Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Down Time

And this, my friends, is why I don't write many posts. A photo documentary of the madness that goes on when I sit down for 30 minutes at the computer and put my feet up:

That's mud on his face, from an earlier escapade in the back yard.

He made sure that the trash was just where liked it to be.

The contents of the wastepaper basket has been scattered and the cushion pulled off the couch.

And the big girls are dueling, while Jack fusses as he always does when someone else has the temerity to use a sword.

Yeah, just another afternoon in the Darwin household.

19 comments:

Rebekka said...

That makes me all nostalgic for my own totally chaotic and extremely messy childhood. (With intersibling violence too.) They will look back on these days with fondness.

lissla lissar said...

Huh. It look like my living room, except it's my husband and housemate dueling, and you don't show the play-dough ground into the furniture.

mrsdarwin said...

I'm a fairly easy-going mother, but playdoh is on my list of banned substances. :)

Melanie Bettinelli said...

Aw but he's so cute!

Thanks for the preview of coming attractions in the Bettinelli household. Ben is doing his darndest to get up and walk. When he does, nothing will be safe.

christopher said...

Smart move with the wood floors, (and an attractive flooring I might I add!). Works well for the hundreds of pounds of dog hair (and play-do) that otherwise end up in carpets too.

lissla lissar said...

We've only recently introduced play-dough with the birth of our second kid. Older kid only uses it if he's strapped down in his high chair, and it occupies him for ages.

And still gets ground into everything, argh. But it does buy time.

Bill Hoog said...

These are your "good old days"! Enjoy them for they pass by way too quickly! ;^})

Bill Hoog said...

By the way, they are beautiful children!

DMinor said...

Darwins,

You have some very beautiful sources of entropy! The debris scenes are very familiar to me, and, I'm sure, to anyone who has had small children. And Bill is right -- these are the "good old days" that you'll (believe it or not) remember fondly.

Hey, are those real foils your girls are using? As a fencer, I worry about eyes and teeth when I see two unmasked people wielding fencing weapons. When my kids were smaller we had some "wacky whackers," foam "sabres" that you could actually fence with (sort of) that are less apt to do damage to facial features.

Of course I raise this mild protest in full knowledge that my brother and I used to do equally dangerous stuff (and have the scars to prove it). Kids are resilient.

Jordana said...

They are lucky they are cute at this age, aren't they? Sigh. This all looks far too familiar, except I have one dedicated informant/tattle-tail who might have warned me what was going on.

Anonymous said...

God bless normal bloggers! I have way too many politically/current event types on my dashboard. After scrolling through tons of malarkey, finding Jack sifting flour was a true blessing & break back to the reality of what really matters. Family. Love. God & all that mushy stuff. :)

Christopher Blosser said...

A premonition of things to come, now that we have another newborn -- and that living room looks a bit like ours. =)

mrsdarwin said...

D,

Not to worry. Those are real foils, but they usually live in a big bag in the garage. Darwin and I were choreographing a duel for a production of Peter Pan I'm directing, and the foils were still out because I had to have Captain Hook rehearse with one. So they've all been packed up again -- not least because Jack is completely enamored of all things swordsy, though he prefers a light saber when he can get one.

He has a big foam sword, but he keeps taking bites out of it.

BettyDuffy said...

Doth she thumb her nose at me? I believe she is thumbing her nose at me!

Emily J. said...

Our globe looks like that, too. But it was not sliced by a foil.

Dorian Speed said...

But the vacuum sneaked into one of the pictures, so we know you had good intentions.

TS said...

Your daughter's a born multi-taasker - thumbing her nose while engaging in sword play. Lil' Jack is getting bigger I see...

Kiwi Nomad said...

Jack in the flour.... classic..... An active and enthusiastic fellow!

eulogos said...

Ah how well I remember. My two youngest boys were 17 months apart and we called them the "terror team." If I went upstairs for a minute to go to the bathroom, I could come downstairs and find oatmeal and flour and syrup all dumped out together on the table, or an entire 5 pound jar of peanut butter smeared...on the screen door, in the exposed bricks, on the heat grate...
And there was no one to understand or appreciate after hours of cleaning, what I had been doing all day!