on her scooter but still working on bikes and swimming. She's an adorable dancer and loves doing tumbling and somersaults with Anneliese.
She loves the beach and the pool and candy and pizza and corn on the cob and playgrounds and youtube (she also loves taking the ipod upstairs and recording her own youtube-style videos, mostly outlining the mess in her room and all the rules she is breaking by making a video when she's supposed to be cleaning or whatever).

She has a withering glare that DOES NOT PLAY, and no one in our family can beat her at the straight-faced game. Which is a game the kids play. For fun, I guess. I don't know. (It's less fun for me when she perfects said glare when I would like her to just! smile! and take! a! nice! picture! but I know those photos will make me laugh one day so I try to roll with it but LAWD child, that face.)

She still answers to the name Booler (at home, more often than Charlotte) and she loves to tell us she's the pinky finger of our family but she is NOT a baby anymore. Basically she is a hilarious, warm, loving, playful creature and she brings so much happiness to our home. Our family is complete because she is with us, and we love her so much. Happy almost six, little Booler.

Clemson, Brene, Sunshine Charlotte

When I was in Illinois, Mark took Nathan to Clemson for a football game, and he met up with his college roommate Jeff, and his kids, and they all watched the game together. I can't remember the last time I have gotten happier sweeter texts from Mark while I was gone. It turns out that thing we all did in college, where we dreamed of the day we would be back in the fun college places we loved, with our college friends, and our college friends' future hypothetical children? Yeah, men do that too. And it's just as sweet and happy.

I love seeing Marky share his special joys with our kids. (The girls will get their turn next.)

I went on another road trip, too, just a quick jaunt yesterday to Charlotte to meet up with my sister and see Brene Brown give a talk downtown. We knew she would be good, but we weren't expecting her to be so funny. She was great. She is brilliant and sassy and somehow makes both her brilliance and her sassiness super... accessible? Yes, accessible is the word I think I want. Everyone should go and read all of her books, immediately, stat, post haste, yes right now.

A bonus of our night (besides our super ability to find the most flattering light for selfies, OBVS) was that we stumbled into the most random of random Mexican places for a snack before the event (like, random as in, they looked a little surprised to have customers at all, much less white lady mom types) and anyway it ended up being freaking delicious, but on top of that, a group of older men (post-work types? grandpa types? we don't even know) bought us drinks, and tried to buy us more, and just... whaaaa?

That is the first time a stranger has ever bought me a drink in public. It was not what I was expecting. They also did not speak any English. SO. Random adventures for the win.

This has nothing to do with anything, but look: here is Charlotte and baby Claire at the bus stop. She got lots of waves that day.

Also, it's a good thing she is basically a ray of sunshine (at least here) (ha), because this picture was taken the last time the actual sun was out. It's been over a week of rain. COME BACK, SUN.

I don't even remember anymore what this post was intended to being about when I started writing it but! This... (?) is apparently what it's about now! Hi!

Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

Charlotte is four today! We are on the road and away from home and I am full of feelings and I can't believe our baby is four because that means I have to stop calling them all babies, right? And there is of course a birthday video.


(If you can't see the embedded video, click here to watch on YouTube.)

Also, if you're so inclined:
her first year
her second year
and her third year.

Happy birthday to our sweet Charlotte Booler. We love you so much, you funny chatty delightful girl. Be our baby forever, okay? Okay.

Charlotte Booler, Almost Four

Charlotte, despite being born only a few weeks ago and clearly still being a baby, is about to turn four next weekend. Four years ago today I was sitting around very pregnant thinking "any minute now" -- haaaaaa no I wasn't, I knew she would be late, we hadn't even gotten the kids handed off to grandparents by her due date. Anyway. Four years later and this post is going up as we are somewhere on the road between North Carolina and the great midwest (funny, exactly like this day last year), on a long family road trip. One of the games (conversations, really) that Charlotte loves best these days in the car is having us "guess" all the facts about Boolers. What they like to eat and wear and do. She delights in this game. So, let's learn all about what a Booler does.

A Booler loves to giggle and shriek.
A Booler loves her brother and sister.
Boolers always use the potty.
Boolers are delicate flowers who are somewhat accident-prone.
(Boolers bruise easily.)
A Booler loves to dance, always, but especially with no clothes on.
A Booler loves to do dress-ups.
Boolers can buckle their own seat belts!
(But not unbuckle them.)
A Booler cannot walk past a mirror without admiring herself.
Boolers love pigtails, but also bows, but these days mostly pigtails.
A Booler does not like to wear her shoes on the correct feet, ever.
Boolers fall asleep in car seats, almost immediately.
A Booler's favorite foods are yogurt and french fries.
Boolers are social and love other people and might be budding extroverts.
A Booler loves to go to bed with her good-night song.
A Booler's biggest fear is being left behind: "don't leave meeeee!"
Boolers have imaginary friends, sometimes named Apple.
Boolers talk with their hands, emphatically.
A Booler loves to suck her thumb and snuggle Sheepie.
A Booler loves Daniel Tiger and toysies and her trolley hoodie.
Boolers have hair the color of the beach.
But Boolers do not have any curls.
Boolers can swim by themselves but only with a floatie.
Boolers are good at puzzles.
Boolers are good at scooters.
Boolers are really good at coloring.
A Booler promises her family she will always be a Booler.
A Booler makes her family complete.
A Booler is delightful.

Happy due date, Charlotte Booler. You are an amazing little girl.

Holding Pillows

Okay so amongst a handful of other more... typical eight-year-old presents, like lego sets and minecraft shirts and and a toy robot kit and space stickers for his ceiling, he also got a long-awaited... holding pillow.

This is a thing I didn't even know was a thing until the past few years.

They're just those slinky squishy pillows you see in various places, apparently Brookstone has the best ones - fom pillows, they call them - but they're all over. Anyway Another Nathan has had one for years, calls it a holding pillow, doesn't like to sleep without it (whoops I just told the internet about that) (seriously though he even travels with it). So when he moved, and needed to fly back with limited suitcase space, he asked if he could have a holding pillow here, in the guest house, so he didn't have to pack one when he visits. WELL OF COURSE. Easiest thing ever, to make our favorite guest comfy.

Anyway, long story short, we got one, it's kind of cool, and now everybody in my house wants a piece of that thing. I used it in the guest house to prop my book arm up when I would go over there to read. Then it made its way to my bed for leaning purposes, or head propping while watching TV. Then the kids started fighting over who got to hug it and sleep with it. 

Y'ALL. I mean it's fun and soft and I like it too, but... it's just a pillow. Not even a pillow. A pillow-thing.

So in April, one of Anneliese's friend's big sisters gave her this one as a hand-me-down. She was thinking Anneliese would like it just because it's a silly rainbow thing but she had no idea the pure joy of her having her very own holding pillow. (!!!) (?)

Can I say it again? It's just a pillow. JUST A PILLOW. It costs $15. We can own as many of these as we want!

So when Nathan wanted his own too (SHOCKING), which he has "casually" mentioned for months now, I took Anneliese to the mall to pick one out for him. She chose a bright blue one, and I swear it was the happiest thing he opened on his birthday.

And thus ends today's episdoe of You Can Never Predict The Random Things Kids Will Go Nuts For.

Spring, it Sprang

Where did spring go? It took forever and a day to get here, and now summer is basically upon us. School will be out in a few weeks, and we are in the throes of the end-of-the-year stuff: concerts, recitals, school events, forever and ever amen.

Mark and I went out last weekend to celebrate the 18th (that's ten plus eight, EIGHTEENTH) (!!!!) anniversary of our first date, back when we were sixteen. We were dumb naive teenagers, and we cringe now at thinking we knew what the heck we were getting ourselves into, yet also really really happy that we did. It's so fun to remember the very beginning, and feel happy and grateful about where we are now.

Nathan and Anneliese, waiting for their school rides together. Anneliese is so tall for her age, and Nathan is still so tiny, and I get asked now more than ever if they are twins. Anneliese can't wait til next year when she can finally (finally!) get on the bus with Nathan.

Yes, I know Nathan needs a haircut. No, I do not know why wearing your instrument on your back and your backpack on your front is a Thing, but among the second grade orchestra set, it indeed is.

Anneliese sang in a little concert at preschool, and she was a cow, and she is officially the cutest singing cow that ever sang.

And! The preschool did a big Letterland Day, to have fun with the reading and writing curriculum they use (which is very cool, if you care about linguistics and pedagogy), and each kid got to dress up as a letter character from the Letterland world (haaaaaa I say "got to" like I wasn't cussing up a storm about having to come up with a costume in the last weeks of school... I totally was, make no mistake).

ANYWAY she chose to be Annie Apple, and she was the only one in the whole preschool, and everyone clapped for her. I have no idea if she loved or hated that, but she was hella cute. And this is the part where I pat myself for an illegal download from a google image shirt, reversed onto iron transfer paper and an etsy hat. Costume! May! Super cute! Whatever!

Moving on.

We are also in the throes of All The Baseball.

Okay so baseball is a pain, y'all. It's too many times a week, with lots of rain schedule changes, and not much notice, and it's the busiest time of the year. Whyyyyyyyy. I mean, Nathan likes it and Mark loves it so we go, and we cheer, and I absolutely love to see him having fun. But make no mistake, it's a pain.

Charlotte (who wears this outfit every Tuesday, because I do their laundry on Mondays and she is obsessed with this outfit and mostly only cares that I do her laundry so she can wear it, and does at the soonest moment it is clean every week) has taken to eating toast with me in the mornings.

I used to guard my toast and coffee time as my own alone time, but on days when it's just her at home (well, while Ali is napping), it's sweet to have a snack together. I sort of love it. It has been a good school year of Tuesday and Thursday mornings with her.

So, also. I made a bowl for Charlotte; our church gives us these little stone thumbprint things to mark faith occasions (baptism, Bible reading, confirmation, communion, etc) and there is always this brunch event when the kids are three, where the parents make little bowls for them to collect said "milestones" as the years come. We have one for Anneliese (with a rainbow imprinted in the bottom), and Nathan's is a blue hand-me-down pottery bowl that Another Nathan made at Montreat, since we missed the bowl making when he was three. Anyway! So I made Charlotte's, and then I put it in the oven, per instruction, at like 200 degrees for four hours, except I actually cooked it like twenty hours, and it's totally burned.

It's supposed to be... white.

I really wanted to toss it and start over, but she saw it, and she thinks it's SUPPOSED to be this color, and, well, now what do I do? So we are keeping it. And at every faith milestone we will remember the story of the time I miraculously didn't burn the house down. *sigh*

In other less serious milestones, there is a new Princess Charlotte! And when I told Charlotte there was a new princess Charlotte, a real one, she insisted that she was the real one, and promptly made herself a dot-art crown from her dot-art book, and wore it grocery shopping. Soooo... she sure told me?

And on that note, this is where I make a bloggity plea that anyone who wants to send any Princess Charlotte kitsch my way, I totally definitely want it.

And Then March Happened, Apparently

That thing where you are months behind so you just post a lot of random thoughts, because people like that better than carefully crafted themed posts anyway right? Hi, welcome to the March (waaaaaay later than March) edition of I Don't Even Know What This Post is About.

Okay so the most important thing is that my sister had a baby! After a pregnancy lasting forty weeks plus four months (she is a dolphin, you didn't know?) (ask me how I know about gestation length of dolphins anyway *side eye*Nathan*) she delivered her third son (yes THIRD) (yes, her oldest is Charlotte's age) (yes, she would accept any of your prayers for sanity) and anyway, meet my newest nephew Everett! He is perfect.

Also! Ali turned one! ONE! I can't believe it's been a year. I love her so much.

The weather got warm and the girls had been asking Mark to plant something, so he took them to pick out flowers and some veggie seeds, and he pulled some dying shrubs out of an area near the pool, and they turned that space into a little garden.

The girls are totally taken with it. (Nathan too, although mostly he is too cool to act like it.)

Oh! Speaking of cool ("cool") Nathan also did a weather project where he needed to write a report including a media/visual component about some weather phenomenon. He chose monsoons. He did a good job researching and writing the paper, and then he made a little video to show why monsoons can damage houses even if you put plastic on your roof, like some people in monsoon-prone areas have to do.

I'm not sure this video actually proves anything, other than he likes to build with legos (and make videos), but it still tickles me. You know you want to see it. Right?



Another random Nathan thing, from the grocery store one night: "Hey this is the same kind of bread Jesus ate! You can tell by the shape!"

(Pretty good endorsement for Kroger, yes? JESUS HIMSELF ETC ETC.)

Hmmmm I... have no idea what else happened in March. Let's look at some pictures.

Anneliese, wearing a lot of colors, and not one but two headbands, including one with a donut on it, because obviously:

Me with all the kids, taking a walk on the greenway, proving once again that it is difficult to get very many people to look at the camera at once:

Charlotte, looking half teenager and half baby:

Perfectly reasonable outfits for a Target run:

And! Marky made me a brownie in a skillet one night when I had a random hankering, and he sort of made it up from a boxed mix, and then he throw ice cream on top, and it was delicious. You know how some things are just exactly what you had a taste for, except even a little bit better? He wins everything.

We ate it on the couch in front of Netflix, because we are good at being grownups.

Boolerisms, 3 1/2

Charlotte is three and a half, and I was all ready to say what she's up to these days but first - can I just say, three looks SO MUCH BETTER on her than it did on her siblings? Three was awful with Nathan, awfuler with Anneliese, and last summer when Charlotte started showing signs of the dreaded Threenager, I was both dreading it and ready for it.

Dreading because it sucks, and ready because I'm a seasoned mom now, and I know two very important things about Age Three:

1.) It is a phase. Threeness is not an indicator of future good citizenship. She is not being ruined forever by my inability to parent her well, and anyway -

2.) IT'S HER, NOT ME. Whatever three is, it's on her. And it will pass.

Aside: my dad once told me that the best parenting advice he could really give to anyone, with kids at any age, it is this: JUST WAIT. Be patient. Almost everything passes. Even if hard things drag on for very long seasons, just keep loving them, don't give up on them or yourself, just wait. I have decided that's really good advice.) (He knows what he's talking about, he had some rough teenager years (side eye: a Certain Brother Who Shall Remain Nameless).

Anyway, after the whole IT'S HER, NOT ME mantra of dealing with little Charlotte Booler, my third three-year-old, well, it turns out... she's fine. All of those months of Brace For Impact were notsomuch needed.

I mean, she has her moments. She's had a few epic tantrums, usually when someone comes or goes out of our driveway and doesn't wave to her (side-eye: Daddy at 6am on the way to work). She is sometimes shrieky, and often slower than Christmas, both of which make me batty. But! She isn't nearly as three as the others were, or maybe she just isn't there yet, or maybe I just getting better at not internalizing threeness as a parenting failure. (I'M DOING IT. I'M BREEZY.) But whatever is happening, it's easier.

So besides being sunshine with a sometimes side of storms, the most important thing about Charlotte these days is that she is talking so much better. Speech therapy is a dream. She thinks it's fun and games, it's not social-worker-stressful for me, and it's working. She rarely stutters now, unless she's really frustrated. We no longer need to rank her days on a speech scale of 1-5, and she is full of cute opinions she can actually voice, and those adorable things that all three-year-olds say in their own funny three-year-old ways:

Instead of singing her ABC's, she sings the EFG song.
PJs are pee-tays.
Nightgowns are night downs.
Her window: my nindow!
When she has an opinion to declare: I pronounce you... not sharing!
When she's finished something she's proud of: ta-done!
When she needs something: can you help with me?
Her blanket is and remains bank-o-link.
When you ask her a question she isn't sure of: singsong voice i-ah know...?
Her life motto with two older siblings: wait fo me!
Her life fear, being left behind: don' weeve me!

She told me recently that she saw a bear in the backyard. A bear! (There is a Bumgarner family legend about my brother seeing a bear in the hall; it was a mouse.) I have no idea what Charlotte really saw. But she told me in all earnestness that it was a bear, and answered detailed questions about it, and opted to play inside after that in case it came back, and all I could do was clap proudly and say EXCELLENT TALKING, BABY BOOLER.

Speaking of imagination, she and I told a story today, doing that thing you do with your kids where you take turns telling one part at a time, making it up as we go. And it turned out to be about a mom who can climb trees, and in the backyard she found a house of fairy ballerinas in a tiny treetop house. Their favorite food is strawberry spaghetti, and their favorite thing to do is to dance on top of the water in the pool when no one is looking.

She should write a book, is what I'm saying.

She told me last week she was "beautiful like mommy" and then my heart
burst into a million tiny hearts and flew all around in a happy cloud, forever.

Here is Charlotte telling us she's three and a half.

She is eating a cupcake that we picked out at the grocery store for her. We decided if a Booler was ever made into a cartoon character, it might look something like that cupcake.

Happy December! Or Something?

Hey it's December! And I'm still behind from November so let's take a journey through my phone and see what we have been up to, yes?

{HAAomg sometimes I forget I have a blog. Love, Erin in January.}

Anneliese and I had a lunch date after church. Everyone else was sick and/or crabby, and we wanted ZaxBEE's (that's how we pronounce it, we are just cool like that) and can I just say she is a delightful companion?

I have no idea exactly how this happened, but I walked away for three minutes and walked back... and clearly some toddler achievement has just been unlocked.

I'm not sure what's happening here either, but I'm pretty sure she is posing for her senior year pictures. The awkward, oh how she nails it.

I took Nathan to his school literacy night (and book fair) and he picked out several new things to read: a book of beautiful things people have built from Legos, and a biography about the Wright brothers. Why so opposed to good ol' fiction, bro?

Mark sits down with the girls, any evenings he is home, to watch Daniel. "Watch." I like to joke that Daniel is his unisom. Because... yeah, every time.

I took Ali and Charlotte to the (nicer) grocery store (with the fun carts) and they had a blast driving together. I can't believe Ali is old enough to play like this. Wasn't Charlotte just the baby?

Anneliese got her friend Beatrice a duplicate of her favorite shirt, for a birthday present. Yes, that's a half donut, half rainbow. No, I do not understand it. Yes, it is awesome. Yes, they planned ahead to wear them on the same day. Yes, they delight me.

This is Nathan's DNA bracelet, because of course it is.

Also, NOW that it is December, let's all enjoy some good holiday clothing. With a t-rex on it. Obviously.

We have now reached the "what am I even blogging about?" portion of today's post. The end.

Stuttering, and a Poop Joke

So, this is a thing I haven't said much about on the internet, but Charlotte is having a rough time talking this fall. She went from being a perfectly appropriately-fluent three-year-old this August, to... barely being able to get a thought out in September. Over just a matter of weeks, truly.

Like, complete breakdown in communication. I know this sounds weird, with her being right here - but I missed her. I didn't know what she was thinking, and she was so easily frustrated that she basically broke down into tears any time she needed to communicate a thought beyond a few words.

It sucked, y'all.

And it only took a tiny bit of googling (and a few gently concerned questions from her teachers at school) to realize her stuttering falls into the "severe" category, which sounds, well... severe.

Anyway, we took her for a speech assessment through the early intervention people (well, not them, exactly, but the county people who do that for preschool-aged kids) and it turns out yep! she stutters! badly! and she qualifies for full speech therapy through the county! So, bad and good.

They sent me away with a stack of books and DVDs about stuttering and speech disorders and how to be a parent advocate, and paperwork to start up her IEP with the school system, and suddenly WHOA this is a whole new world for us.

Okay so here's the deal. She will be fine. Speech therapy is very effective for stuttering, and Charlotte is pretty textbook in how she struggles. There are 44 phonemes in the English language, and she gets stuck on about 20 of them (yikes). She does most of the classic severe-stutterer things, like: repeating sounds at the beginnings of words and syllables (not the words themselves, which is stammering, which is something different - a more normal disfluency that isn't actually a speech problem), explosions of sound at a high volume to force some of her sounds out, and dragging out some sounds (like mmmmmmommy).

Anyway, it's a really Known Thing, this problem and its treatment. Almost all stutterers can be therapied out of it, and we should have no worries about long-term fluency. So that's not the main concern, surprisingly enough.

The main concern, apparently, is the psychological stuff that comes with difficulty in communicating. This is especially true for young kids. Learning that it takes too much effort to talk, or you will be interrupted or your words inserted for you, or that people don't have the time to hear you, or might tease you, etc etc etc - that'll eff a kid right up, and can have effects into adulthood. (Not that surprising, right?)

So while the professional therapists will do the work with her of making sounds and teaching tricks and workarounds, our job is to make sure she is heard. Like, endless patience in letting her get her words out. No interrupting her, ever. No supplying words for her. In general, convincing her that whatever she has to say is something we want to listen to, and that it's always worth the effort for her to tell us what she's thinking. We have to be very aware of our body language and facial expressions and we all (even Nathan and Anneliese) do lots of turning and facing her and kneeling down to be close when she wants to tell us something.

And y'all. It has been sort of... well, humongously relationship-changing, this pattern of really intentional listening. I know, that shouldn't be shocking. But it makes such a difference.

Anything she wants to tell me these days, no matter how silly or inane, I care about it in a way I didn't used to. She will sometimes take a full ninety seconds to tell me something like how she put Sheepie under her blanket (still bank-o-link) because it's naptime, or how someday she would like to wear a hat (?) - but if those are the things she wants to tell me, then make no mistake: I WANT TO HEAR IT. It's no small thing, the effort and energy it takes her to talk! And she is using it on me! It's an honor to listen to it. It really is. And that's never how I've thought about preschool chattiness before. Um, to say the least. Ha.

Okay anyway that's not what I meant for this post to be about.

So, she's actually doing way better now. Ranking every day on a scale of 1 to 5 helps overall progress, and overall progress is good. And that's just with what we are doing at home which has seemed to improve her confidence, which  often means she talks more - which all counts as practice. When we get into the meat of the speech therapy over the next couple of months, I imagine it will get even better than the improvement she's already made.

There are some days that are still turrible, but there are some that are good -- so good that she talks like most any three-year-old would, like what we remember from this summer, and we get a little giddy at her sweet voice and happy easy chattiness.

All that to say, she was doing some great talking one night, and these days that means we bust out the phone to get it on video... and then she told a poop joke. Sigh.


(If you can't see the embedded video, click here to watch it on YouTube.)

(Still worth it for her tiny voice, telling me something! Anything! Worth it.)

(And, secretly bursting with pride anyway. Such! Good! Talking!)

Hippie Bullsh!t Coffee and Other Quick Takes

1.) I bought some hippie bullsh!t coffee at Fresh Market a few weeks ago. I got sucked in because I had a taste for cold caramel coffee in a bottle, and the packaging is so pretty! Good font choice! Matte labels! And on the side there is a funny blurb written by someone admitting to be a blurber! It was all very enchanting, except it said things about how it doesn't have any of those "nasty chemicals" in it like other coffee (YES IT ACTUALLY SAID THAT), and I could not have rolled my eyes harder. Y'all! Once again, brief lesson: everything has chemicals. Everything is made of chemicals. Nothing but chemicals actually. Yes. EVERYTHING. Full stop.

But despite my eye rolling, and knowing it would not actually make me "focus" in any "natural" way, I bought it and drank it and it was delicious. Excellent use of one dollar next time you're at Fresh Market. Hippie bullsh!t coffee: RECOMMEND.

(Children who photobomb coffee pics for blog post: not included.)

2.) Mark took Charlotte to a park a few weeks ago, and in case you were wondering if she only likes to take selfies with me? Nope. Girl loves a good pic with Daddy too. I mean, who wouldn't? He's a pretty awesome human.

3.) We started a thing last month with a friend and preschool classmate of Anneliese's, whose big sister gets dropped off at school before his mom takes him to church on a route that goes right past our bus stop, at the exact time we are outside waiting on the bus. Which means Nathan and I did a lot of waving at them as they drove by, until we realized hey! Anneliese could just... get in their car, and save me a trip of loading up the babies and taking her to school.

So that's the story of why there are now two kids at the bus stop with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays (those are the days only Anneliese goes). They both love it. It's fun.

4.) When I was in Minnesota I got the worst chapped lips of my life, I think. I was using lip balm, just not enough I guess, or not often enough. One night when I was home I needed some and didn't have any in bed, so I asked Mark for his out of his night stand, and the next morning, I kid you not -- MY LIPS WERE HEALED. Like, almost completely better. Overnight. A second night and they were as good as new.

I can't believe the small fortune I have spent in the last decade on fancy lip balms, when REGULAR OLD CHAP STICK is basically a miracle balm. Y'all! Buy this! I am now officially a chap stick evangelist. Recommend.

5.) My new identity as a Kindle user is coming along. I like it. It is handy. It was especially handy for traveling. And for reading in the evenings in bed when my doctor-designed Sleep Plan (capital S, capital P, it is a PLAN) dictates that I should not have lights on. And e-ink is safe reading in the evening hours of dimness. Anyway! Guess who else likes the Kindle?

Our library website has a great page where you can sort the children's e-reader books they have, by topic and grade level. So that means Nathan can see a berjillion book choices, and two clicks sends them to our house in minutes. For free! LIVING IN THE FUTURE IS SO GREAT Y'ALL. In related news, I think someone might be getting his own (very basic) Kindle for Christmas, since someone's mommy is tired of sharing.

6.) Speaking of Nathan and reading, he picked out this book from the dollar spot at Target a few weeks ago:

Yep, that's Moby Dick. Most boring book in the history of books and English. (I love Melville, but I freaking hate that book.) Anyway all he saw was chapter book! one dollar! sperm whale on the cover! and he had to have it. It's a thing I would never say no to, of course, so he bought it and read it and then sent Another Nathan this adorable email about it and oh my lands.

This is why we let kids read adaptations of boring books we hate: because it's surprising that a whale would eat someone's leg, and he's guessing the whale must have been a girl. WELL.

7.) Still speaking of reading, I read this last week and found it just delightful. A lady who loved the Little House books visits all the sites in real life, and finds some disillusioning and some lovely.

This isn't the best LHOTP travel guide you can find, nor the best biographical info, but it doesn't intend to be either of those things - just a funny thoughtful lady traveling to Little House sites and writing about it, from her perspective. Really fun book.

8.) One last book thing! Another Nathan and I, unbeknownst to one other, both checked this book out of our respective libraries last week. A book about friends and influence and I mean... haaaaa okay universe. Good one.

9.) We let the kids try for a three-way sleepover last week. Usually this is just a Nathan/Anneliese thing, every Friday night, but Charlotte always wants to join, and so we let her try. We had done it once before and it was fine, but this one was doomed.

This photo was taken pre-doom. It was super cute until it wasn't.

10.) It got very cold this week, and the girls look very cute in their cold weather clothes. That is all.

Seven, No Ten Quick Takes

1.) Anneliese picked out a new winter hat with some Amazon birthday money. Raise your hand if you never could have guessed she'd pick one like this:

2.) I took Nathan on a date to the symphony last weekend. It was a super crappy day and a really lovely break from the super crappy day. He was cellodorable, admiring all the instruments.

3.) I read the Astronaut Wives Club this weekend and it's far from brilliant writing -- mostly a series of vignettes about the first astronaut families in the sixties -- but I didn't need it to be a great novel, I was totally captivated anyway. I am now craving anything about the space race, I kinda want to watch Apollo 13 tonight, and I can't stop wikipedia-ing all the folks for a dose of Where Are They Now. Also I want to go back to the space center at Cape Canaveral (Mark and I visited in 2010 and it was great, but I think it would be even more great for me this week). 

So yeah, I'm hoping they make this into a tv show as has been promised (then delayed, but we'll see). The stories might actually tell better as a series instead of a book.

4.) Anneliese and Ali and I went for a fall walk a few days ago, just as the leaves were starting to change. You would not believe all the things a five-year-old has to tell her infant cousin about leaves changing, but it's a lot.

5.) We closed the pool last week and I miss it already.

6.) Nathan just read the "junior novel" version of the Lego movie and he seems to have internalized its message differently in print than on the screen. He now considers himself a Master Builder and keeps building things and telling us how he VISUALIZED them and that's how he designed them and oh man it cracks us up. (In a good way! He is sweet and smart. I'd hire him for all my aeronautical engineering needs, and no I'm not kidding.)

PS I got a haircut and highlights, as per my pre-birthday usual.

7.) After the slowest loudest construction project in the history of history, and many early-morning and late-night trips in my PJs to fuss at workers causing a ruckus outside of approved times ("I know you're just doing your job, but WE LIVE HERE" = me, sick of hearing myself talk), the house across the street is finally done! It was featured in a Parade of Homes thing, so we went to check it out, and it was nice in the way that fancy houses are always nice, but not our taste at all: some odd mashup of clean/modern and also totally dowdy. It's hard to explain. But anyway, if you want to live directly across the street, the house has a million dollar view!

Yes really.

8.) A few weekends ago when I was in Charlotte, I stopped at Ikea for some new cubes/shelving, which are lovely. (I got a teal cube system! TEAL! For my bathroom! Which I am now 99% sure won't fit but whatever, it's TEAL.) While I was there I also got Anneliese a new duvet, which I have been wanting for her since we rearranged all the bedroom furniture in our house A YEAR AGO, but the one I coveted for years before that has been discontinued, and anyway I never could find one that I liked AND she liked, and then this happened at Ikea, and now she has a very Anneliese bed.

Here is a thing I absolutely did not need but absolutely wanted, and I didn't buy it, but I'm pretty sure I might. It's a neon yellow stool! I mean, I need that, right? Someone talk me into it. Where should I put it?

9.) I have a new-ish phone case, and I love it. This is called a Loopy Case. It is just a case, with a loop in the back, which you can adjust to fit whatever finger you want. It is so simple and SO GENIUS.

It helps me hold my phone much steadier (I was a two-hand typer on my bigger android, and the smaller iphone is still an adjustment - slightly too small for two hands, but slightly too big for one -- and this makes it totally doable). It also means I never drop my phone on my face in bed anymore YES THAT IS A REAL THING. It also means I can knuckle it on the back of my hand and also carry a kid/purse/car seat, which keeps me from sticking my phone in my pocket instead, and that's always a good thing.

PS with the loop on the back you can stand it up for such purposes as alarm clocking. Or facetime dates. Or everyone trying to watch a video at the same time.

Anyway I love it, and I get asked about it all the time, so I am blogging about it. (My first one cracked, and I emailed them and they sent a new one -- with the loop holes now slightly offset, in their updated version, which I think will prevent that stress fracture from happening again -- and anyway with the recplacement they sent me an EXTRA. It's black, and I have a pink and a purple and a gray loop for it, so if you have a 5c and you want it, tell me and it's yours.)

10.) This post barely mentions Charlotte, but she's still the best Booler ever, so here, enjoy a delightful picture Mark took of her swinging out back.

Yes, she is wearing a sundress and some shorts and a tutu. Why, what do YOU wear to go swinging?