Ok, so he started walking two days after I made that last post. It’s been a busy week. Little rascal is learning fast. He can go halfway across a room if he doesn’t get too excited.

I am enjoying it. Gage is less dependent on me now that he can do a little walking on his own. It really was hard being a major source of entertainment whenever he wanted to walk, which was most of the time he was awake. Now that he can walk he’s starting to play independently again. Still comes over regularly when he wants a long walk around the house, but not nearly so often as before.

I am really enjoying the reading and writing class Ariel and I are attending. It gets a little frustrating sometimes when she just gets into an activity and the 15 minutes allowed in each room is up. She is so excited to go and we have a lot of fun together.

I am very much ready for Gage to start walking. Ever since he discovered that he can walk around holding my fingers, that is what he wants to do with me all day. Playing with his sister doesn’t hold his interest very long, not when he could be walking!

Today I was doing a lot of housecleaning, and he constantly in the middle of things. Fine when it comes to folding laundry, not so good when it comes to sweeping or vaccuuming.

I got a lot done, even so. Even got my quarterly taxes filed, something I have to do now that I earn enough working at home that my husband’s withholding doesn’t cover what I earn. I can think of worse problems to have!

I’ve added about nine new recipes to the recipe section of the site today. Just started going through my cookbook and typing away.

I can never leave a recipe alone, and my cookbook consists of printed pages and lots of notes on each page. People keep giving me cookbooks, but I get a lot more use from the one I’ve made myself. Not every change I make works out, but I do pretty well overall.

Cooking with small children around can get interesting, but this was one I just have to share.

Making homemade pizza tonight. I rolled the dough out on the kitchen table while my daughter was playing with some of her paint pens. Stepped away to cook some chicken for a topping while letting the dough rise. No, I’ve never mastered tossing the dough.

I came back in a few minutes to roll the dough out just a little bit more. Ran the rolling pin over it just one more time and noticed some blue. Yes, you may have guessed it already.

My daughter had put just a little bit of the paint from her pens onto the pizza.

Now, this was just a tiny amount, the pens are nontoxic and I was able to pick it all out of the dough. My daughter was just in tears as I told her she needed to keep her pens out of the food. She just thought it was something fun to do!

Now, my son isn’t making things any easier. Much of the time I was cooking tonight he was practicing his walking by grabbing my pants by my knees and going everywhere I went. I swear I waddle more now than I did when I was pregnant with him! I am going to be so relieved and driven so nuts when he can walk on his own.

Why do those things go so well together?

It feels so good to have Gage taking his nap at last! He’s trying to learn to walk, and his favorite thing to do right now is take my fingers and go wandering around the house. It’s lots of fun, but it sure can cut into my work schedule.

Some of my work, of course, can be done with him on my lap. I don’t do things that require too much typing, however, since he loves to pound on the keyboard. I think when my new one comes in I’ll have to remove the cord from this one and let him have it. We did the same for Ariel when she was a baby with an old keyboard, and Gage is much more into pushing buttons than she was.

Of course, chasing after the kids is one of the great benefits of working at home, even when it makes getting actual work done more challenging. I wouldn’t trade it.