2013

I have tried this blogging thing many different times. It goes in fits and starts - I'd get pretty good at keeping up, then stop as other things distracted me. The biggest problem was when I ended up doing something just a little interesting I'd be to busy with it to blog about it. So mostly I've blogged about the more boring parts of my life and as it is a tiny life already that can mean pretty mundane blogging.

This year I will try to blog about the interesting stuff.

We started the new year in Las Vegas. That sounds more exciting that it was. We celebrated early with a birthday dinner for my grandmother-in-law. It was a fancy dinner at Nove Italiano on the top of the Palms hotel. I believe our family will be debating which dish was the best for years to come ( in our house we're still trying to decide between the Nove Spaghetti with seafood to the 45 day dry aged New York strip with balsamic glaze).

Speaking of our house: we are not in it. Well, not till June at least. My husband has a military thing to do in Monterey, CA and we have moved all four of us out here for the next few months. The plan is for my husband to not miss the the baby's big milestones and to have a bit of an adventure as a family. So far I've been in Monterey for four days and I love it. We're enjoying the cold weather, so different from our home in Ewa, and I love the view of the ocean. I look forward to the trips and adventures that are so close to our little temporary home.

I also look forward to getting a chance to write about it and reflect on how awesome my life can be at times.

Gobbled

We had a good Thanksgiving.  

I made two turkeys, twelve pounds of cranberry sauce, two pesto-cheese tortas, corn pudding, corn bread, sweet potatoes, stuffing, roasted vegetables, and lobster salad.  There were potatoes and a pineapple casserole that I am still dreaming about.  

I made twenty-two pies: sweet potato, pecan, pumpkin, and apple.

I went to two pre-dinners and one pizza party at Costco.  

I ate some food.  I fed people more food.  I packed a lot of food to give to other people and cooked some more - to give to other people.  

I cleaned the place, top to bottom, multiple times.  Emily made twice the messes as normal.

I am thoroughly exhausted.  Emily is thoroughly exhausted.  D is well stuffed.  

I am so tired that all I want to do is

Go out and get a Christmas Tree!

I love that my holidays are now busy and filled with cheer!

Moment

You know those commercials where a woman is dressed in really comfortable clothes, like pajamas, but still looks impossibly pretty settles down into some really comfortable couch or chair that is not covered in cat hair?  The one where she has something like a cup of coffee, or a thing of yogurt, or a chocolate bar?  The commercial where she sits down and as soon as she indulges in whatever she has she experiences a moment of utter bliss and contentment that you feel you need to emulate because honestly you really, truly, need to have a moment of utter contentment and bliss?  You know that commercial?  You know that moment?

I had one last night.  I was wearing Hello Kitty pajamas covered in baby food.  My hair was frizzy and messy.  I was covered in Pumpkin Patch dirt.  My couch was covered in cat hair despite being just vacuumed.  My husband was making some strange noise with his cocoa.  But I had that moment anyway.

It was Chocolate Mint Truffle Hot Cocoa.  Ahhh.

Clothes

My husband has been helping with Emily's clothes more lately.  Usually he has nothing to do with her dressing or changing as he's either at work or asleep when it happens.  So he doesn't really know the clothing system I've devised where there are some things that Emily does not fit hanging in her closet and some that she does fit into.  This is for two reasons.  One - I don't want to pack things away to early.  There needs to be a critical mass of clothes that are too small for me to want to break out the boxes and put away a new set of clothes.  Two - there are things she will fit soon.  Things like pajamas that will be perfect when Emily has another growth spurt, but don't fit now because her arms and legs are fat.  If these are left in the box or drawers now, while she doesn't fit them, I will forget them when she is finally ready to wear them and once again my kid will be stuck squeezing into the same dang pair as always - or going naked.  Poor Emily.

Of course I know what is part of what system, but my husband doesn't, so the other day he had to attempt to fit a bunch of different pairs of pajamas on her before giving up and handing the screaming toddler over to me.

All of this means it's time to pack.  This morning we moved half of the 12 clothes into the bin and made sure all the 18 month clothes were out of storage.  There is a giant lack of 18 month clothes so I also went through her 24 month sets and picked out the ones that run small.  Circo, Garanimals, and Gerber tend to run smaller.  This is all bitter sweet for me.  First of all, there are far more casual play clothes in these sets.  No more frilly dresses.  There are some of course, but for some reason people think toddlers should wear shorts and jeans and play shirts.  I personally think she should still wear lacy, frilly things.  You can still climb a tree in frilly dresses - trust me I've destroyed enough lace to know.

It's also bittersweet because these clothes are designed to be easier for little people to dress themselves.  Emily is already an expert at getting my shorts on over her head and she has figured out sleeves on her shirts.  In just a little while she'll be pulling up her own jeans and picking out her own shirts.  Gone are the days of me playing dress-up with my little doll.  She'll want to put on what she wants and I'll have to nod and say "Okay honey.  Good job."  As exciting as it is to watch my child make her own choices and take care of herself it is also super sad.  I spent a long year trying to remember to savor all this itty-bitty baby-ness.  And I still feel like I didn't get enough.  I need more baby snuggles, more hours with an tiny hand wrapped around mine.

So maybe I had a third reason for my clothing system:  Keeping those little baby things around just a little longer.

Kitty!

Emily and Joy taking a nap together.

We're pretty lucky that Emily really loves our cats and the cats seem to tolerate Emily very well.  Emily's best friends are our two cats Joy and Coconut.  Her first word was kitty and now she knows how to meow.  It's pretty adorable.

We're lucky that these two cats like Emily.  They're amazingly tolerant.  Both of them will play with Emily and let her chase them around the house.  Often I will find all three of them sitting down together and getting into trouble.  When Emily goes into her play area in the living room Joy often follows and sits close by.  Coconut keeps a safer distance, but is never too far off in case Emily might drop a cookie for him to gobble up.  They both let her pet them as well as pull on their whiskers and, in the case of the other night, ride their tails.  (Emily held onto Joy's tail as she was walking away and Joy dragged her across the floor...no screaming from cat or toddler.)  

I sometimes worry about Emily not having a sibling to play with now, but she seems content to socialize with the cats and that's pretty sweet.  After all, that's what her mother does.  Some of my best friends have been kitties and I'm glad Emily has some cat friends too. 

Happy House Week 2

So I am completing my second week of the Happy House Express Challenge.  You could ask why I don't start and/or end my week on a Sunday.  It's because I don't work weekends.  Well, much.  I don't work fulltime on the weekends.  I'll feed and cloth my child but my floors will have to stay unswept.

That being said here's how I've done:

Week 1
Make the bed 7/7 (I actually do this on the weekends)
Empty the sink 6/7 (I do this too, I missed Wednesday though because of the tire thing)

Honestly Week 1 was a gimme since that was the week I cleaned top to bottom and made the house not just happy but orgasmically happy.

Week 2
Make the bed 7/7
Empty the sink 7/7
Clear the clutter 5/7  (I spent a lot of time re-clearing the clutter of my living room, but since we spend most of our time there the rest of the place still isn't that bad)
Sweep the kitchen floor 4/7

There is it.  The house looks lived in again, but not a disaster zone.  Which is a semi-miracle considering my house elf sometimes does more

harm 

than help.

Clean

I started the Happy House Express Challenge this week.  I'm three weeks late, but no one really has to know.  Anyway, I started adding the two new chores for this week and that was all well and good.  However, my house needed more than a spruce.

Growing up our home wasn't really clean.  It was loving, it was wonderful, it was fun, but it wasn't organized.  We were healthy, well-fed, happy children with attentive and loving parents.  Parents who spent a lot of time taking us to events, classes, shows, adventures while they ignored all their own endeavors.  The fun ones and the not-so-fun ones like cleaning.  Family was more important and I'm grateful for that.

My husband grew up in a very different home.  His mother was, to put it mildly, house proud.  He and his siblings spent most of their time cleaning the home or doing other tedious chores (there was a story about picking out certain colored rocks in a rock bed that just makes no sense to me at all).  Of course they did other things, but apparently keeping the house close to perfect was important to his mom.  I have a hard time wrapping my head around this.

Thankfully, D does not share his mother's zeal for cleaning.  If the house gets a little crazy he can deal.  He'd like it clean once in awhile, but lived in is good enough for him.  Good thing too because I live in my house.  So does our toddler.  Which means that things do not always get cleaned right away.  There are often times when I only get to one room a week.  Sometimes not even that.  And so, for the past year, there has not been a single moment where every room in the house was organized, tidy, and clean.  It was livable.  The important parts were clean:  kitchen, bathroom, laundry.  Just some rooms had closed doors and a pile of stuff that needed love sometime - sometime in the future.

This week though I finally did it.  For a few weeks I ignored everything but the biggest rooms of the house.  I cleaned and tidied these until I had it to a point where with just an hour of wiping, sweeping, and some clutter control they looked neat.  Then I moved on to the smaller rooms.  They were easier to take care of and so I had a chance to also do those things that never get done.  You know, those things that professional cleaners do that normal cleaners don't.  Door moldings, the tops of the legs of the rocking chair, the corners of the ceilings.  Those things.  Who knew they could get dirty?

So I did those things along with some others and today I put the finishing touches on the last room of my house.  Now all three bathrooms, all four bedrooms (including my craft room), all closets, the office and library, the kitchen, the living room and even the foyer are scrubbed, tidy, and calm looking.  And that is with a toddler and two cats running around.  I even had time to make dinner.

So now that it's all finally perfect I can continue on with the happy house challenge and making the bed will actually mean something.  You know, rather than being a neat bed in the midst of a hurricane of dirty clothes, books, toys, and kleenex.

Projects: Curtains

I made some really pretty curtains for my craft room. They are white voile with ribbons of flowers over them. I lined them in magenta. My craft room is painted pale pink so when the sun shines through the magenta the room really pops bright.

Unfortunately, the homeowner/condo association people have cited me for having pink curtains so now I have to change the color.

I could line the magenta with white so the magenta will still show through the voile on the inside of the window, but hopefully not show through the lining towards the outside.

I could put up a white blackout curtain on a different rod behind the actual curtain.

I could change the curtains altogether.

Or I could take them all down and make everyone look straight into my pink craft room.

Don't know what I'll do, but that's my new project.

Help

It is soooo cute the way my daughter helps me clean the house.

After I sweep and mop the floor she helpfully takes her cheerios out of the bowl, one by one, and places them on the floor.

After I fold the clean clothes she very graciously moves them from the couch to the floor. Starting with the stuff on the bottom first.

After I put the dishes away she opens the tupperware cupboard and puts all the containers in her plastic kitchen cupboard.

When cooking she will clear out the bottom shelf for me. Today she pulled out the chicken breasts....wait...that was actually pretty helpful cause I was making chicken.

Finally, today when she watched me vacuum she made a dirty diaper for me. She is so helpful she decided to head on up the stairs to the changing table. By herself. At warp speed.

I love it when she learns new tricks.

Green

I love green things. Trees, flowers, grass. I love looking at them. Last summer I spent my mornings watering our tiny yard and watching green things pop up. Lettuce, strawberries, green beans. The most exciting thing about my day was going outside to see what had popped up overnight. Then our daughter popped up overnight (or over four nights really) and I ignored the yard again.

Now it's time to start again and my husband has spent weeks getting the garden ready. Which means every morning I get to walk around outside and for five to ten minutes I explore green things. We have tiny green things coming up that will soon be marigolds. My pumpkin plant is sprouting orange blossoms now. My citrus-tree-of-unknown-variety is now fruiting citrus-of-unknown-variety. There are mushrooms of different colors and our palm trees and ti plants are plumping out. Everyday my super-tinny-tiny yard has changed completely from the day before. And I get to witness it.

My bonus is after I spend a few quiet minutes watching green things grow I go inside and spend a lot of noisy minutes watching a pink thing grow. That's really not a bad way to spend the day.

Productive

I like to do things. I get bored easily and my cure for that is picking up a new hobby, skill, or project. In addition I'm a hard worker. Back when I went to work-work I got there early, stayed late, and got a lot done. Whether it was theater or school or office filing I worked hard. I enjoyed it because I like to do things.

However, I have a hard time feeling as though doing housework is doing things. Doing chores all day feels like, well, doing chores. It does not feel productive. I can work all day at dishes and laundry and floors and at the end of the day all I feel is exhausted and defeated. I don't go to bed feeling accomplished and pleased with myself because for all the things I do finish in a day I still know, and list in my mind, all the things I did not. Finished all the laundry? Great, but I still need to vacuum. Polished the living room floor? Fabulous, but the couch is still covered in cat hair.

Similarly, when I wake up in the morning it's not a wake up of hope and promise for all the things I'm going to sink my teeth into but rather a long look at a list of things I did yesterday and will do again. Then repeat the next day, or week, or month. When my husband comes home on Monday and asks "What did you do all day?" I will tell him I did the laundry and shopped for groceries and mopped the floor and played with the baby. When he asks again on Tuesday I will say the same thing. Again on Wednesday and Friday too. I know it as I'm saying it and talking, because I desperately need to talk, and he knows it as he's listening and eventually we'll just stop doing both.

Not that watching and helping a baby grow isn't the most fabulous, exciting, and interesting thing I've ever done. It is. However, I'm in the middle of doing it so somehow the wonder of getting both laundry and dishes done while I'm changing diapers and convincing her to take a bite of avocado doesn't seem that productive. I mean say it to yourself: I got the baby to try avocado. Feel accomplished?

Part of this feeling probably stems from the fact that these are jobs that never end. You never complete housework, or raising a child, or dinner for that matter. You cook the dinner, you serve the dinner, you eat the dinner, you put the dinner away, you do the dishes, you put the dishes away - then you begin planning the dinner for the next night. It never ends and it spawns it's own set of things to do that don't stop. It's a cycle of some big ups and downs. Similarly, housework never stays in the up position for long. I can polish the floor sure, but as soon as I do the husband comes home with the combat boots and the baby dumps a bowl of carrots over. It's not a big deal, but it means the thing you spent your energy doing today now needs to be done again tomorrow.

It is strange these things bother me. I love routine as much as excitement. I like schedules and lists. I enjoy knowing some of the things I will do during the day will not change just as I enjoy knowing somethings will really change. But I am finding it hard to get the perspective to find all this fulfilling as I did before. I am finding it hard to think that for all the effort I put in, and all the exhaustion I feel, I have done anything at all.

I'm busy but am I productive? And is it really important? Am I?

Blessings

Today at church our minister read from Yeats:

When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blessed.

He emphasized that everything - everything - is blessed. Even Dick Cheney. And that was funny.

But what struck me more was the line above: We are blest by everything. More than the fact that everything around us is blessed all the time is the fact that we are being blessed all around. All the time. The hugs and kisses I share with my family are so much more than just affection - they are blessings. The food I cook, the house I clean - all blessings.

Which is a nice thought to a woman who isn't sure what her job is or if what she does everyday is important. It may be little, but even little blessings are nice.

All I need is the apron

My wedding is coming up and though we don't really need anything and we don't want any presents (just lots of loved ones present!) I still got surprised by a few gifts.

From my husband a shiny, brand new Singer sewing machine (with a buttonholer).

From my dad a copy of The Joy of Cooking.

Think I might officially be a homemaker now.

But what I really want to do is blog

A week or so ago I looked down to watch as Emily moved from sitting to lying on her stomach to rolling onto her back, then back up again...all on her own. The remarkable part of this feat of baby strength was that I was not at all surprised. She'd been doing it for awhile and it took me at least a month to notice that I've noticed that she can roll any which way she pleases.

And that's pretty much my life. If there is anything to note I note it...then promptly forget that I've noted it because there are things to do. When Emily first rolled from tummy to back I cheered and clapped and we ran upstairs to wake up Dad and tell her she finally did it. From back to tummy...eh...just don't do it when you're on the changing table. Good. Next!

It's not that I'm not paying attention. I am. Quite a lot. I can tell by the look on her face what she's gearing up to do. I know what she's trying to grab. I see her doing all these new baby tricks. I just am too busy doing them with her (or keeping her from doing them into a wall/corner/down a flight of stairs) that I don't note them as milestones anymore I see it as the progression of our lives.

Except I want them to be milestones. My mother and I talk daily and she always asks (as she has for my entire life) "What adventures have you had today?" And I start to answer before I realize my adventure was going to the supermarket. It was fun. We enjoyed ourselves (Emily loves riding in the cart), but is is actually an adventure anymore? Is it noteworthy? Actually forget wasting paper on a note: is it blog worthy?

Shoot is it even Facebook status worthy?

I like my life. I like that the supermarket is fun. I like that a pair of clean socks has now become a toy that can mean at least 15 minutes of fun. I like all that. I like being a Mom. It's a lovely job. However, when my friends write to me and tell me of their fabulous lives then ask what I am doing I want to say something other than "breastfeeding."

I know there is something else to me than boobs...I just wish I could notice what it was.

My Other Kid

I've lived with a few men (not all of whom I had an obligation to like) and they have some pretty strange habits and a lot of them are pretty gross. Over the years I've learned to pick my battles about changing them...gym socks on the kitchen table (gentle nudge), re-wearing dirty jeans (ignore), drinking straight from the jug (click of the tongue).

Recently, we had a bunch of house guests so my husband stopped drinking straight from the jug (because sharing germs with the Mother-in-law is pretty gross even to him). But now it's just the three of us so it's back to the old trick. But not when I'm looking. No clicks if I don't catch him.

So how do I know it's happening? The other day I was pouring milk from jug to cup when I noticed chocolate stains on the rim. It was a little like a little kid with chocolate stains on his mouth saying he didn't get into the cookies.

Click...click...click