The Big Room

I got almost the whole bed cleaned off today in my quest to get the big room livable for my MIL's visit next week. I packed into totes toys that Smug-Baby isn't playing with right now (the thinking is that I will pull these out and pack up what she is playing with now once she is acting like she is done with them). I sucked all the air out of my off season clothes and got them on the shelf. I really should have just taken them all to the goodwill and been done with it, but oh well...

I gathered up lots of trash and got that out of the room too. Smug-Hub still needs to fix the top part of the shelving the books are on, so I wasn't able to unpack the last box of books or the totes of photo albums, but that will come.

All that is really left to tackle is the desk and office stuff. I need to find a place to stash my growing collection of Christmas gifts, move the TV and VCR on top of the dresser to get it off the floor, and take the new microwave upstairs so Smug-Hub and my BIL can install it this weekend. After that stuff, the room will need to be vacuumed and dusted, but then it will be finished!! Not perfect, but totally livable and I can work on a list of stuff to work on when this room comes around in the rotation again, like putting the books on the shelves by subject, sending some of those clothes to goodwill, putting the movies in alphabetical order, stuff like that!

I love that I am getting so close to getting the room livable! I just hope that I can work to keep it that way! I need to set aside some time weekly to keep up on filing and other office stuff so the desk doesn't get out of hand, but I should be able to keep the rest of the room in decent order now. I have been really impressed with how I have been able to keep up with the organization in the rest of the house and how nice it is to know where everything is and everything has a home! Now, if Smug-Hub would just stop messing things up that I have to keep going back over and fixing.... I know, get used to it :)

Now, I just need to get our finances as organized!!

Progress

My Mother-In-Law is coming for a visit and will be here in 9 days. I have 9 days to finish my downstairs project and get the room ready for her to stay there. Which I know, basically means that she needs access to at least past of the bed, but I would like to give her the whole bed and some where on the floor to walk around too!

Smug-hub has been very helpful the last two weekends moving furniture and setting up shelving so I have some room to maneuver now. So, today, the plan is to unpack the last box of books onto the shelf, put up the pictures upstairs that have been packed up for the last, umm, 4 1/2 years, and put the out of season clothing into space saver bags and suck all the air out of them!

The over-the-range microwave we got at a yard sale still need to be carried upstairs and installed (my BIL said he would help Smug-Hub maybe one evening this week). I would like to actually organize the CD's and DVD's into alphabetical order and the books by subject, but that isn't imperative. What is, I'm afraid to say is the desk area! It is piled high with papers and cards, bills and Christmas gifts, magazines and mail and leftover newspapers! it needs some dedicated attention!! If I get the books, clothes and pictures squared away today, then I will have the majority of the week to work on the desk/office stuff!

I kinda wish that I had taken some "before" pictures, but the biggest reason that I didn't is because I really don't want to remember how bad it looked or to let any of my readers out there know what a horrible slob I had become!! I will probably take some pictures when it is finished, so you will just have to picture piles of junk to the ceiling on your own!!

In addition to the room tasks, I have several loads of laundry to work on, but that shouldn't be an issue and I have a lovely curry stew planned for dinner! I feel like my plans are working and my weeks are becoming less difficult and the house is staying nicer and things are staying more organized and clean. After this downstairs room is complete, the whole house will have been deeply cleaned and organized and I can start over, spending a little time in each room each week to keep up on the progress I have made without killing myself! I'm excited!

I am also really looking forward to my MIL's visit. I am ashamed to admit that I am really selfish when it comes to Smug-Baby and I always felt like my MIL was taking away MY time with my baby that I waited so long for and wanted so much! I knew it was a wrong feeling and totally nothing really to do with my MIL, but there you have it. This time will be different! I have to work on this quarterly project and her visit will encompass the whole project. This will give me someone who really loves Smug-Baby to watch her, someone that she really connects with to hang out with her, give my MIL some concentrated time with Smug-Baby, and not make me feel left out of my own child's day! It should be a win-win!! Plus, she will probably cook some amazing food while she is here and food is always a winner in my book!!

Timing

I know that all things happen in the time in which they are supposed to happen, but I am not very good at letting go and letting God handle it. I like to plan and I like checklists and spreadsheets and to-do lists. Tell me how to make something happen, give me a deadline and watch me beat it every time!!

Except when it comes to having babies. A few months ago, a girlfriend and I were discussing her desire to get pregnant and I said that I felt it was important to make sure that you want to have a baby more than you want air before you have one, because pregnancy is hard, labor is hard, being a parent is hard. You have to want it more than anything or you will suck at it!

A few weeks later, she found out she was pregnant and is currently in the depths of morning sickness and wondering what she has gotten herself into. When she told me she was pregnant, that little twinge that had been niggling at me since I heard that another girlfriend was pregnant, got stronger. A few weeks after that, I heard about a woman from my birthing class was pregnant again, and a woman who's blog I read is also pregnant again. That little twinge became a full on throb!!

Smug-Hub and I had already discussed having another baby and have been trying for a last few months. We didn't want to put off trying because it did take us so long to get Smug-Baby, but we were half-hearted about it. The fears of starting over with pregnancy, nursing, teething, etc. was really hard. But, we knew that we wanted another baby and if we were going to do it, now was about perfect.

So, now it has been a few months and I am feeling that same old feeling like I did when I was trying with Smug-Baby. Like everyone around me is pregnant and other people seem to get pregnant so easily! By accident! Like, not trying!! Why is it so hard for me? I want to realize that I haven't started in like 3 months and just be surprised. But, that's not me. I'm am tracking my ovulation and cycle and keeping track of the best possible days and waiting. Waiting and waiting and waiting. The two week wait each month is SOOOO LOOONNNNGGGG!!! It's like the first two weeks go by in a snap and I spend the next hundred years waiting for a chance to pee on a stick.

I just want to be pregnant again. I want to look at my sweet daughter and know that I get to do it all over again!! Just a few more days and I can take the test! Of course, I am feeling a little PMS-y today, so...

Scared of Clothes

All of a sudden Smug-Baby is hating having her clothes put on, diaper put on, diaper changed, clothing taken off, shoes put on or taken off. I don't know what the deal is, but she screams and cries as though I am killing her when I get her dressed in the mornings or attempt to clean the poo off her butt!

She is getting so much better (and I am too I guess) at getting her point across and letting me know what she needs. She is also getting tons better at understanding what I am trying to tell her too, but we don't understand each other when it comes to this clothing thing. I win, I mean she is always wearing clothes, and I don't let her stay in a poo filled diaper, but it is a real challenge!

She used to love her bath time, then she screamed and cried throughout bath time, then all of a sudden she liked the bath again and now that she is having this aversion to changing her state of dress or undress, she is crying though bath time again. I suppose that she will come out of this stage too and all I can do is make sure that she is clean and dry and warm and ride it out.

Other than that she is lots of fun. She wants to play with me and hands me blocks to stack or twirls around my legs in a fun game of lets-get-dizzy! She likes to push the stool up to the bathroom sink and watch me while I am getting ready for bed. She also looks at herself in the mirror and practices her facial expressions - it really is too cute!!

So, you know how Smug-Hub is a die-hard Dallas Cowboy fan and I am a die-hard Washington Redskins fan? Well, these two teams met on Monday night and my team lost by a tiny 2 points. Well, this morning Smug-Hub dressed Smug-Baby in a Cowboy's shirt!!! Well, Smug-Sister decided Smug-Baby wouldn't be allowed into the house with "that Cowboy crap on"

Lucky for Smug-Baby, Smug-Sister had something she could wear

Smug-Hub was so NOT happy :)

Weekend Win

So, I had this really long list of things to get done over the weekend. And, I didn't do any of it. Not one thing on the to do list is marked off. However, I did mark off some very, super, major important things that weren't on the list:

1) Spend time with a sweet and squishy baby.

2) Spend time with family

3) Have a nice meal out with husband and baby

4) Sleep in just a bit

So, no I didn't vacuum the house, finish organizing the kitchen, do laundry or go grocery shopping. But I did take full advantage when my daughter wanted to cuddle. I played along when she wanted to stack blocks. I participated when she made Lego margrarita (I let her play with the plastic margarita glasses I discovered when working on the kitchen and she filled them with Lego's and then presented them to me for "drinking"). We watched Finding Nemo together with her all snuggled in my lap.

Why in the world would I pass up time to snuggle and cuddle with my baby, who is all too quickly growing up, just to vacuum?!?!?

I hope everyone had a great weekend and took some time to stop and smell the roses too!! I sure did!!

Balance

The whole point of killing myself throughout the week is so I can spend the entire weekend with my family, doing fun things and not worrying about all the stuff that I have to get done. I don't want to spend the weekend cleaning, grocery shopping, doing laundry and all that there stuff!! I want to go to brunch with a friend, meet up with Dad for a bike ride, stay in bed late and tickle Smug-Baby and Smug-Hub and have coffee and a late breakfast. I don't want to kill myself working and waste my family time.

I want to make sure that I have a good balance of getting my house in order and keeping it that way, of getting my body ready to grow a new human life, of feeding my family really great food, of spending enough time playing with my child. To do that, every moment needs to be thought out. I spend the majority of my day during the week busting my ass to get all the house stuff done, so I have the weekend free for family (although I do make sure to spend at least an hour each day in concentrated baby play time with Smug-Baby). I refuse to spend my weekends working on the house and stuff. That is my family time!

That is, until this weekend. Smug-Hub is going to be out of town on business (although, I don't know how you really count a company fishing trip as business but oh well...) So, Smug-Baby and I will be on our own this weekend. I have run into a complication in my ability to get everything done today (Thursday) and tomorrow (Friday). Friday, I have a dentist appointment and an appointment to have a tear in the back seat of the Jeep fixed. These errands are going to take most of the day, so the chances of getting the house cleaning done are slim to none. As for today, I was concentrating so hard on working on the deep cleaning in the kitchen, that I forgot to clean the bathrooms (today's daily task), so that has to get pushed off.

So, I have this whole weekend stretching out in front of me. I will be with Smug-Baby but it won't be the fun-filled family time without Smug-Hub, so I am planning on using this weekend to catch up on the things that I haven't been able to get done and get a bit ahead on next week. So, here is my "to do" list for the weekend:

1) Dust
2) Sweep and mop the kitchen, entry way, and both bathroom floors
3) Clean both bathrooms
4) Vacuum the house
5) Complete the deep cleaning in the kitchen - 1 more upper and 4 lower cabinets
6) Grocery Shopping - fill in week, shouldn't take too long
7) Workout

Now, I know it takes about 30 minutes to clean both bathrooms. It also takes about 90 minutes to do the dusting, sweeping, mopping and vacuuming. Grocery shopping will include a trip to the co-op as well as the normal grocery store, so about 90 minutes there. Working out will only take 10 minutes each day. Finishing the kitchen should take about another 60-90 minutes. So I need to devote about 6 total hours during the whole weekend to my tasks! That should be doable and still allow me time for a bike ride, time to take Smug-Baby to the park, catch up on all those shows on the DVR and maybe even start some laundry!!

Without the "distraction" of Smug-Hub I shouldn't have any trouble getting this all done and getting all ready for the coming week. Since I will have finished the upstairs deep cleaning project, I will be able to start on downstairs, a little at a time next week. It will be my second week of working out daily, so the soreness (which is already a lot better) shouldn't slow me down. I have high hopes for next week.

I am well on my way to creating balance within my home and my family!

Plugging Away

Today is day three, yet it feels like I have been working out and juggling all my tasks for a whole lot longer. I have stuck to my plans come hell or high water and gotten most of what I needed to get done completed on the days it needed to get done.

Monday, the only thing that didn't get done was cleaning out the kitchen drawers. I cleaned them on Tuesday, but that meant that I didn't get to clean off the tops of the fridge and pantry, but everything else for Tuesday got finished. Today, I cleaned the tops and the dish cabinet, the glasses cabinet, made wipes, and washed diapers. I didn't clean out the Gladware cabinet or fold the washed diapers, so that moves to tomorrow. Overall, the stuff that I needed to push off to the next day was small, so I am still feeling like this is doable and I am proud of myself for accomplishing so much.

Smug-Baby is on a short fuse as I think she is teething. She did better today, playing on top of me while I attempted to do my workout moves. Smug-Niece on the other hand seemed less happy to be there. She didn't want to play, have something to eat, or watch Elmo. She would play for something for a few moments, then cry and want to be held, but almost as soon as I picked her up, she wanted down again. I think she was tired, because they didn't nap long and they both fell asleep again on the way to take Smug-Niece home, so maybe that was all it was.

Tonight, we worked on leftovers and played on the floor with Smug-Baby for a while, but then Smug-Hub took off to hang with a friend he hasn't seen in a while with the promise that he would return by 9:30 and we would all go to bed together. We have this plan to keep Smug-Baby up a bit later in the hopes that she will sleep more soundly in the mornings when I am trying to sneak out. The last few mornings she has been up when I left and it is terrible!! Notice, that I am typing this and it is almost 10 though so...

While he has been gone, Smug-Baby and I have gotten all ready for bed with a bath for her and a face washing for me. We both brushed our teeth and put on our PJ's - we are set! She is running circles around the living room with a bucket on her head at the moment!

Smug-Hub has to be out of town this weekend and I have big plans to knock out the rest of the cleaning in the kitchen and start on the downstairs. I also want to catch up on uploading all my pictures to Facebook and order prints from Shutterfly. I want to get caught up on all the season premieres that are currently on the DVR and basically spend the weekend at home, doing home stuff!! It will be nice I think!

I hear the truck pulling up - 10:15! I'm gonna strangle him one of these days!!! Good night all!!