7 Quick Takes Friday - #11

Here are my "7 Quick Takes" for this week--

1. The difference between the sexes, summed up this week, after watching the cartoon version of "Robin Hood":
   

   Maranatha (our 4yo daughter), in a dreamy voice: "I love the part where they get maaaarrrried. That's my favorite paaaart."
   Baxter (our 6yo son): "I like the part where they dodge all the arrows!"

   Sounds like what adult men & women like about movies, too! :)
   
   (I kept trying to take a picture of all 5 kids, and he kept crawling ahead of the group... pretty determined little guy!)
   
   
2. This motherhood gig passes so quickly. I'm so glad I listened to the people who told me that. My first baby, so beautiful, so chunky, so intuitive and interactive... he'll be 9 this year. Halfway to what our society marks off as "manhood". It seems like just yesterday I was cracking up at him jamming on his baby xylophone like Chris Martin with his piano, or watering plants with him in our yard in Texas. I'm so thankful that we still get to spend our days learning together, laughing together, and listening to Coldplay. While I'm glad to be able to teach him things and help shape his character, I'm so thankful to God that he uses this son of mine to is teach me things, and shape my character.
   
   Along those lines, I've just started reading "Sacred Parenting", and I love it already. In it, Thomas (the author) goes into how parenting changes us... and it's just so true. What a crucible for the soul is this work of motherhood.
   
   
3. I've been hearing a bit about this this week: Should homeschoolers get a tax break? This is not a tax break I'm interested in receiving. I'm thankful to be free each year to make educational choices for our family as we see fit. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'll just link to Spunky. She sums up my concerns quite well.
   
   
4. Ever visited my cooking blog? It's not filled with great photography, hilarity-written-right-into-the-recipes, or anything outwardly special... but I'm about to start methodically filling it with my favorite go-to recipes. In the past, I've posted a couple dozen of our favorites, but with our upcoming visit to the States later this year, I'm going to put all of our family's favorite recipes in one place, so that I don't have to take up luggage space with the cookbooks and recipes we use all the time. To be honest, more than putting you on notice, I'm giving myself some accountability to go ahead and get this show on the road. :)
   
   
5. It's about mid-month... and so far, I'm keeping up with all of my five-a-month goals for January. Except, being that we're halfway through, I should've already visited one of my neighbors, and I haven't. But I've listened to or read scripture every day, I'm faithfully living out the No-S Diet, and I'm a good way into a pattern-making book. We were actually going to visit an art exhibit this morning, but one of the kids (not the little goofball pictured below) threw up last night, and we didn't want to risk getting vomit on a Diego Rivera. I think they frown on that sort of thing.
   What about you? If you posted January goals, are you keeping up with them? If you didn't join us this month, will you consider it for February? I'm finding that it's a good way to keep myself focused on a few key areas.
   
   
6. My "newborn" is 6-months old now. Isn't that wild? How can he be that old? When he nurses, his feet hang over far past the other side of my body... he is crawling everywhere, into everything, even pulling up and walking alongside furniture (huh?). When he finds my husband or I, he grins and sometimes laughs really hard, like he really did something amazing. And really, he did! He still hasn't fully learned that if you pull on the speaker cord from the back, it will fall on your head (no worries! It's a small speaker!). He has completely won over his brothers and sister, all of whom are convinced that no baby can top him in the departments of cuteness or smartness. (If you're wondering, I agree.) He sits up at a full 90-degree angle, and doesn't tip over the way all of our other babies did. It's as if he developed his ab muscles first and then just decided one day to sit up, so he did. At present, no one can make him laugh like Daddy, and no one can comfort him like Mama. He is very precious, and Doug & I keep telling each other how weird it is that it doesn't feel weird to have 5 kids. It doesn't feel overwhelming the way I would have expected that it might. Anyway, we love little Moses and are so glad to have this adorable seventh person in our quirky family. :)
   
   
7. This new blog background makes me happy. Blog backgrounds are getting harder to find, or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. Anyway, it made me feel a bit like blogging might be going the way of the dinosaur, but it matters not to me. I'm here, I'm writing. There may be gaps and lulls every now and again, but I don't plan on going anywhere.

As always, I welcome your comments & thoughts.