When I paint my masterpiece

We took a picnic lunch up to the hilltop ruins of Castellas à Forcalqueiret a few days ago, and it was pretty darn awesome. That night, as Quincy and I were putting the kids to bed, I was reflecting enthusiastically on the day. "I love ruined castles," I said. The kids had their own opinions. Said Maddox: "I love castles what aren't ruined and have bakeries inside them."

Meanwhile, we're hoping that our house here in Cotignac doesn't become a ruin itself before we're done with it. It's a rental, after all. It's not like we're bad renters, but things do break down. (We bought a brand new coffee maker to replace the one that succumbed, on our watch, to years of calcium deposits from the famously hard French tap-water). And things just break, period – especially on these stone-hard floors. Cups, saucers, plates, bowls. Hell, last week we broke 3 wine glasses in just one single evening. (I realize that makes us suddenly sound like we're Def Leppard trashing a hotel room here, but I assure you, there is a legitimate and non-drunken-debauchery explanation for each and every bit of breakage.)

We're especially attentive to breakage because of all the kids passing through our house. Our friends Donald and Jane arrived in Cotignac a few days ago, with their daughters Cara and Caity Rose, both of whom are at the ages (like our own kids) where hands and feet seem especially likely to seek out and slash themselves on any stray shard of broken crockery. Plus, Bob and Erica are here as well, with baby West; and West is at the age where he explores his expanding world by putting everything possible in his mouth. Anyway, keeping things pristine is a bit of a chore, what with our doors open to the terrace all to the time, and the breezes blowing, and kids tromping in and out. Luckily, the mottled terracotta floor-tiles disguise most of the dirt, so it doesn't look quite as filthy as it always is. The flip side, though, is that we're sometimes reminded of that hidden filth in ways that are, well, just a bit horrifying. Like the other day when Erica heard West half-gagging on something and, upon extricating that something from his mouth, discovered it to be an old Bandaid.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the rest of us, Maddox yesterday decided to re-decorate his bedroom with a crayon, and he spent the better part of the morning doing so. His bedroom is a sizeable estate, including (and I'm only exaggerating the slightest bit) his own antechamber, bathroom, and office, as well as the bedroom itself. That's a lot of walls to cover with crayon. And he covered them all with a series of designs that, while not exactly sophisticated, were impressively coherent in style and motif. Mostly they were cycles of loops and swoops and rounded humps – like an endless series of hills seen from afar, or the world's largest herd of purple elephants – plus a few generous X's and hearts for visual punctuation.

And of course, because this house isn't actually ours, it's all illicit graffiti. It's not allowed. We punished him by sending him down the street, with Jasper and Cara and Caity Rose, to spend several hours playing with clay in the studio of a local potter. He loved it (that'll teach him). They all loved it. Meanwhile, I spent a good chunk of my afternoon with a sponge and bucket of soapy water.