"I just baked my first loaf of bread from scratch - I feel a little like Ma Ingalls!"

"Ma Ingalls would be so proud of me, I canned 12 jars of jam today!"

"How did Ma Ingalls get it all done with children underfoot?"

Ma Ingalls. Always Ma Ingalls. Is there any other legendary homemaker so revered and idealized as Caroline Quiner Ingalls? Among women of my generation, probably not. We were raised on the Little House books, grew up believing that Laura's embellished stories were absolute fact. There was never a day that Ma allowed to pass in idleness, never a dish unwashed, never a tear unmended.

4 Mouth-Watering Recipes for Taco Tuesday (plus a shortcut you'll adore!)

With 8 people eating dinner at our place every night, it's not often that I can find a meal that pleases every single person. But tacos? Crowd-pleaser, every time. I've got a whole bunch of recipes at the bottom of this post if you're looking for a little inspiration for Taco Tuesday or Cinco de Mayo, but tacos are good any day of the week, so give these a try soon!

A couple friends recommended these taco boats and they were so adorable I had to make little sails for them, obviously! They were so, so much easier to fill than the regular tortillas I usually use, so I was able to have them assembled for the kids so that they could add any extra toppings they wanted. Such a simple shortcut, but definitely one we'll be coming back to.

To The Mom Who's Falling Behind

I see you, mama. With your uncombed hair, eyes tired from a night of broken sleep. Maybe you've got that first trimester fatigue that won't go away, or the beginnings of a cold that you know is coming on because you just can't get enough rest at night to stay healthy.

Your laundry pile keeps multiplying and it's never going to get folded and put away because the moment you *do* fold it, somebody's going to come along and dump it before it makes it to the dresser.

Your dishes stack up in the sink and you wash them but then the darned water backs up again and there's no money for the plumber and you can't get the dishes cleaned in a sink full of dirty water.

You've finally cleaned up from breakfast and it's time for lunch. Those kids just keep needing to eat!

And did the baby seriously poop again?

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to make it to daily Mass? Or have a little quiet time for prayer? But you try waking up before the kids and they just wake up earlier. That treasured quiet time is now full of noise and demands because they need breakfast now. And that daily Mass always seems like such a good idea until you're dragging your screaming children out of the church one by one, walking the walk of shame to retrieve your purse and the one child who can stay quiet in the pew.

Other moms can do it all - why not you?

Well, aside from the fact that most other moms *aren't* doing it all... This might just not be a season in life where you can get all those things you so desperately crave - the clean house, well-behaved children, perfectly attentive Mass, uninterrupted prayer time.

And that's okay.

Take comfort from the Saints - they know how it is. Frances of Rome is a particular favorite of mine:

So make that laundry, those dishes, that vacuuming into a prayer - you may not be kneeling in your favorite adoration chapel, but you're serving Him in your way. And He's right there with you.

This Week's Happenings + What I Wore Sunday

Star Wars Day (May 4th - get it? May the FORTH be with you?) - John Paul said he made this face because he was feeling confused.

They've been teaching me about all the things they can reach that they couldn't last week... This time it was the whiteboard markers. I heard them say, "We're havin' a sleepover! We're paintin' our nails!" and knew something was going wrong, but I was getting Peter down for a nap and they were leaving me alone, so I figured it couldn't be *that* b ad...

And really, it could've been MUCH worse. It could've been Sharpie (and it WAS Sharpie for a second later in the week - Mary Claire's big toe is now black until it comes off on its own).

Mary Claire is OBSESSED with babies right now, so it's convenient that she has one to play with all the time! Unfortunately, she wants to play with him when he's sleeping, so naps haven't been frequent or long.

We used to use bibs. They never worked. Stripping babies seems to be a lot more effective at keeping stains out of clothing!

Mom blog alert! Peter's almost 6 months, I happened to have some ripe avocado, and he was going to have a bath last night anyway, so he got his first taste of solid food!

He. Loved. It. 

John Paul and Cecilia HATED their first tastes of solid food (avocado and peach, respectively), and we put it off for a while longer with the twins (who had flank steak and adored it), so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Baby-led weaning for the win! Normally he sits in Andrew's lap trying to grab at his food and whining, but he was SO happy for the entirety of the meal, and the big kids were happy to retrieve the spoon whenever he dropped it.

Yes, that's pencil on the wall behind him. I've given up - the whole upstairs needs to be painted with paint that is NOT matte, and every time I clean it it strips the paint off the walls!

And that high chair? Going strong since John Paul was a baby! It's awesome because it has a booster seat included, so now Peter's starting to take over the high chair that Mary Claire's been using, and if we decide she's not allowed on the bench at the table, we can put the booster on one of the chairs.

Sunday ice cream for everyone! Very little ice cream, lots of sprinkles, happy kids!

Dress: Forever 21
Top: J.Crew Factory via ThredUP (similar for only $24.50! and 20% off right now, so actually only $20!)
Cecilia's grumpy face: I don't even know - she ASKED to be in the picture!

I had plans for what I was going to wear, but it would have required ironing so I grabbed this dress, which is desperately in need of being hemmed now that I'm not pregnant... It was fine with heels for Mass and I tied it up the rest of the day, but I still kept stepping on it and my shoulders were killing me by the end of the day! So I should probably put it on my sewing table and find the energy to hem it soon...

Throwback to last summer when I was pregnant! Gotta love non-maternity clothes that work awesome for maternity, too!

And in case you were wondering, I DID get a vacuum for Mother's Day! (We needed it anyway, but still!) It's awesome and I've used it a TON, which solidifies my status as lamest person on the planet. But hey, it's not like it's a competition?

Happy Monday! Linking up with Fine Linen & Purple for What I Wore Sunday!

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Here's to Getting Nothing Done!

These days in the age of the internet, it feels like we're presented with a few contrasting views of motherhood:

There's the frazzled mother with no sense of organization - her house is a disaster, her kids are running wild, and everyone is miserable.

We weren't miserable, but things sure were nuts!

There's the zen mother, who has taken the art of decorating to a new high, stocking her shelves with handmade wooden toys purchased on etsy (or better yet, crafted lovingly herself from sustainable lumber). Her children only wear natural fibers, and have the skill of always being photographed looking somewhat ethereal.

I don't have a picture to illustrate this - we have NEVER been close to that state!

There's the detached mom, whose home is immaculate thanks to the maid, whose children are perfectly coiffed thanks to the babysitter, and who fits in her daily Pilates, home business, and errands effortlessly.

You TOO can clean one section of your living room well enough to take a picture that makes you look like you have it all together!

Then there's the realistic mom, and I think she's a mom we're seeing a little more often. She's a mom who knows that it's impossible to religiously adhere to EVERY aspect of any one parenting style.

She knows that sometimes you're going to have to choose between folding the laundry or playing with the kids, and she also might be the mom who manages to invent the brilliant game of "laundry challenge" and kills two birds with one stone.

Sometimes you ignore the mess and let them be!

And she's the mom who has realized that the secret to maintaining a halfway-decent home while not neglecting one's children is just to accept the fact that nothing will ever get done.

I mean, maybe not *nothing* - there's always the necessary wiping/dressing/diapering/pottying/feeding that goes on throughout the day. And that's something, but that's the bare minimum, and after a point, the bare minimum just isn't enough!

But she's the mom who realizes that these endless to-do lists, with all of their wishes and hopes and "maybe if they all nap at the same time and then go to bed early I'll have time to do all of this-es," are just going to be depressing in the long run.

Maybe you're more efficient than the realistic mom. Or maybe you DO have a maid and a nanny! But me? I'm in the trenches with the rest of you, and most days the best I can expect to do is one thing. You get to pick one - do the laundry, cook a nutritious meal from scratch, clean the bathroom, go to the grocery store and put everything away...

Pick ONE. And don't expect to get anything more done (aside from loving those sweet children, reading 87 books to them, and singing The Wheels on the Bus 42 times). Anything more than that one thing is a bonus! But don't expect to get it all done - nobody can.

It took me years to figure out that all I can reasonably expect to do is one thing per day. And these days, now that I've got that much figured out? It's like I'm an efficiency expert! All because I can do one thing.

Saints, Paper Priests, Fall Photos {7QT}

--1--

My sister got this Happy Saints card set for John Paul to celebrate his upcoming feast day, but they're an even bigger hit with the twins!  Oh my goodness, it's adorable - they just want me to flip through the cards and they'll fire off the names in the most adorable little toddler voices.  They did it Tuesday night when we had a priest over for dinner (and we'd had the cards for...  4 days?) and named every. single. saint. correctly.

So you might want to get your own set!  It comes with an e-book and tons of printables too, plus free shipping so the $25 price tag doesn't seem quite so steep.  And for those of you with kids who are SERIOUS about gender equality, there are 13 girl saints and 13 boy saints.  Cecilia was VERY pleased about this when she was lining them up!

--2--

And while we're talking Catholic stuff, this:

Father Peter Cutouts Booklet from Catholic Extension

If you click the link, you'll find 8 printable pages of old school paper dolls complete with EVERYTHING necessary for a pre-Vatican II Mass, old-style vestments, etc.  It's AMAZING.  Our printer is out of ink right now or I'd print the whole set out right now because I KNOW John Paul and Cecilia will adore it.  Can someone please assign this as a project for your kids and blog about it so we can see the finished product?

--3--

Bucket list update!  We made it to our favorite Fall Festival!

She did NOT want to wear leggings under any of her proposed outfits.  I finally convinced her of the necessity, and she understood why after she went down this slide!

This pose.  Kills me.  And those muddy knees?  Yeah, she was that dirty within minutes of us getting there!

She and Mary Claire are actually the exact same height, you just can't tell from the picture!

Really, really good at smiling.  Really good.

So big!!!

This picture REALLY makes me laugh.  Those cutouts never work when it comes to scale, but John Paul's expression combined with Mary Claire's confusion slay me!

And once again, Cecilia proving that she has Miss Photogenic in the bag once her pageant days (ha!) begin.

We got rained out before we had a chance to hit everything, sadly, but they're AMAZING and we got rain checks so we'll go back for a (hopefully) quick trip sometime before the end of the month.  Which will be exhausting, to say the least...

--4--

And a week-old picture just to contrast with next year's picture at the same Fall Festival when this little one is EX-utero:

35.5 weeks in this picture, 36.5 weeks now!  

I used some ThredUP credit to round out my maternity wardrobe with a jersey dress, a denim skirt (which is SO comfy) and a scarf (okay, not maternity) and feel like I'll make it to November without completely giving up on actual clothing!  As a side note, their mobile site has really grown on me, and you get free returns if you order from a mobile device so if you've been holding off on ordering, it might be worth a try!  Shipping was a lot faster for me this time around, so I wonder if they've done something new to improve upon that?

--5--

John Paul has been...  Something else this week.  

And not in a *truly* naughty sense, but he's doing stuff like getting out slices of bread and punching holes in them so that he can use it to celebrate Mass, but then he leaves crumbs EVERYWHERE.  

Or he decides to get himself a tea cup and saucer and make some tea with elderberry syrup because that's apparently his new favorite drink, but then he opens up the teabag and ends up dripping pink tea everywhere...

And he's convinced that he should have access to EVERY shelf in EVERY cabinet so now nothing's safe (including my secret candy stash) because he gets it down and tells me THAT is what he'll be eating for dessert tonight.  

Francine suggested hiding candy in coffee mugs, and I think that's probably the best possible solution.  But seriously - what the heck?

Oh, and today?  Today I noticed it had been quiet for too long, and found him in the basement with Cecilia, playing a game on the Xbox.  I'm actually surprised this hadn't happened before, but once again he's been banned from electronics.  Adolescence can't be worse than this, right?

--6--

What do you do to help keep things clean at home during the day?  We had a pretty good system down, including a 4 pm cleaning blitz, after which I'd send the kids downstairs to watch TV for an hour or so before dinner.  And TV time was conditional upon completion of any cleaning tasks.  But now they've decided that they'd rather just keep playing and NOT clean AND not watch TV.  Argh!!!  And they're actually mostly leaving me alone while I cook, so it's not horrible.  But then things don't get cleaned up ever...

What do you do to enforce a cleaning routine?  I've been TERRIBLE about it in the past, and I know it'll be better if we have an actual routine...

--7--

Go check out more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!

7 Quick Takes: Calendars, Freezer Cooking, Consignment Shopping

--1--

I Instagrammed this picture this morning:



Because hey, St. Eustace!  We just finished reading The Silver Chair so Eustace is fresh in our minds and I never knew that he was the patron saint against fire!  Makes SO much sense that Lewis named him that, considering the whole dragon thing, right?

--2--

And then I remembered how awesome our calendar is, so I wanted to toss the link to you in case you like calendars with awesome sacred art, traditional AND new feast days listed, and little fish on Fridays to remind you not to eat meat (and to remind you when Solemnities mean you CAN eat meat on a Friday!).  Soooo if you're looking for a calendar for 2015, check out the options here!

--3--

Then a friend of mine who works at Catholic Extension pointed me to THEIR 2015 calendars, which also look lovely, although not as detailed - apparently lots of parishes buy these to distribute to their parishioners for free, soooooo you should send the link to your pastor or whoever purchases those for your parish, because they look WAY better than the ones we get from the funeral home!

--4--

I had my 32 week appointment yesterday and baby is head down and doing awesome and ohhhh yeah, coming our way in like, 2 months!  Whoa!  I've been slowly preparing the freezer - right now I've got 4 jars of pesto and 8 jars of tomato sauce in there, and I just made a pot pie and a couple dozen cookies (oatmeal chocolate chip, because raisins are GROSS) to stick in the freezer this morning.  Oh, and a gallon of bone broth last week!

Edit: Make that 3 jars of pesto...  One of them was sacrificed for tonight's dinner because this lazy pregnant lady didn't want to go outside to harvest enough basil to make a fresh batch.

I've got a big long list of stuff to make to stock the freezer, but my major problem is making these things and not eating them right now...  And then I realized that I'm not exactly having twins again, so cooking once baby arrives probably won't be such a huge deal for the first few months because hi, baby wearing!  But it can't hurt, right?

Just in case you're curious, here's my pinterest board with ideas - we'll see how much of it actually happens.  Big long post with ideas to come soon!

--5--

We're reading Farmer Boy now and John Paul ADORES it, to the point where he continued reading it out loud to the girls when I had to stop to make lunch. Melt my heart, why don't you?

Do you see a glimpse of the playroom floor?  That's why I was able to get a pot pie and cookies made today ;)

--6--

Cecilia drew this picture of Andrew and I about died of the cuteness.  Then she drew another picture of him and told me that it was "Dad pooping" soooo that one I didn't take a picture of...

I love love LOVE the preschool stage, have I told you?  When they start getting super-creative and you just get to watch how it all unfolds?  John Paul decided HE wanted to draw a picture of Dad too, but then he got side-tracked and glued two pieces of paper together to make a "folder" and drew a picture of "Me as a teenager wearing a bandanna" on the front.  I don't even know, but I love it.

--7--

Tomorrow I'm headed to the HUGE fall consignment sale that my Mothers of Multiples group runs, and I'm pretty psyched.  The twins don't really need anything but leggings, since Cecilia has always been attired in way more than she could ever need and it's all getting handed down.  But Cecilia needs pretty much everything, and it is SO FUN to shop for little girls when everything is super-cheap.  John Paul needs pretty much everything too, but it's really hard to find boy stuff as they get older, so most of his will probably have to be bought new...

And then I remembered!  Baby!  November baby who is only getting hand-me-downs from a July baby!  He needs stuff, too!  Let's hope I can restrain myself once I'm confronted with all the adorable baby clothes...

Linking up with Conversion Diary - go check out more awesome posts!

Fake Pouting, Dinosaurs, and Fruit Flies {7 Quick Takes}

--1--



This kid kills me.  She does this fake pout and uses her deepest voice to scold whenever she does something wrong...  "You pooped on da playroom floor.  Did you eat a crayon?  Did you pee on da chair?"

And then brightens up immediately to correct herself, "Poop goes in da POTTY!  We COLOR wif crayons!  Pee in da POTTY!"

It makes it a whole lot funnier because she uses the same voice and expression when she's pretending to be various dinosaurs or small plastic animals, which frequently tell her to do a good job pooping (her idea).

--2--

John Paul dictated a really boring dinosaur story to me before bed...  And I spelled half the dinosaur names wrong.  Whoops.  (You may have to click through for the video if you're on email or in a feed reader)

I really don't understand the ending.  And I was expecting something more from a story titled Protoceratops vs. Triceratops but somehow it ended with a flea.

He also wanted it to be a math, hence the math problems.

--3--

This is disgusting buuuuut...

We've been trading off between having a problem with ants and having a problem with fruit flies in our kitchen.  It's gross, and once we solve one problem, the other always comes back with a vengeance.

But THIS I find fascinating:



Fruit fly traps - cut off the corner of a sandwich bag, invert and rubber band over a glass with apple cider vinegar (I like wine glasses because then I can see them dying).  On the left is Braggs, on the right is the dregs from a Trader Joe's bottle.  And they LOVE the Trader Joe's stuff!  To be fair, they were in different locations, so maybe that was the only reason but yeah, I find it fascinating.  Also gross.  But mostly fascinating.

--4--

Cecilia has decided that she would like to put the baby to bed all by herself when he's born.  She just needs us to build a crib with a ladder, she says.  "And what if the baby won't go to sleep and you get tired of rocking him?" "Oh, I'll just put him down and he'll fall asleep on his own!"

Yes, because that has EVER worked in the history of our babies...  Oh wait.

Two baby dolls and a unicorn under her in that bin.  Babysitting, literally.

--5--

"Picture Yizabeth pouting!"

Elizabeth played a game for a long time this afternoon that involved two small wooden elephants jumping on my stomach, but my stomach HAD to be bare.  So that was a lot of fun for me...  I think I preferred the game she and Cecilia invented later, which involved a very small baby doll being shoved into a toilet paper roll.

They're going to be AWESOME babysitters when they get older.

--6--



Naps are a disaster lately.  Mary Claire keeps refusing to go to sleep, in no small part because John Paul is SO LOUD no matter where I put him.  I piled up a stack of books for him to read today and then went out to tend to the garden.  When I came back, he AND Cecilia had both left their rooms because they "needed to tell me something" but never got to it because I was so confused as to why John Paul had changed into his suit and Cecilia was wearing fleece-lined boots in August.

Then of course he was totally quiet AFTER the babies were both up, and stayed in his room for 30 minutes past naptime's end, only emerging with his Encyclopedia of Music because he wanted to tell me "SOME composers never die!!!"

By which I suppose he means that some composers are still alive...

--7--

I think we've finally settled into a routine around here, which involves quite a bit of time where I get to lie on the couch and read aloud to the kids (necessitated by my hurting my back a few weeks ago - I'm better now but I'm really enjoying the schedule we've got in place!).  In the past few weeks I've read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (PLEASE don't tell me that you don't read this first to your kids - go with Lewis' original order, not the stupid chronological order the publishers changed to - it loses so much if you read The Magician's Nephew first!), Little House in the Big Woods, and Prince Caspian to the big kids.  We're halfway through Little House on the Prairie and I think we're just going to keep going with these two series until we finish them (well, I'm not sure we'll get all the way through the Little House books just because the last two are a little more for an older audience). We also got some of the My First Little House picture books from the library and Cecilia adores them.

It's such a blast to be sharing these books with John Paul and Cecilia - they're constantly either exploring Narnia or talking about various homesteading adventures that we're going to have next (John Paul is especially intrigued by the pig's bladder).  And we've got a while before we move on to something else, but I'm excited to re-read some of my childhood favorites!  SO much more fun than reading the same boring pictures books over and over again...  Well, they're not all boring, but a lot of them are.

Linking up with Jen at Conversion Diary - go check out more Quick Takes!

It's Going to Get Easier, and SOON: 20+ Household Tasks for the Under-Five Crowd

I've had this draft in the works for a while and keep being reminded of it with posts like Jenna's and Bonnie's!  Thank goodness for internet fellowship, am I right?  

You know the kind of blog post I love to read?  When moms of older kids remind us that being in the trenches is HARD, and that it will get easier.  But the light at the end of the tunnel seems so far away when you're told it gets easier when the oldest is 10 or 12 or 8 or whatever the magic number is...

"Oh great, only 6 more years!" I think.  At which point I may very well have 6 more children than I have now...  This tunnel seems so very long.

I have no doubt that things will get significantly easier when we reach that point, but in the past year I've noticed that it's getting easier even though my oldest is only 4!

It's the little things, you know?  Things like:

- Brushing their own teeth (with "silly brushing" a few times a week by parents to make sure they're being thorough - thanks for the idea, Micaela!)

- Choosing and putting on their own clothes in the morning (and putting jammies on at night)

And who doesn't love the outfits they pick?

- Putting away their own laundry

- Buckling and unbuckling their own car seats

- WIPING THEMSELVES AFTER USING THE TOILET!!!

- Washing their own hands thoroughly (a little too thoroughly sometimes...)

- Making lunch and snacks for themselves and their younger siblings

Maybe don't give them an entire Costco-sized container of oregano for their pizzas, though...

- Refilling sippy cups and fetching drinks for themselves

- Cleaning off the floor after meals, particularly when the babies drop a ton of food

- Watering plants in the garden (and being "hose boy" and "hose girl" and scrambling behind the bush to turn the hose on and off for me when I'm doing the heavy watering)

- Fetching herbs from the herb garden and washing and prepping the herbs for dinner



- Making side dishes for dinner - get them a crinkle cutter and the right ingredients and your kids can make veggie plates and caprese salad, no sweat!

- Collecting renegade shoes from around the house

- Recycling all the paper scraps from their self-guided "art projects"

- Wiping down tables and baseboards

Even the under-2 crowd can help with this one!

- Vacuuming up the messes that they (and their younger siblings) make (LOVE our cordless hand vacuum for this!)

- Sweeping the floor and vacuuming up the pile of dust and crumbs

- Fetching diapers and wipes for the babies

- Taking wet diapers to the wet bag

- Choosing clothes for the babies to wear in the mornings

- Putting on their own shoes, buttoning and zipping their own coats, packing the diaper bag, etc. before leaving the house

- Folding washcloths, towels, napkins, diapers, and stacking cloth wipes

The face says it all.

- "Supervising" the babies while watching TV so Mom can cook dinner in relative peace

- Loading and unloading the dishwasher (I only let them do silverware and their plastic dishes because our everyday dishes are VERY heavy and have been broken by over-zealous helpers)

My oldest will be 5 in July and does all of this.  The next is 3-and-a-quarter (and SUPER-mature) and does all of these things except buckle and unbuckle her own car seat, and that's just because the buckle is tricky even for ME.  And I don't *always* trust her to wipe herself...  Girls are a little trickier in that area!

Bonus: Eventually they'll be big enough to hold a baby with them on the swing!

It's not everything.  It's not even anything particularly huge, but when you look at how all these little things add up?  IT IS BIG. 

And when you're in the trenches with your 2-under-2 or 3-under-3 or 4-under-4, it seems like it will never get easier because they're all so helpless and really just do nothing for themselves except make messes.  But cultivating a general desire for order, and a general desire to "be a helper" is so huge in lightening your load, even just a little bit.

Life is still crazy, no doubt about it.  But I promise you, there will come a day in the near(ish) future when your 3-year-old keeps begging for more "tasks in the house" and you look in the kitchen to realize that your 4-year-old has laid out all the snacks and served all the children because he happened to be hungry in that moment...  And you didn't have to do anything!

Moms in the trenches and experienced moms - what are some ways your kids help out, even when they're not very old yet?

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