Sadly for you, and strangely for me, these slacker-guilt feelings are producing absolutely nothing from me. I have an ounce of scrapbooking mojo and just a tish of inspiration that could blossom into more- but I have decided that given the last year or two. . .I’m going to wait until that tish turns into the full blown URGE. Bear with me. I am focusing on my family. And the grime that lurks in my closets.

Now, when I say I am taking it easy- it should be clarified that I am still working my job. I am still raising three children. I still have several projects going. I’m just not doing the extras. My mother told me on the phone that my slacker is more people’s normal. I’m insane like that, and need to learn to take a step back. I’m working on the balance thing.

Let’s talk baby! Gabe just turned five months and it is just awful how fast that happened! He is unequivocally the cutest baby I know. He can roll both ways, he says “dada”, he bounces like a maniac in his jumper and he started solids yesterday. I was going to hold off longer on the solids, but the boy was HUNGRY. So I fed him. Rice cereal is gross, beans are blah, squash is a step up and bananas are goooooooood. He also has his daddy’s hair, not in color but in texture, thickness and anti-gravity qualities. Poor thing. This is going to be a problem as he grows up, but on a baby? Cuuuuute!

Jonas finished summer school, much to his dismay, and we are now doing school at home per his request. He is inhaling workbooks at a slightly slower rate than the first few weeks of summer, but only because he finished all the first grade books and is now doing 2nd and 3rd grade level books, and he has to think for 1.2 seconds before writing in the correct answer, unlike the 1st grade books where the knowledge leaped straight out of his ear and onto the page before he could even pick up his pencil. This is good. His reading is taking off, and the only problem he really has at this point is confidence. He keeps telling me how he just can’t read something, but he is actually 100% able. I think this all exploded so quickly he hasn’t really registered that he can.

Speaking of reading. . .Maggie is starting to do that. She has picked up a few things and I now find myself reading bedtime stories and having her say, “STOP! Did you just read “yes”? Where was it?” And then she scours the page until she finds the word. She seems to get a new word almost every night, and I don’t know where she’s finding them. I have been gearing up to homeschool Kindergarten with her next year (we were going to do pre-school, but based on her skills. . .we already did that unschool style. We also did two-thirds of Kindergarten, for that matter, but I’m going back to fill in the blanks). She has a learning style that is totally unlike her brother’s, and so I am learning as much as she is. These kids are like deciphering code. They have similar system functions- but every process and application runs differently (and crashes differently, for that matter). It is at once beautiful and terrifying as you learn all this at the same time while worrying that you are completely messing up this innocent little human being.

Ok, that’s all for now, so slacker-Leah has a little something to offer you - call it a peace offering for having a stinky blog this month: Two give-a-ways before the end of the month. And they are good ones, if I do say so myself!