Impromptu Break

I ended up taking last week as a semi-internet fast. I still did stuff online but I tried to stay off the computer during my "work hours" unless both kids were asleep. And since they have decided to stagger their naps, that was almost all day all week long. So I didn't blog and I'm behind in some emails but we did

• Spend a day at the nearby state park hiking, exploring fungus (we saw three different types that morning!), feeding fish, and playing on the playground. Except when Lucy "plays on the playground" she really plays near the playground. That day she used the wooden edging boards as balance beams and walked around them over and over again while Jonah ate wood chips. Fun was had by all.
• Enjoy the "fall weather." It's not technically fall yet but nobody told the weather. Poor Lucy kept asking to go to the pool so she could show me her swimming lesson skills but I kept having to distract her. 72 is just not warm enough for me to sit in the baby pool area is normally shady freezing but hikes and parks and Neighbor J's kids did the trick. Charlotte Mason's recommendation of 4-6 hours outside every day normally seems insurmountable but we hit 4+ hrs 3 days in a row this week!
• Finish sewing doll paraphernalia. More pictures coming soon but she now has a clothes and pajamas so there is no excuse for nakedness. I'm not saying she won't be naked, just that it won't be my fault.
• Start and finish five books: Kisses for Katie, What to Expect When No One's Expecting, Call the Midwife, How to Live on 24 hrs a day and Thyme of Death. For the record, I enjoyed them all except Thyme of Death which I thought was only so-so despite my love of herbs, small towns in Texas and murder mysteries.
• Can tomatoes. This is our third year of growing tomatoes but the first I'm really trying to put some away. The first year we didn't get too many more than we wanted to eat. Last year we did but I was hugely pregnant and not about to spend all day canning. This year, I'm ready for whatever then can grow throw at me.
• Start "reading lessons." Lucy became obsessed with letters a few months ago, learned about 2/3 of her sounds then poof, she was over them. But recently she has renewed her interest. She's been asking me to teach her how to read so I told her we would work on letter sounds and once she learns them all "we'll see." We'll see is mama code for "probably not yet but I don't want to fight so I'll just wait for you to be distracted" but either way, she's excited for her reading lessons every morning when Jonah takes his nap. 
• Walking. Jonah's been taking steps here and there for a little while not but in the last week, he's gotten a lot more confident. Lucy loves to find him standing somewhere and call him over to her. At which point she tries to hug him and knocks him over to the floor and I hold my breath hoping he'll start laughing instead of crying.
• Prepped for preschool. I'm really ready for fall and the structure of staring "school" again. With only two little ones at home, you wouldn't think summer would be that different but I can tell the summer boredom, less of a routine thing is getting old for the kids as well as me. Just one more week!