Where are the blocks going to go?

I have a small house.

It does not have enough storage.

The bedrooms are not very large.

Two months ago I neatly reorganized my son's toys. Instead of one big toy mess in the living room, everything had a place in his room and there was room to add more toys.

Many people bought my son many toys for Christmas.

We only got him a few books.

I've spent all day freeing toys from their wire cages. Why must it be so hard to get toys out of their packaging?

I'm almost done putting it all away.

Grammy got Micah an expansion set of animals that go with the large set of blocks.

Toy makers don't leave room in their plastic block container for expansion sets.

We now have a rocking horse and a rocking panda in the living room with the saucer, and the Einstein Rocket.

I've reorganized, decided what will be put away for later and what gets to live at Grandma and Papa's house or be returned.

My house is only 1500 square feet.

The rooms are very tiny.

AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGG!

Where do the extra blocks go?!

I'm at my wit's end.

We need a container store here.

My husband just came in with a solution!

VICTORY! The trick is to stack all the blocks.

We are blessed.

I am thankful for all the gifts my son has received.

Imitation Hot Wheels are not as good as the real thing. For optimum fun with cars, buy genuine Hot Wheels.

Stream of consciousness blogging...

Five in a Row

Most of you know how much I value a clean house. I like when everything is in it's place and I don't feel burdened to be cleaning. I like being able to walk on the bathroom floor and not feel like my feet are coated in dust, or worse. I like being able to actually sit in my favorite chair. In fact, before I had Micah, I would strive to make my home look like it could be a model home.

I like all these things, but I'm horribly unorganized. I try and sometimes it gets better, but some things suffer because they've never had a place to call home. I have two defenses for this. First, it was very much a learned behavior when I was growing up and secondly, my house doesn't have enough storage; it just doesn't. There is only one closet in the house where we can keep the vacuum cleaner and the only other storage beyond that is a few cabinets in the laundry room. I guess my biggest conundrum in cleaning isn't the scrubbing, dusting, and vacuuming - it's the clutter - all the stuff that just piles up. It's my various necklaces and earrings that were changed so often during the week they never got put back. It's my bags. I have a work bag, purse and diaper bag and I switch uses at least twice a day. It's the mail that piles up on the counter despite my constant attempts to make sure it's sorted and put in it's proper location (trash, shredded trash, file cabinet, magazine rack, bill slot). A maid wouldn't help my cleaning attempts because she wouldn't know how to put away all my clutter.

I've spent so many Saturdays cleaning up the house that five weeks ago I put an end to it. October was a pretty bad month for us. Josh was gone twice and was consumed planning the Ashe Bashe. There was one week where Josh was gone and we received very disheartening news. I tried to picture how overwhelmed and burdened my husband must be feeling during that week and I responded in the best way I knew how. I wanted to make sure that when he returned home on Friday night, our home was clean. That way our Saturday could be family time. All we had to do was play and lounge around, watch our Thursday night shows that had been waiting on the DVR and take naps. There was no dusting or cleaning out the clutter or doing dishes first thing Saturday morning. It was just keeping up with the day's little messes. It was fun and peaceful and I felt like I was able to really spend time with my family. It was a sanctuary from the week's chaotic events.

It's been five weeks since I worked so hard to have my house in order by Saturday. I liked it so much that I'm trying to make it a habit. I've made five in a row now. While my house still isn't perfectly clean each week, it doesn't matter because it's clean to a level where I know that I can relax. I can have my quiet time without worrying about the mess around me. I can read in peace. I can crawl around and act like a total dork without seeing stuff to do out of the corner of my eye. I'm able to put my family first on the one uninterrupted day I have with them.

Roomba!

There are so many times where I wish that my eyes were a camera and I could just freeze an image that I see and print it out. Sometimes, my camera isn't with me when it needs to be and then if I do have my camera, my sweet boy is more focused on that than what he was doing that was so cute in the first place. I've been unable to capture so many precious images because he's so enamored with the camera. On Monday morning I had another one of those moments where I look at Micah and know that I never want to forget this moment.

I could feel his little heart pounding as he sat on my lap, my arms wrapped around him. We were on the floor of his room watching the Roomba vacuum. It's such a nerve wracking and stressful event for Micah. He wants to see it, but it scares him, so he alternates between going up to it and touching it, grabbing on to me with all his might and then crawling over to it. We spent about 30 minutes watching. His little head would crane to see it when it vacuumed under his crib. And every now and then he would get brave enough to crawl over to it, then a few seconds later climb up on me and tightly grip on.

My mom was over today and she shot a few pictures of Micah braving the Roomba. It's not quite the moment I've tried to forever imprint on my brain, but it comes close.





And since you are all wondering, yes, I do like my Roomba (I'd even go so far as to say love). I'm very happy with him and I feel he does a great job at keeping my house cleaner than I ever would. He sucks up a lot of dirt for a little guy. No, it doesn't mean I can never get out the real vacuum again - it just means instead of me vacuuming every week, I vacuum with the real vacuum more like once or twice a month and let Roomba do the rest.

*After posting this and my husbands comment, I realize some of you might wonder why I torture my child so. I didn't do it out of meanness, I just wanted him to get more used to it. He cries when he sees it. There are certain things that must be done and vacuuming is one of them. He hates the blender more than Roomba and I'm not making him spend time with the blender!

15 Minutes

Like everyone else, I want harmony and peace in my life. I want all of my different roles in life to go well together. I want to be doing a good job at work, and at home. Instead I often feel like if I'm doing well at home, then my job suffers and if I'm doing well at work, then my home suffers. And it's been that way since I got married. If the house was clean, presents were bought and wrapped and dinner on the table, then I was behind in my grades, and probably doing lesson planning in my head on my way to work. I've always hated that I can't seem to do both things well. Now that I'm a mom, it's just one more thing that I feel like I'm not doing well enough. Apparently all of this had been weighing down on me and I was being a little snippy to my precious husband. We finally talked about what was wrong with me and I told him that I feel like I'm failing at everything. Being a teacher, I used that analogy and I told him that I feel like I'm making C's and D's in all these areas and then I proceeded to list all of my responsibilities - there's a lot when I get down to listing them. From that we decided on a course of action to help me feel less house stress. Each nigh after Micah goes to bed we set the timer for at least 15 minutes and during that time, both of us clean the house. Usually one of us does dishes and the other picks up toys, does laundry or whatever else needs to be done. I love that it's a joint effort and that it's not just me fighting the clutter battle, but the best part is feeling like we're being proactive and working as a team instead of just putting things off. And now there's way less to do on Saturdays. Josh must laugh at me because I tell him each night how happy this little tradition makes me. I miss it when he's gone and I have to do it myself. There's nothing fun about cleaning all by myself.