Tales from the Six-Headed House: Today's post is brought to you by the letter B.

Books

Charlotte has really become a fantastic reader. She reads throughout every day and loves to read to her siblings. The boys are liking this a lot, as Charlotte can read them a story while I'm getting Marion ready for bedtime.

Bees

We found out why Charlotte was stung by a bee in July. There was a bee's nest in the kids' playhouse! We didn't find it until we recently had a second victim, though. Simon got stung VERY close to his left eye.

Leonard let him borrow his soft new tiger. Andy felt really bad for him, so we loaded everyone into the van in their pajamas and went out for ice cream.

Beauties

Baby

Marion is charming and lovely, as always. But now she is happily sitting up independently and rolling all over the floor. She has figured out how to scoot along on her bottom, so she can cross a room and get into all kinds of mischief.

Bespectacled

Charlotte wants to show everyone her new glasses. She went in to have her prescription changed a couple of weeks ago and picked out really fun new frames!

They have little star cutouts on the sides.

Bedlam

To say that the past few weeks with Simon have been challenging would be a severe understatement. Here's what happens if you turn your back long enough to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer:

That's an entire, brand new box of cereal that I was feeding the baby. He descended on the dining room, in true tornado style, leaving destruction in his wake. He ate Marion's heap of cereal from her highchair tray, dumped the whole box of cereal all over the table and floor, and knocked my full glass of Diet Pepsi onto the floor.

It could have been worse. The glass could have broken and cut him. The soda could have tipped onto the laptop instead of away from it. I could have turned into the Hulk and ruined a perfectly good shirt. But we just scooped the dry cereal back into the box, sopped up the wet cereal, wiped down all the dining room furniture (my gosh, the SPLASHING from one glass of soda!) and washed the floor.

And here is what happens when you are feeding the baby (why does everything fall apart when I'm feeding the baby??) and the other kids go to play upstairs. But you forget to lock your bedroom door:

Yep, that's PERMANENT MARKER. All over the walls, the cool dinosaur stickers we just put up in the boys' room, my hallway mirror and my 2 year old.

It's gonna be a long week of scrubbing. Stock tip: go invest in whichever company makes Magic Erasers, because I'm about to make them very, very happy.

Beach

We went to the beach in Oconomowoc with our friends the Pedersens! The kids loved it. The water was cool and clean and they got to splash around and dig in the sand. Despite the intense heat and sun, I was the only one who left with a sunburn. I'm calling that a success. Thanks for inviting us, Pedersens! Oconomowoc is beautiful.