Dear Moms,

I never had a pink nursery for my girls. Because we never learned the sex of our babies, our nursery was gender neutral, decorated in bold, primary colors with little teddy bears.

Hanging over my bold red rocking chair was a poem.

Cleaning and  scrubbing 

Can wait till tomorrow

For babies grow up

As we've learned to our sorrow... 

So quiet down cobwebs

Dust, go to sleep

I'm rocking my baby

And babies won't keep. 

In roughly 48 hours, we'll load up like Clampetts and drive to Mercer University to leave Miss Whimsy for her Great Junior Year Adventure. From there, Super Dad will continue to Atlanta to work in his mother's yard. ('Cause he's Super Son, too...)  

Me? I'll return to a very quiet and empty house once again.  Once again, I'll have plenty of time on my hands for the lively art of homemaking and the livelier one of blogging about it. 

If I had one tip to share with young blogging mommies, that poem would just about sum it up. Never, ever squander your rocking time. The intangible home you're making is eternal. The tangible one, notsomuch.

Put down the paint brush and play. 

Along those lines, my domino playing for this first week of August has doubled as daughter time. 

We rocked Whimsy Land from closet to drawers to that under-the-bed storage where she keeps the 4,728 extra t-shirts that come with a college diploma.   

Yesterday, we rocked our way to the outlet malls to replace items lost in The Great Closet Purge.  The Farm Sister came along too. That's because I always play Barbie with the Farm Sister, and the other three dolls are all grown up.  

The Duchess came too, of course. If there's anything cute left on Hilton Head Island, don't blame the two of them. They tried... 

Actually, Whimsy didn't need a lot. Much to her dismay, she stopped growing long ago. We mainly purchased things to go with what she had.  

See these paint chips? That's tip #2.

They represent the color families from the skirts we were trying to match. Carrying a handful of paint chips is infinitely better than playing a guessing game as to whether that pink or orange or green is the right pink or orange or green.

And tip #3? Mention to the nice sales clerk that you're in need of more hangers for the aforementioned skirts. She might just give you an entire bag of them.  Woo. Hoo.

So that's where I've been and why I haven't been as visible in Blog Land recently. Please indulge me. Sooner rather than later, I'll be back in the swing of things. In the meantime...

Quiet down Blog Land...

Put Pinterest to sleep

I'm rocking with daughter

And daughters don't keep. 

*****

Can I get an AMEN

 from other mothers out there?