Something Good

Wow.  The last couple of months were...hard.  The pregnancy and some associated complications made things pretty difficult.  I managed to keep up until my mom got here at the end of June, and then I was quite grateful to have her help with the kiddos and the house during the day.  My pain level almost immediately dropped, which did show me that I really had been pushing myself too hard.  But, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

So, first of all, I made this:  



Welcome to the world, Winnie!

She's now almost six weeks old, and I'm getting pretty antsy about getting things under control.  My mom just went back to Florida this weekend, and hubby's back to full-time this week; so I'm full-on figuring out how to be a mother of three.  

There's obviously been a lot of change around here, and the seasons are following suit.  Right now, I'm kind of doing a combination of preparing for winter and trying to simplify my days.  In order to do that, I'm getting things organized, paring stuff down a bit, and working really, really hard to kid-proof the house.  I love Lucy with all my heart, but she's kind of a terror, and I'm to the point where if I can't get it out of her reach, it needs to have a childproof lock on it.  

For example, I've mentioned on here a couple of times that it just drives me crazy that the girls get out all the baby blankets and drag them all over the house.  CRAZY.  I find myself saying things like, "why do I have to pick up the same things over and over every day?!"  The answer I'm thinking is because my monkeys keep getting the blankets/straws/books (although, I can't get too annoyed about that one!)/whatever out and not putting them away.  The REAL answer is because I haven't made those things inaccessible.

So, for the last week or so, I've been working on that, as well as trying to take care of other nagging things.  In addition to creating barriers between the kids and the stuff I don't want to clean up yet again, I'm also purging some things.  I figure the less stuff I have, the less stuff they can drag around, right?  This week alone I cleaned my dresser and closet, neither of which was nearly as difficult as I anticipated because I did such a good job organizing last time.  Seriously, if I'd known it would be that easy, I wouldn't have spent the last three months dreading opening my closet door and feeling like a failure whenever I stuffed something into an over-full dresser drawer.  I would have just taken the half hour to solve the damn problem, already.  That allowed me to get rid of about half a big black garbage bag full of clothes, and I'm sure more will follow once I get back down to a more pre-pregnancy size.  (Bye, bye, maternity clothes.)

I also managed to scrub one shower and one toilet (the ones that I never get to), cleaned out the winter accessories drawer downstairs (how many brown scarves do I really need?), got some work projects done, tracked down a bill that erroneously went to collections, and got the bigger two girls to their gymnastics classes (with help from a friend).  Whew!

I will be getting back to the Big List Project, but for right now, I'm "striving for zero."  That's what I call it when I'm working from a deficit.  It's kind of how I feel about debt, for example.  "If I could just be at zero!"  Anyway, I'm trying to get to zero as I still feel behind from being so sick during my pregnancy.  I've got this awesome five-day planner pad (pictured above--it's pretty funny), and I'm kind of lining up each day of the week in advance.  I plan out the work stuff I want to get done, the house stuff, possible craft projects for each day, appointments, etc.  I did it this week, and even though I didn't get to everything on the list every day (or ANY day, really), it's been helpful to have that to turn to rather than trying to remember what the blazes I'm doing on those days when I'm a bit sleep deprived with a crying baby, a toddler with an appetite for destruction, and a 4-year-old who really should still be taking naps but doesn't.

I have so very much I want to get done, but right now I have to remember that slow and steady wins the race.  Either that, or I need to keep telling myself that lie so I don't sink into despair over the fact that my to-do list stretches to approximately 2017...