How to kill a blog ...

... and try to bring it back from the dead with one ramble of a post sprinkled with tens of photos.

Let's go.

I'm feeling a little rusty. And reckless .... abandoning ship for a week? Who cares? I know, not a soul! My biggest complaint about St. Louis (or more specifically - me in St. Louis) is that most days it still feels like we moved here two weeks ago because I do not feel integrated at all. This is 100% my fault but all of the emails that have hit my inbox this past week make me feel like who needs tangible friends when you have the internet?

Not I.

Anyway, the break was unintentional (you already dedicated one paragraph to your sabbatical! no more no more no more .... ) but I was able to find a dark little basement even below the bottom floor that is super survival mode and went into gum-on-a-sidewalk mode.

Or Theodore's bottom lip on a padded playground floor mode. 

Or ... lazy. Or ... slacker. I hope you roll your eyes at my wines + an h ... but night float has just been especially tough this time around -- which still comes as a ridiculous shock to me. It's lonely because whenever Simon and I see each other it's as if our brains have been thrown into a blender and whipped into a vommy smoothy. We are tired. Really bleeping tired. And even though I love my kids and laugh every time Julia mandates yet again that Sebastian is going to dress up as a "costume" for Halloween ... or that when I'm holding Theo and trying to make lunch and Sebastian busts out his second two word phrase that is, "hode you?" ... it's really inconvenient but mostly really endearing ... they do make better company than no one in the house ... but I'll gladly bury vampire Simon in two weeks time. Bring on the semblance of normality. Please. Pretty please.

So. What's been going on around here? More of the same.

We went to Wichita last weekend and I did a terrible job of documenting but snapped these ...

It took Simon three tries to get the overalls on correctly.

As usual, we were spoiled by Simon's family. Super spoiled.

And the big kids love for Frankie makes me almost consider becoming a one pet family again in the VERY distant future but ...... probably definitely not.


We visit Simon as the laborers allow ...

 ... and Sebastian is getting extra bold and stealth and bolty in public which is really great. I'm pretty okay with taking the kids to playgrounds myself (this only took me about 7 months after Theo was born ... I adapt to new situations beautifully) but Sebastian has to be watched like a hawk. I hope you never have the pleasure of seeing me holding poor Theo while sprinting after Sebastian headed toward a pond, parking lot, or street because it's an ugly scene that Sebastian repeatedly finds hilario.

And actually my empty-armed chase is pretty and poised as well.


oh! And the biggest news of all is that we had visitors! Glorious visitors.

Ana and her three little ladies came through on Wednesday and left this morning. The visit lifted my spirits immensely and I love Ana's blog but I love her even more in real life and wish there was some crazy bloggers commune where we could all just retire at the age of how about today? I was a terrible hostess and totally hit up Costco's snack bar for lunch one day and Dunkin Donuts drive-thru for an after dinner park snack and after feeding the kids and putting them to bed last night it dawned on me that I hadn't fed Ana. So ... come visit. You'll eat really well.

You'd think it would be chaos central with six kids under the age of five in a not-very-big house but the kids got along great and Julia is still sad about her friends being gone and that I'm probably less likely to entertain her grating game of "Fee-Fi-Fo" which involves stomping around the house with a super creepy Gollum voice than Ana's sweet girls did. It was so nice to hang around with someone that understands that minivan floor diaper changes are the norm and that tantrums are a toddler's love language. She even had the pleasure of waiting in the hospital parking lot with a screamy Theo as we waited to see Simon for 3 minutes between c-sections. Red carpet treatment. She got it.

the Patton offspring are like .... wtf is that? getting along? looking happy? not for us.


ANYWAY.

I'm back. And as mediocre and melodramatic as ever. Run while you still can.