Don't judge me by the title, please. I am not some nut job that sincerely thinks the world was formed 4 years ago. This is not going to be some post musing over what the world may have been like when it did, in fact, turn 4. I am not proposing a theorem revolving on the concept of 4 parallel worlds which we are constantly pulled between. I'm merely referring to my world - the world in which I'm a mother.
A few weeks ago, my eldest boy Gabe turned 4. A joyous occasion, is it not? My biggest little boy is growing up! He's nearing the next stage in his life! Soon he'll be old enough to go to school! ... I can feel a panic attack setting in even now.
4 years old??? Are you sure????? Didn't I just give birth to him a little while ago? And I'm sure he just started walking not that long ago. And sometimes he still gets a sippy cup even so I can be sure he doesn't spill on the couch! How can he be 4?!?
But it's true, and scary. And before you start thinking, "What's the big deal? It's not like he's moving off to college," - hear me out. I grew up in a day home, but the wonderful things was, it was my own mother's day home. Not content to leave her kids, she did everything she could think of to ensure she could afford to stay home with us, which meant providing a safe and happy place where other parents could drop off their kids. My mom was fantastic at running a day home. We had ample time playing outside, individual play time with special toys, fun trips to water parks and the like, special lunches once a week and lots of creative activities, like a playdough "Dinosaur Land" which was decorated with twigs from the yard, plastic dinos and chicken bones that we could dig up. It was an awesome childhood, and when the kids went home every day at 5:00, I was always left feeling like I got an awesome day playing with my mom during an extended playdate. We did so many fun things that I resolved when I was pregnant with Gabe to repeat many of them with my kids. But it's funny how in the past 4 years I never managed to get around to so many of those little things that were day-to-day treats in my own childhood.
Sure, Gabe has gone to the Drumheller dinosaur museum, and has been to the mountains numerous times, and ridden horses, and gone fishing, and even gone to a show jumping exhibition at Spruce Meadows in Calgary, but those were all outings. I've been great about big outings - I try to make sure we get to do lots of those things with the kids. But for one reason or another, the special daily things have been much harder for me.
In part, I think I'm scared to let the kids make too big of a mess. Painting is a pretty rare occurrence in our house. Glitter is banned. If we bake together I'm the one who cracks the eggs, and the boys have no knowledge of anything called "bath paints". Another reason is that I often feel like some things may be too advanced for my boys. Gabe is just getting to start using scissors and glue this year while many other kids have been using safety scissors for a couple years by now. And sadly, another reason may be that I just haven't made the time and I've often opted for the easy route.
A week ago we were getting into the car after our weekly church playdate and the two older boys were picking up rocks in the parking lot while I was getting the baby in the car, and stashing the rocks in our wagon. When it was time for the big boys to get into the car Gabe instructed me to keep his rocks so he could start a rock collection and I almost said, "No". Why? Because it would have been easy to say no. Order and schedule and routine is easy. Bringing more things into our house and getting down and dirty is not easy. But it struck me that by the time I was Gabe's age, I certainly had my own collection of rocks (which were all very plain and boring, except to my excitable eyes). Why did I have a rock collection like that? Because my mom was more inclined to say "yes" than to say "no". I can't think of a better explanation. Where I have been prone to say no, decline requests to play, shut down the chance for a craft, my mother would comply, have a craft at the ready and get down on her knees to push those toy cars around. And it hit me, very hard in that moment, that I needed to change what I was doing, or by the time Gabe was 5 and went to school, I'd have regrets. These first few years where I get my kids all to myself through the day and we have endless opportunities for play, exploration, learning and fun are only worth as much as we make of them. And in some ways I've been squandering this time. Sure, we've done outings, and projects and "bucket lists" of seasonal activities, but our day-to-day fun has been lacking.
I suppose another reason for this is the fact that I have easy-going boys. Yes, they play like boys in that they love tools, they roll all over each other rough housing and everything seems to make engine noises, but they have looooooong attention spans (one bucket of cars = 2 hours of fun), they like to play quietly and neatly for the most part, and they play really well together. If I did not interrupt their play from time to time, I could easily let the two older boys carry on for the whole day. Not bad for a 4 year old an a little guy that's not even 2 yet... But I have taken advantage of their ease for far too long. I have accomplished far too many other things, of far less importance, in the past few years. If my kids were my high-maintenance and needed more assistance to feel entertained, I'm sure I'd not be having these concerns right now, but just because they don't need me doesn't mean they shouldn't get me.
So what do I do whenever I resolve on something? I make a list. In this case, it was a rather large, multi-faceted list, of things I wanted to do with Gabe before he turned 5. But not in the way one would do a bucket list, but more so a standing list of things that should be recurring. For example, growing up with the dayhome, about once a month we would get Face Sandwiches - we'd each get a piece of bread with CheezWhiz or peanut butter and put various toppings on them (celery, carrots, raisins, dry ichiban noodles, mini marshmallows, chocolate chips) to make faces. I want to do that! And we will make a dino land, and I'll finally break down and get some glitter! But these won't be the sort of things that I need to schedule out and plan extensively; these are things that we'll get to in our day, maybe when the baby is sleeping, or maybe when the cars get cleaned up and we need something else to play with before lunch time. Really, it's more about how I approach their playtime, rather than what I plan for them. I'm sure that if I involved myself more in their active play that we'd have got around to all these things and more by now.
SO I tried to do things differently this week. I earnestly tried to say "yes" (almost) every time I was asked for something. Less, "Not now," and more, "Let's do it!" How did that change the look of our week? For starters, excepting one day where Gabe had soccer in the evening, we played outside every day - which is a record for us! Getting them outside was too close to getting them dirty before and often seemed like more effort than it was worth, but this week they went outside to wash the rocks from their collection (which I let them bring home), they helped me rake leaves left from the melt, they painted the fence with water and they played with the dog and dug in the flower beds. We made muffins together and when we had eggs for lunch, Gabe cracked them all for me (one went right onto the floor, but hey, what can you do?). We painted - Gabe painted his rocks and Nathaniel did a number of pictures. We made coffee filter flowers as gifts for the Grandma's on Mother's Day, played with playdough and did lots of coloring together. We watched far less TV than we have in a long time, and we played ALOT of Spiderman and "Pet Store". We even had a bath with colored bath soap similar to playdough... you can shape it, then lather it for shampoo or soap... long story short, it temporarily dyes everything blue until thoroughly rinsed. Now, some moms may read this list and think, "That's all? Didn't you have an organized craft time every day where you work with mixed media, or sessions of intentional sensory play to aid in development?" But this is a step forward for me in this area, and I'm happy with how it went. And most importantly, the boys were happy too. And that really is the point to all of this.
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
Friday, May 10, 2013
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Meal Planning May 13 - 18
I didn't meal plan for this week (WHAT?!) thanks to a weekend of migraines, and an unwillingness to go to the grocery store and, you know, spend money. But NOT meal planning does not actually help you save money. This week I was saved by a very generous friend who rode over on her motorbike on Monday and pulled out a pot pie and a lasagna from her backpack for me (a neat party trick, I think). Anyway, I sat down tonight intent on making up my meal plan before the weekend starts so that whenever I get a chance to grab groceries this weekend, I can with my list prepared and my head full of yummy meals.
So here are my meals for this week, based on what's on sale this week:
Hamburgers
Oven Fried Chicken
Shrimp Scampi
Homemade Cream of Broccoli soup with Salad
Stuffed Pork Tenderloin with roasted apples
The best part? The most expensive meal is, I believe, $5, to feed my whole family. I don't buy meat over $3/lbs as a general rule.
I'm excited!
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
So here are my meals for this week, based on what's on sale this week:
Hamburgers
Oven Fried Chicken
Shrimp Scampi
Homemade Cream of Broccoli soup with Salad
Stuffed Pork Tenderloin with roasted apples
The best part? The most expensive meal is, I believe, $5, to feed my whole family. I don't buy meat over $3/lbs as a general rule.
I'm excited!
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
Thursday, May 2, 2013
The Ups and Downs of Meal Planning
If you have ever at all been given to reading organizational blogs, or have read books on how to simplify your life, you'll likely have encountered at least a few pages of reasons why you should meal plan. Meal planning is a fantastic way to save time, money, and frustration. By planning a shopping list in advance that works along with your menu for the week, you can limit waste, by having a schedule made up you can begin meal prep earlier in the day and pull meat from your freezer the night before, and a little bit of thinking ahead will save you from staring at your Pinterest Recipes board at 4:30 on a weekday until you finally throw in the towel and order pizza. And while I know all of these wonderful advantages to meal planning, I must confess that I am a hot-and-cold meal planner myself. Some seasons it is an essential part of my household management and others it just seems like one more thing that would be thrown into my schedule, and something I just really don't have time for. In those latter seasons I invariable eat more fast food. But still I manage to convince myself for chunks of time that I don't really need to meal plan.
I think a large issue I have with meal planning is that repetition in your menu is glaringly obvious when it's written down on paper. I always love variety with my menus, and can't seem to bring myself to list the same menu item on a written schedule twice in one month. However, that mindset is ridiculous when I look at how many times in a month we resort to having spaghetti because I can't think of what else I should make. It's no wonder though that I should find meal planning to be a burden sometimes when I set such ridiculous standards for myself. To never repeat a meal in a month is fine, but not necessary. The reality is, if we enjoy it, why shouldn't we eat it every other week?
I started meal planning when I was living with a roommate in another city, just after high school. We had different schedules, her with school and myself with an office job, so when I cooked, I was cooking for one. I couldn't stand the thought of wasting large amounts of food, which would unquestionably happen if I weren't thoughtful about using up the produce I bought at the beginning of the week, so I started meal planning, often concocting new dishes just to use up what was already on my grocery list. When I sat down to make my meal plan, I'd pick three or four meals I wanted to have that week, and then I'd go over my ingredient list, anticipate what ingredients I'd have left in my fridge by Thursday, and dream up some way to use them. For example, I loved to make rice noodle bowls with marinated honey garlic pork and steamed peppers, but what would I do with the leftover red pepper after I'd had that meal once in the week? But since I always had canned peaches on hand, and I'd have some lychee nuts for snacking too, I'd plan to make Peach Pepper Chicken with sautéed lychee nuts. Peppers were gone, any lychee nuts that were getting old were gone, and the remaining canned peaches were taken for lunch the next day. Some ingredients were at a higher risk of sitting unused and eventually spoiling if I didn't plan in advance, like fresh ginger, or avocados. But as I learned that reusing ingredients didn't necessarily mean all my dishes would taste the same (Ginger Beef vs. Lime Ginger Pork) I felt like meal planning during that season was really an outlet of creativity, rather than an inhibitor.
But after I moved home to go to college, the next time I was the primary person responsible for grocery shopping and meal planning was as a newlywed. But there was no real advanced planning beyond the night before in that case. Running to a grocery store every night was a novelty - a way to enjoy the simple pleasures of being newly married - and since I was working I would decide the night before what we'd be eating the next day, but trying new, fancy recipes was far higher on my priority list than staying within a set grocery budget. For a few months a typical week's meals would look like this: Monday - T-bone steak with crab topping, Tuesday - homemade perogies and loaded nachos, Wednesday - pulled pork with a root beer sauce, Thursday - salmon steaks with stuffed potatoes, Friday - Deep dish pizzas with homemade sauce and fresh Italian sausage. Variety, experimentation and 'Wow factor' were my goal, and thanks to the addition of a KitchenAid mixer to our household, and the resulting fresh dessert baked every night, my poor husband gained 15 pounds in 6 weeks, and we were spending around $800/month on groceries, for two of us! And that's before we factored in dinner's out! Fortunately we couldn't carry on like that for long, and by the time I went on Mat leave with my first boy, I realized that we needed to have a real budget, and less rich food on such a regular basis. I recalled my old meal planning ways and set out in that direction again.
Now, as I mentioned before, I've since yo-yoed back and forth with my meal planning tendencies, but while reading a e-book on simplifying life the other day I was reminded of just how much pizza and spaghetti we've eaten in the last few months, and I decided I was fed up with it. Something had to give. I've maintained a tight grocery budget of $300 a month for the past 4 years, but just in the past two months my ravenous toddler has helped bump up that number. And while pasta is a cheap meal, I felt like if I meal planned I could manage to save money still, while increasing our variety.
The trick I'm faced with this time is 'how'. How long do I plan for? One week at a time? A month at a time? Do I keep it a rigid schedule? Do I dare repeat meals in a month?
Some tips I'd heard ranged from using Google Calendar to plan a rigid schedule that would email you reminders daily about what you were to prepare that day, and planning two weeks of meals and then just repeating the same two weeks until you decide to change the whole menu again.
Neither of those really rang true for me.
First off, part of the reason I'm so successful at being cheap with groceries (you may choose to call it 'cost conscious' but really, it's just cheap) is that I shop the flyers every Thursday. I can't bring myself to set foot in a grocery store without having first checked to see what's on sale, and where. So my maximum planning time will be one week at a time, and that way I can determine if we'll be having turkey meatloaf or not, depending on whether ground turkey's on sale.
Secondly, sometimes it just doesn't work to put in the time you had anticipated spending on making supper. Maybe the baby is super fussy and you just plain won't have a chance to stand over the stove making crepes for half an hour straight. Or maybe the kids made an epic mess and you just need to throw something in the oven so you can deal with the rest of the house before hubby gets home. One friend on Facebook offered up a brilliant suggestion: make your list, but don't be rigid with the days those meals will fall on necessarily. Write all of the menus on a chalkboard, maybe in a loose schedule, but if the day is crazy, take a glance at the chalkboard and choose the meal that will be most do-able that day. You'll already have all the ingredients on hand, so changing up the meal midday won't throw you through any serious loops.
Lastly, while I may be able to bring myself to occasionally repeating a meal in a month, I can't limit our household to 14 meals in one 30-day period. So as I plan week by week, I'll make sure I feel free to choose repeat meals, but I won't just hit the 'repeat' button en masse and play through the same meals we just had two weeks ago. That's not enough variety for me.
Once I had resolved to meal plan, it was already a couple days into the week and I had no intention of going grocery shopping until the end of the week, so I simply planned based on what I had in the house. And what did we eat? Balsamic Chicken the first night, then homemade chili and cornbread, tonight is Chicken Souvlaki Crepes and tomorrow will be Barbequed ribs. And while making crepes for supper might seem labour intensive, I had enough of a heads up that I prepped all the veggies and fixings while I was waiting for eggs to cook for the boys at lunch time, and the chicken is thawed, marinating, and waiting to go on the grill, so having to ONLY make crepes for my supper preparation at 4:30? Not a bad deal.
Meal planning is worth it - very much so. It makes complicated meals seem much more doable on a regular weekday, it makes for less waste, less frantic Pinterest searches at 4:30 in the afternoon, and will certainly make for less spaghetti in our household. And after the last few months, that last point is reason enough for me to recommit myself to meal planning.
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
I think a large issue I have with meal planning is that repetition in your menu is glaringly obvious when it's written down on paper. I always love variety with my menus, and can't seem to bring myself to list the same menu item on a written schedule twice in one month. However, that mindset is ridiculous when I look at how many times in a month we resort to having spaghetti because I can't think of what else I should make. It's no wonder though that I should find meal planning to be a burden sometimes when I set such ridiculous standards for myself. To never repeat a meal in a month is fine, but not necessary. The reality is, if we enjoy it, why shouldn't we eat it every other week?
I started meal planning when I was living with a roommate in another city, just after high school. We had different schedules, her with school and myself with an office job, so when I cooked, I was cooking for one. I couldn't stand the thought of wasting large amounts of food, which would unquestionably happen if I weren't thoughtful about using up the produce I bought at the beginning of the week, so I started meal planning, often concocting new dishes just to use up what was already on my grocery list. When I sat down to make my meal plan, I'd pick three or four meals I wanted to have that week, and then I'd go over my ingredient list, anticipate what ingredients I'd have left in my fridge by Thursday, and dream up some way to use them. For example, I loved to make rice noodle bowls with marinated honey garlic pork and steamed peppers, but what would I do with the leftover red pepper after I'd had that meal once in the week? But since I always had canned peaches on hand, and I'd have some lychee nuts for snacking too, I'd plan to make Peach Pepper Chicken with sautéed lychee nuts. Peppers were gone, any lychee nuts that were getting old were gone, and the remaining canned peaches were taken for lunch the next day. Some ingredients were at a higher risk of sitting unused and eventually spoiling if I didn't plan in advance, like fresh ginger, or avocados. But as I learned that reusing ingredients didn't necessarily mean all my dishes would taste the same (Ginger Beef vs. Lime Ginger Pork) I felt like meal planning during that season was really an outlet of creativity, rather than an inhibitor.
But after I moved home to go to college, the next time I was the primary person responsible for grocery shopping and meal planning was as a newlywed. But there was no real advanced planning beyond the night before in that case. Running to a grocery store every night was a novelty - a way to enjoy the simple pleasures of being newly married - and since I was working I would decide the night before what we'd be eating the next day, but trying new, fancy recipes was far higher on my priority list than staying within a set grocery budget. For a few months a typical week's meals would look like this: Monday - T-bone steak with crab topping, Tuesday - homemade perogies and loaded nachos, Wednesday - pulled pork with a root beer sauce, Thursday - salmon steaks with stuffed potatoes, Friday - Deep dish pizzas with homemade sauce and fresh Italian sausage. Variety, experimentation and 'Wow factor' were my goal, and thanks to the addition of a KitchenAid mixer to our household, and the resulting fresh dessert baked every night, my poor husband gained 15 pounds in 6 weeks, and we were spending around $800/month on groceries, for two of us! And that's before we factored in dinner's out! Fortunately we couldn't carry on like that for long, and by the time I went on Mat leave with my first boy, I realized that we needed to have a real budget, and less rich food on such a regular basis. I recalled my old meal planning ways and set out in that direction again.
Now, as I mentioned before, I've since yo-yoed back and forth with my meal planning tendencies, but while reading a e-book on simplifying life the other day I was reminded of just how much pizza and spaghetti we've eaten in the last few months, and I decided I was fed up with it. Something had to give. I've maintained a tight grocery budget of $300 a month for the past 4 years, but just in the past two months my ravenous toddler has helped bump up that number. And while pasta is a cheap meal, I felt like if I meal planned I could manage to save money still, while increasing our variety.
The trick I'm faced with this time is 'how'. How long do I plan for? One week at a time? A month at a time? Do I keep it a rigid schedule? Do I dare repeat meals in a month?
Some tips I'd heard ranged from using Google Calendar to plan a rigid schedule that would email you reminders daily about what you were to prepare that day, and planning two weeks of meals and then just repeating the same two weeks until you decide to change the whole menu again.
Neither of those really rang true for me.
First off, part of the reason I'm so successful at being cheap with groceries (you may choose to call it 'cost conscious' but really, it's just cheap) is that I shop the flyers every Thursday. I can't bring myself to set foot in a grocery store without having first checked to see what's on sale, and where. So my maximum planning time will be one week at a time, and that way I can determine if we'll be having turkey meatloaf or not, depending on whether ground turkey's on sale.
Secondly, sometimes it just doesn't work to put in the time you had anticipated spending on making supper. Maybe the baby is super fussy and you just plain won't have a chance to stand over the stove making crepes for half an hour straight. Or maybe the kids made an epic mess and you just need to throw something in the oven so you can deal with the rest of the house before hubby gets home. One friend on Facebook offered up a brilliant suggestion: make your list, but don't be rigid with the days those meals will fall on necessarily. Write all of the menus on a chalkboard, maybe in a loose schedule, but if the day is crazy, take a glance at the chalkboard and choose the meal that will be most do-able that day. You'll already have all the ingredients on hand, so changing up the meal midday won't throw you through any serious loops.
Lastly, while I may be able to bring myself to occasionally repeating a meal in a month, I can't limit our household to 14 meals in one 30-day period. So as I plan week by week, I'll make sure I feel free to choose repeat meals, but I won't just hit the 'repeat' button en masse and play through the same meals we just had two weeks ago. That's not enough variety for me.
Once I had resolved to meal plan, it was already a couple days into the week and I had no intention of going grocery shopping until the end of the week, so I simply planned based on what I had in the house. And what did we eat? Balsamic Chicken the first night, then homemade chili and cornbread, tonight is Chicken Souvlaki Crepes and tomorrow will be Barbequed ribs. And while making crepes for supper might seem labour intensive, I had enough of a heads up that I prepped all the veggies and fixings while I was waiting for eggs to cook for the boys at lunch time, and the chicken is thawed, marinating, and waiting to go on the grill, so having to ONLY make crepes for my supper preparation at 4:30? Not a bad deal.
Meal planning is worth it - very much so. It makes complicated meals seem much more doable on a regular weekday, it makes for less waste, less frantic Pinterest searches at 4:30 in the afternoon, and will certainly make for less spaghetti in our household. And after the last few months, that last point is reason enough for me to recommit myself to meal planning.
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Housekeeping
I subscribe to a blog called Keeper of the Home, a Christian-living based blog which offers articles and advice on home organization, healthy living and eating, and general home-keeping topics. Yesterday I got an email from the site announcing a one-week e-book sale: 97 e-books for $29.97, regular price is over $640. I read through the list of titles and determined that this was a very good investment for me; ice cream recipe book, a book of crockpot meals, a book with a list of 52 'projects' to help simplify your life, even stuff to help me plan Sunday School... awesome. So I went ahead and bought the bundle (you can do the same here, until May 4th) and spent a chunk of time today and last night looking over some of my purchases. I was inspired by so much of what I read, but by 11:00 I realized that I had yet to actually 'do' anything with my day, or even set out a list of things I hoped to accomplish. Now, granted, today was basically the first day in about a week that I've been able to sit upright for the whole morning, so I actually forgot outright that I normally plan what I want to tackle, or that I even try to tackle stuff during my day, but still - I felt pretty lazy at that point. It had started to bug me as I read through some of the organizational tips that some of the e-books held, and I realized that while they made some very good points, I doubted implementing a new organizational system sat very high on my list of priorities when I still hadn't done dishes from the night before. So I paid bills online, shut off the computer and set about cleaning some of my everyday things. I will take this time to say that I am very pleased to announce that my tolerance for mess has decreased considerably since I implemented my daily cleaning routine. The first day I was able to leave bed for longer than 5 minutes after my two week battle with illness, I made a point of doing the dishes up; Matt had maintained them reasonably well during my time out, but they had yet to be done to absolute completion, so I spent those first 10 minutes out of bed scrubbing the dishes, and making sure my kitchen counters were clear. All that really meant was that when I did my cleaning today, I didn't have to 'catch up' too much. So by the time my middle boy went down for a nap at 12:30, I had a load of laundry to fold, and then I felt at my leisure to do other things again. But this time, as I read, I felt justified in tackling some of the organizational 'nudges' that I came across in these books. And as I read, I did.
Pinterest, magazines and home organizational blogs are wonderful tools! ... if you actually attempt the things that inspire you in them. What's the point in having a "Favorite recipes" board that you pinned 80 recipes to today if you wasted so much time that you decided to order in pizza? And how much help is it to have a whole board devoted to front entry solutions if you never do any of them and throw your coat on the couch for months on end? Sometimes we get so blinded by trying to find the 'perfect' solution, be it for organization, cleaning schedules or meal ideas, that we forget to try anything at all. One of my relatives regularly sends me tips, articles and books on the next brainwave on how to clean your house better - and yet her house is perpetually messy, to the point of being unable to enter some rooms! And the real trick is, she needs to just start doing. Period. Instead of scheming how to keep her papers organized in a nifty little filing system, first she just needs to clean up her papers and get rid of everything that she doesn't need anymore. And instead of making lists of ways to clean, sometimes she just needs to pick up a glass when she's done with it and put it in the dishwasher. Granted, there is a time to re-evaluate a system, and make changes to help you stick to things better, but there's a point where just doing something - anything - is really what you need to be doing. And then when it comes time to re-evaluate our current system, we need to ensure we don't become paralyzed by the sheer number of options before us. If we have 20 different ideas for how to organize our kids' toys better than their current toy box, but never pick one and go with it, the toy box is going to be around for a long time.
Now, with that little public service announcement out of the way, I do want to take some time to dwell on, and extol, the virtues of those wonderful resources for organization and housekeeping tips. When you do get to that point of re-evaluation - maybe your best efforts just don't seem to be enough for keeping up with household clutter, or your makeup stash is overflowing and you can't seem to keep it contained or organized, or maybe you are about to put in a new pantry and want to get it right the first time (all personal experiences) - by all means check out Pinterest! I say Pinterest as a very general rule because that's how I stumbled across some of the awesome blogs I regularly head to for tips, like Keeper of the Home, but don't limit yourself. Magazines, blogs, newspaper articles, e-books... there are endless sources of wisdom out there on such topics! My cleaning schedules that I printed off from MarthaStewart.com have helped me enormously, although I did have to makeup my own "Bedtime Checklist" (Martha doesn't have 3 little ones at home), my makeup is now stored in little galvanized pails that hang on the wall (IKEA utensil holders actually) and is sorted by eye makeup, general face + creams, and brushes + lips, and my pantry is going to be incredible when it's finished! Thank you Pinterest!
But again, you have to actually try doing these things, or it's all pretty pointless.
So what did I come across today that inspired me enough to actually try it? First off, there were some great points in a couple of the e-books I read today about getting paper out of your house, and dealing with what you do need to have in it. When I came across these tips, I did the first step, which was to deal with the mess I already had on that front. I've got a mail organizer on a barnwood accent table which I'm supposed to go through every Friday and clear out or file away everything. I have to confess, that's one of the weekly chores on my cleaning schedule that I haven't kept up with very well. Just this morning my poor husband asked if there was some way he could help me keep that area more organized, which, to my pride-filled head sounds like, "You need to do a better job of this; you're letting your husband down by having mail pile up", so the prompting to deal with it was very timely. 10 minutes later, all the mail that had piled up since I last purged the little barnwood table (maybe a month and a half ago?) was sorted and ready to be filed. Then I was able to move on to the re-evaluation stage and identify what was, and was not, working. The e-books talked first and foremost about just not letting paper into the house. They suggested throwing flyers in the recycling bin outside before you even bring them in and look at them but I rely a little too much on my flyer habits for that idea to be anything short of traumatic. Their other suggestion I could fully embrace however: switch to electronic bills. Why have I not done this sooner? Basically because I have always felt like hardcopy is the only legitimate form of record for tax purposes. And if I ever get audited, that may be true, but the reality is, should I ever get audited, I can pull up my past years' statements from my online bill file and print out a hardcopy. Nifty, is it not? So I resolved to make the switch. I get so much mail to my current email account however, that I'm going to set up one simply for bills. That way it will be much easier to keep everything organized, especially since we have different service providers for nearly everything since it's always been cheaper. The next thing mention in handling paper was to dispose of what you don't need, as soon as possible. Turns out I have 2 years worth of monthly financial statements that are tucked away in my filing cabinet because we don't have a paper shredder and there's too much information on those bad boys for me to feel confident with simply tearing-and-tossing. So for the past couple of years I've just been keeping them instead of turning to the obvious solution - buy a flipping paper shredder!! For the amount of grief this silly overflowing barnwood table costs us, you'd think I'd have broken down sooner, but for some reason or other, I never have. But now I can say with certainty that both hubby and I would easily pay $30 to have our pretty accent table back, and de-cluttered. Granted, I will opt to have most of those statements as e-bills now, but that's not an option for all our accounts, so the paper shredder will still be well worth it.
The next biggest thing that struck me in my reading today was mentioned in the e-book One Bite at a Time:52 Projects for Making Life Simpler - it talked about having time with your spouse where you regroup, look at the upcoming week, and basically having a management meeting. I had heard this idea talked about before in Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll but never really thought that it was needed in our household; our kids weren't in school, we had no evening activities to drive them to and things were pretty straightforward. Well now our 4-year old is starting soccer next week, and when that's over we're taking him to swim lessons (birthday presents from the grandparents - great idea, no?), hubby has deacon meetings every other Tuesday, though I can never remember which one, I have meetings for church commitments and am trying to step up my play dates and times where we have people over for dinner or dessert, and there's something every weekend from now until July. I think the time has come where we need to make sure we're on the same page. I really recommend getting One Bite at a Time, so buy it, if not the whole e-book bundle, and see what the author has to say about these weekly meetings, but to set aside time once a week where you go over scheduling, finances, concerns for the family, and where you can indicate what your needs for the week will be seems like a fantastic idea. But I found a hitch in this idea. If I want to schedule date night with my husband every week, and we have meetings or life group nearly every evening, and then when our schedule is open we're so busy dealing with the demands of the household that we would feel hectic trying to set aside time for this meeting, how is this actually going to work? Well, One Bite at a Time actually inspired the solution to that hitch, too. Another 'project' the author mentioned was starting family traditions, and she proceeded to paint a picture of her and her husband cracking open a bottle of wine every Friday, and working side-by-side to make pizza from scratch as a way to help their family kick-start the weekend. It sounded like a beautiful idea and I could picture it clearly with swing music accompanying the choreographed cooking. I wanted that. And the perfect time popped into my head too! Since our church relocated to another church's building, we've switched to evening services, which means that in order to be at church by 6 (and often earlier if I'm leading worship or teaching Sunday School), very often we only eat a light meal and then hubby and I are hungry when we get home (the kids get snacks at church, lucky dogs), so we usually get the kids ready and into bed, and then have a couple hours of downtime before bed where we usually make up nachos or Kraft Dinner and unwind. But often we unwind separately. But not anymore. I am claiming that time! Starting this Sunday, after church each week hubby and I will come home, get the kids in bed, make dinner together, eat, then sit down with a nice dessert and a pot of tea, and have our weekly management meeting. It might seem like cheating to combine the management meeting with the new family tradition, but when you're pressed for time, that's what happens - and to be honest, I think we'll enjoy the time so much that we won't mind at all. The end of the weekend makes perfect sense for us, too: after having help all weekend with the house and the kids, my Sunday evenings aren't as hectic, and hubby hasn't been working all day, so he's not so tired that he can't focus on our conversation (totally happens sometimes). I'll take the initiative to make sure we have something quick to whip up for dinner after church, and something nice to have for dessert afterwards (even if it's just fresh fruit) and we'll get in some reconnecting time before the week comes to tear us asunder.
There were smaller things that I was spurred on to do today, like making a list of items that would help our household (a Dust Buster and a bigger food bin for dog food storage), and trying to start meal planning again (chili, BBQ ribs, and Chicken Souvlaki Crepes over the next three days!), and while I'm very excited about some of the changes that will hopefully help our household down the road, had I not tackled my regular duties, and gone to bed tonight with laundry done, the kitchen cleaned, and all the toys put away, I wouldn't feel like I had accomplished nearly as much with my day. In fact, I might have felt downright lazy.
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
Pinterest, magazines and home organizational blogs are wonderful tools! ... if you actually attempt the things that inspire you in them. What's the point in having a "Favorite recipes" board that you pinned 80 recipes to today if you wasted so much time that you decided to order in pizza? And how much help is it to have a whole board devoted to front entry solutions if you never do any of them and throw your coat on the couch for months on end? Sometimes we get so blinded by trying to find the 'perfect' solution, be it for organization, cleaning schedules or meal ideas, that we forget to try anything at all. One of my relatives regularly sends me tips, articles and books on the next brainwave on how to clean your house better - and yet her house is perpetually messy, to the point of being unable to enter some rooms! And the real trick is, she needs to just start doing. Period. Instead of scheming how to keep her papers organized in a nifty little filing system, first she just needs to clean up her papers and get rid of everything that she doesn't need anymore. And instead of making lists of ways to clean, sometimes she just needs to pick up a glass when she's done with it and put it in the dishwasher. Granted, there is a time to re-evaluate a system, and make changes to help you stick to things better, but there's a point where just doing something - anything - is really what you need to be doing. And then when it comes time to re-evaluate our current system, we need to ensure we don't become paralyzed by the sheer number of options before us. If we have 20 different ideas for how to organize our kids' toys better than their current toy box, but never pick one and go with it, the toy box is going to be around for a long time.
Now, with that little public service announcement out of the way, I do want to take some time to dwell on, and extol, the virtues of those wonderful resources for organization and housekeeping tips. When you do get to that point of re-evaluation - maybe your best efforts just don't seem to be enough for keeping up with household clutter, or your makeup stash is overflowing and you can't seem to keep it contained or organized, or maybe you are about to put in a new pantry and want to get it right the first time (all personal experiences) - by all means check out Pinterest! I say Pinterest as a very general rule because that's how I stumbled across some of the awesome blogs I regularly head to for tips, like Keeper of the Home, but don't limit yourself. Magazines, blogs, newspaper articles, e-books... there are endless sources of wisdom out there on such topics! My cleaning schedules that I printed off from MarthaStewart.com have helped me enormously, although I did have to makeup my own "Bedtime Checklist" (Martha doesn't have 3 little ones at home), my makeup is now stored in little galvanized pails that hang on the wall (IKEA utensil holders actually) and is sorted by eye makeup, general face + creams, and brushes + lips, and my pantry is going to be incredible when it's finished! Thank you Pinterest!
But again, you have to actually try doing these things, or it's all pretty pointless.
So what did I come across today that inspired me enough to actually try it? First off, there were some great points in a couple of the e-books I read today about getting paper out of your house, and dealing with what you do need to have in it. When I came across these tips, I did the first step, which was to deal with the mess I already had on that front. I've got a mail organizer on a barnwood accent table which I'm supposed to go through every Friday and clear out or file away everything. I have to confess, that's one of the weekly chores on my cleaning schedule that I haven't kept up with very well. Just this morning my poor husband asked if there was some way he could help me keep that area more organized, which, to my pride-filled head sounds like, "You need to do a better job of this; you're letting your husband down by having mail pile up", so the prompting to deal with it was very timely. 10 minutes later, all the mail that had piled up since I last purged the little barnwood table (maybe a month and a half ago?) was sorted and ready to be filed. Then I was able to move on to the re-evaluation stage and identify what was, and was not, working. The e-books talked first and foremost about just not letting paper into the house. They suggested throwing flyers in the recycling bin outside before you even bring them in and look at them but I rely a little too much on my flyer habits for that idea to be anything short of traumatic. Their other suggestion I could fully embrace however: switch to electronic bills. Why have I not done this sooner? Basically because I have always felt like hardcopy is the only legitimate form of record for tax purposes. And if I ever get audited, that may be true, but the reality is, should I ever get audited, I can pull up my past years' statements from my online bill file and print out a hardcopy. Nifty, is it not? So I resolved to make the switch. I get so much mail to my current email account however, that I'm going to set up one simply for bills. That way it will be much easier to keep everything organized, especially since we have different service providers for nearly everything since it's always been cheaper. The next thing mention in handling paper was to dispose of what you don't need, as soon as possible. Turns out I have 2 years worth of monthly financial statements that are tucked away in my filing cabinet because we don't have a paper shredder and there's too much information on those bad boys for me to feel confident with simply tearing-and-tossing. So for the past couple of years I've just been keeping them instead of turning to the obvious solution - buy a flipping paper shredder!! For the amount of grief this silly overflowing barnwood table costs us, you'd think I'd have broken down sooner, but for some reason or other, I never have. But now I can say with certainty that both hubby and I would easily pay $30 to have our pretty accent table back, and de-cluttered. Granted, I will opt to have most of those statements as e-bills now, but that's not an option for all our accounts, so the paper shredder will still be well worth it.
The next biggest thing that struck me in my reading today was mentioned in the e-book One Bite at a Time:52 Projects for Making Life Simpler - it talked about having time with your spouse where you regroup, look at the upcoming week, and basically having a management meeting. I had heard this idea talked about before in Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll but never really thought that it was needed in our household; our kids weren't in school, we had no evening activities to drive them to and things were pretty straightforward. Well now our 4-year old is starting soccer next week, and when that's over we're taking him to swim lessons (birthday presents from the grandparents - great idea, no?), hubby has deacon meetings every other Tuesday, though I can never remember which one, I have meetings for church commitments and am trying to step up my play dates and times where we have people over for dinner or dessert, and there's something every weekend from now until July. I think the time has come where we need to make sure we're on the same page. I really recommend getting One Bite at a Time, so buy it, if not the whole e-book bundle, and see what the author has to say about these weekly meetings, but to set aside time once a week where you go over scheduling, finances, concerns for the family, and where you can indicate what your needs for the week will be seems like a fantastic idea. But I found a hitch in this idea. If I want to schedule date night with my husband every week, and we have meetings or life group nearly every evening, and then when our schedule is open we're so busy dealing with the demands of the household that we would feel hectic trying to set aside time for this meeting, how is this actually going to work? Well, One Bite at a Time actually inspired the solution to that hitch, too. Another 'project' the author mentioned was starting family traditions, and she proceeded to paint a picture of her and her husband cracking open a bottle of wine every Friday, and working side-by-side to make pizza from scratch as a way to help their family kick-start the weekend. It sounded like a beautiful idea and I could picture it clearly with swing music accompanying the choreographed cooking. I wanted that. And the perfect time popped into my head too! Since our church relocated to another church's building, we've switched to evening services, which means that in order to be at church by 6 (and often earlier if I'm leading worship or teaching Sunday School), very often we only eat a light meal and then hubby and I are hungry when we get home (the kids get snacks at church, lucky dogs), so we usually get the kids ready and into bed, and then have a couple hours of downtime before bed where we usually make up nachos or Kraft Dinner and unwind. But often we unwind separately. But not anymore. I am claiming that time! Starting this Sunday, after church each week hubby and I will come home, get the kids in bed, make dinner together, eat, then sit down with a nice dessert and a pot of tea, and have our weekly management meeting. It might seem like cheating to combine the management meeting with the new family tradition, but when you're pressed for time, that's what happens - and to be honest, I think we'll enjoy the time so much that we won't mind at all. The end of the weekend makes perfect sense for us, too: after having help all weekend with the house and the kids, my Sunday evenings aren't as hectic, and hubby hasn't been working all day, so he's not so tired that he can't focus on our conversation (totally happens sometimes). I'll take the initiative to make sure we have something quick to whip up for dinner after church, and something nice to have for dessert afterwards (even if it's just fresh fruit) and we'll get in some reconnecting time before the week comes to tear us asunder.
There were smaller things that I was spurred on to do today, like making a list of items that would help our household (a Dust Buster and a bigger food bin for dog food storage), and trying to start meal planning again (chili, BBQ ribs, and Chicken Souvlaki Crepes over the next three days!), and while I'm very excited about some of the changes that will hopefully help our household down the road, had I not tackled my regular duties, and gone to bed tonight with laundry done, the kitchen cleaned, and all the toys put away, I wouldn't feel like I had accomplished nearly as much with my day. In fact, I might have felt downright lazy.
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
Monday, April 29, 2013
The 4th Birthday UN-Party
Well, I got a little sick the last few weeks. And by a little sick I mean I made a trip into emerg in the middle of the night last Saturday and got screened for sepsis (not something you want to have). I've been cleared of any and all infections, and after 5 days my fever finally broke... and then I got such a bad sinus cold I'm surprised my face isn't puffy from all the junk inside. I'm so congested, I can't even open my jaw fully. Awesome.
Anyway, I got home from the hospital at 4:40 Sunday morning last week and thought, "I'm supposed to throw a birthday party for my kid in 6 days????" What's more, we had invited about a dozen kids, between the ages of 2 and 5. Scary. So I did the wise thing, and I cancelled the party. I felt bad for my little boy, but planned on still doing something that would make it feel like his birthday.
So what does a planning Momma do when she hasn't got the energy to even sit upright? She enlists help. And my Mother and my sister more than rose to the occasion by offering up houses, running errands, giving opinions and even doing labour for me. We had Gabe's 2 cousins come for his UN-party, which was held at my parents' house on Saturday. There were a couple things I had arranged before I cancelled the original party: I had made tunics for my two younger boys to wear, and matching flags for decoration. I had also planned a bunch of games.
We decorated the inside of the house with bunting made from two plastic dollar store tablecloths, which we cut into long strands of triangles. There were enough from the two tablecloths to decorate both inside and outside. I reused the quidditch hoop I'd made for my sister's Harry Potter party to be a jousting target. I'd also collected boxes for a month to make a life-sized Angry 'Dragons' game, where the kids threw foam balls that my sister had drawn snarling dragons on. My dad printed out a giant dragon which we stuck to cardboard and used for Pin the Flames on the Dragon, and then had the kids throw water balloons at it to 'put the fire out'. My dad also took the initiative to cut out cardboard shields and wrap them in duct tape so the kids could decorate and then play with them.
We even turned on a short movie: The Reluctant Dragon (an oldie, but a goodie)
For snack the kids had cotton candy served in sugar cones, and then a cake which I had ordered from the grocery store that we stuck a knight figurine on.
If my boy were turning 7, would he have thought that the party was lame? Maybe. But fortunately, he was turning 4, so he thought it was the most fantastic party ever. And I didn't even have to have a whole load of cleverly-thematic food, or goodie bags, or anything like that. We dressed up, we had sword fights with pool noodles, and we had cake.
Not bad for an UN-Party.
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
Anyway, I got home from the hospital at 4:40 Sunday morning last week and thought, "I'm supposed to throw a birthday party for my kid in 6 days????" What's more, we had invited about a dozen kids, between the ages of 2 and 5. Scary. So I did the wise thing, and I cancelled the party. I felt bad for my little boy, but planned on still doing something that would make it feel like his birthday.
So what does a planning Momma do when she hasn't got the energy to even sit upright? She enlists help. And my Mother and my sister more than rose to the occasion by offering up houses, running errands, giving opinions and even doing labour for me. We had Gabe's 2 cousins come for his UN-party, which was held at my parents' house on Saturday. There were a couple things I had arranged before I cancelled the original party: I had made tunics for my two younger boys to wear, and matching flags for decoration. I had also planned a bunch of games.
We decorated the inside of the house with bunting made from two plastic dollar store tablecloths, which we cut into long strands of triangles. There were enough from the two tablecloths to decorate both inside and outside. I reused the quidditch hoop I'd made for my sister's Harry Potter party to be a jousting target. I'd also collected boxes for a month to make a life-sized Angry 'Dragons' game, where the kids threw foam balls that my sister had drawn snarling dragons on. My dad printed out a giant dragon which we stuck to cardboard and used for Pin the Flames on the Dragon, and then had the kids throw water balloons at it to 'put the fire out'. My dad also took the initiative to cut out cardboard shields and wrap them in duct tape so the kids could decorate and then play with them.We even turned on a short movie: The Reluctant Dragon (an oldie, but a goodie)
For snack the kids had cotton candy served in sugar cones, and then a cake which I had ordered from the grocery store that we stuck a knight figurine on.
If my boy were turning 7, would he have thought that the party was lame? Maybe. But fortunately, he was turning 4, so he thought it was the most fantastic party ever. And I didn't even have to have a whole load of cleverly-thematic food, or goodie bags, or anything like that. We dressed up, we had sword fights with pool noodles, and we had cake.
Not bad for an UN-Party.
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
Friday, April 12, 2013
Play Catch-Up
It's been a while, I know. I'm not going to go on and on in this post about how I'll try to post more frequently, because I'm sure you're getting tired of that same old song. But how about I catch you up on what's been happening?
I had, again, a series of early labour fake-outs. My doctor could not believe how crazy my body was acting.
I went into the hospital on my due date... for non-stress testing.
2 days later I could have swore I would have the baby before my husband got home to take me to the hospital. The sensation was gone after 10 minutes. Still no idea what that was.
3 days after that, I woke up at 8:30, felt a hard contraction by 9, went to the hospital by 10:15 and had the baby by 11:19. The doctor didn't even make it to the hospital, and two support nurses barely made it into the room on time.
Baby Bennett was born on March 30! He's beautiful and dark and so incredibly precious!!
We were discharged Easter Sunday. My mom made sure my boys still got to celebrate Easter by taking them to church and stocking our house with Hot Cross Buns in advance. We never got around to decorating eggs, but at least we had something of a celebration!
I lead worship at my church when Bennett was 8 days old.
In the past 2 weeks we've been adjusting to life with three little boys, and so far things have been pretty smooth.
...Up until this morning when all 3 of my boys, and I, woke up with cold symptoms ranging from dripping noses to sinus pain and fevers. Awesome.
That basically covers the last few weeks. Now that you're all caught up, here's some thoughts looking forward:
I want another tattoo. Badly. I'm thinking a silhouette of a sparrow sitting on a reed done in white ink on my forearm. I'll have to wait a while though!
I can't wait until our family vacation in the mountains. I love going out to Canmore and I'm so excited for lots of fishing!
I also want to plan a trip to BC, for two reasons: 1) I'm missing Fairmont. We went there on our honeymoon and had the world's most incredible gelati at Invermere (Gerry's Gelati peeps - check it out), and, well, I want more. 2) I just found out that the composer and pianist who did one of my favorite instrumental cds - Orca Suite - lives out on Vancouver Island and plays weekly at the Fairmont Empress during their tea time. I want to go meet him and hear him play live.
I have 15 days until my oldest boys' fourth birthday. It's supposed to be a knight party, but besides some musings I may have written on here previously, I haven't really given it much thought. That's an issue. I need to plan a party, people!
I also need to help plan a birthday party for my Grandma. She turns 85 this year so we're having a "Come and Go" tea for her, and I'm helping to cater. ...With a one month old strapped to my chest by that time.
And then I'm helping with my sister-in-law's tea party bridal shower. I'm running it as a Steeped Tea Party, which means that we're going to have lots of yummy teas there. That also means I need to do a bit of planning...
AND THEN I'm doing a fundraiser show at a Women's Retreat which I'm helping to set up an Afternoon Tea for. That one will be pretty fun I think.
Three weeks ago I had nothing in my calendar for the next few months. Now I only have one weekend a month that is not already booked up, from now until July. Yikes!
I think along with another tattoo, I also want to get the upper cartiledge in my ears repierced. This time with a needle instead of a gun (what an awful crunching noise!)
I finally finished my baby quilts using the material I bought for Gabe and one of his little friends when he was 3 months old... and now nearly 4 years later they ended up being gifts for the two younger boys. Which means Gabe gets to pick his own blanket pattern and I need to make at least one more quilt in my life. Sigh.
I'm going to go eat a Peanut Butter and Pickle sandwich now. I got depressed thinking about quilting.
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
I had, again, a series of early labour fake-outs. My doctor could not believe how crazy my body was acting.
I went into the hospital on my due date... for non-stress testing.
2 days later I could have swore I would have the baby before my husband got home to take me to the hospital. The sensation was gone after 10 minutes. Still no idea what that was.
3 days after that, I woke up at 8:30, felt a hard contraction by 9, went to the hospital by 10:15 and had the baby by 11:19. The doctor didn't even make it to the hospital, and two support nurses barely made it into the room on time.
Baby Bennett was born on March 30! He's beautiful and dark and so incredibly precious!!
We were discharged Easter Sunday. My mom made sure my boys still got to celebrate Easter by taking them to church and stocking our house with Hot Cross Buns in advance. We never got around to decorating eggs, but at least we had something of a celebration!
I lead worship at my church when Bennett was 8 days old.
In the past 2 weeks we've been adjusting to life with three little boys, and so far things have been pretty smooth.
...Up until this morning when all 3 of my boys, and I, woke up with cold symptoms ranging from dripping noses to sinus pain and fevers. Awesome.
That basically covers the last few weeks. Now that you're all caught up, here's some thoughts looking forward:
I want another tattoo. Badly. I'm thinking a silhouette of a sparrow sitting on a reed done in white ink on my forearm. I'll have to wait a while though!
I can't wait until our family vacation in the mountains. I love going out to Canmore and I'm so excited for lots of fishing!
I also want to plan a trip to BC, for two reasons: 1) I'm missing Fairmont. We went there on our honeymoon and had the world's most incredible gelati at Invermere (Gerry's Gelati peeps - check it out), and, well, I want more. 2) I just found out that the composer and pianist who did one of my favorite instrumental cds - Orca Suite - lives out on Vancouver Island and plays weekly at the Fairmont Empress during their tea time. I want to go meet him and hear him play live.
I have 15 days until my oldest boys' fourth birthday. It's supposed to be a knight party, but besides some musings I may have written on here previously, I haven't really given it much thought. That's an issue. I need to plan a party, people!
I also need to help plan a birthday party for my Grandma. She turns 85 this year so we're having a "Come and Go" tea for her, and I'm helping to cater. ...With a one month old strapped to my chest by that time.
And then I'm helping with my sister-in-law's tea party bridal shower. I'm running it as a Steeped Tea Party, which means that we're going to have lots of yummy teas there. That also means I need to do a bit of planning...
AND THEN I'm doing a fundraiser show at a Women's Retreat which I'm helping to set up an Afternoon Tea for. That one will be pretty fun I think.
Three weeks ago I had nothing in my calendar for the next few months. Now I only have one weekend a month that is not already booked up, from now until July. Yikes!
I think along with another tattoo, I also want to get the upper cartiledge in my ears repierced. This time with a needle instead of a gun (what an awful crunching noise!)
I finally finished my baby quilts using the material I bought for Gabe and one of his little friends when he was 3 months old... and now nearly 4 years later they ended up being gifts for the two younger boys. Which means Gabe gets to pick his own blanket pattern and I need to make at least one more quilt in my life. Sigh.
I'm going to go eat a Peanut Butter and Pickle sandwich now. I got depressed thinking about quilting.
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
Friday, March 1, 2013
Nesting - Round 3
I remember when I was pregnant with my first child, I couldn't wait to meet the little guy. The last couple of months were filled with agonizing anticipation, especially due to some bouts of false labour, and 2-week early active labour which stalled when little guy pulled out of position. But he came, exactly on his due date, and the wait was totally worth it.
With baby number two there was less of the joyful anticipation of meeting the baby and finally holding him, and more of the "I'm so ready to be done - get this baby out of me NOW!" feeling. But again, I had to wait until his actual due date, and then my body essentially forced him out - ready or not.
Now we're on Round 3. I'm nearing the 37 week mark, at which point they declare your baby 'full term' and everything should be in working order. And all I can think is, "please not yet, please don't come now, just a few more weeks..."
This is very likely due to the fact that we just finally got moved back into our bedroom. We haven't even hung pictures in it, or put away all of the reno materials that are still piled in a corner of our dining room and hubby and I are still recovering from the exhausting process of being displaced and home renovations (I haven't once heard the boys wake up in the night since we moved back up to our room, so poor hubby has been on night-time duty thanks to my exhaustion). I just don't feel like our house, or our lives, are ready to welcome baby #3.
However, it's not for lack of trying. You see, my nesting instincts have kicked in. Now, for those of you who haven't had a baby, you need to understand that nesting is more than just getting ready for your baby. Nesting is a borderline sickness. What else would make a pregnant woman think that 11:30 at night is the perfect time to make rice krispie squares and clean the kitchen to perfection? Or convince her that the dishwasher needs to be cleaned RIGHT NOW? It's one thing to get your house tidy and check off your to-do list, but nesting is a whole other thing.
I have a friend that knew she was nesting when she got the uncontrollable urge to clean the fan in her bathroom. She'd never thought of doing that before, so she didn't even know how to disassemble it, but she eventually got the cover off, cleaned the inner workings, soaked and scrubbed all the dust and grime off the cover, and slept much better that night knowing that the bathroom fan was clean.
It makes no sense that when your body should be at the peak of exhaustion, you suddenly get these urges to bring your house to perfection. I'm exhausted from the above-mentioned home renos, not to mention my pregnancy-induced anemia and the fact that no one really sleeps well when they have something the size of a melon tucked in their tummy, kicking and punching their bladder and ribs at all hours. But despite the lack of 'sense' involved, it happens. And it strikes when you least expect it.
Now, I'm not saying I hate nesting. I just plain don't understand it. It's actually quite handy... You see, yesterday I woke up feeling like there wasn't a hope that I could get the living room tidied to the point I wanted it, let alone put away all of the clean laundry we failed to put away in our time living in the basement, and yet by the time I went to bed last night I had washed, folded and put away all of the newborn clothes that I dug out of storage, I cleaned the basement, folded and put away about 6 other loads of laundry, I'd cleaned the kitchen back to perfection (including the dishwasher), tidied the bathroom and packed my hospital bag. Not bad for a prego. And as I stood there in my newly renovated bedroom, rolling receiving blankets so they looked cuter when I put them in little baskets in our change table, I realized that this was something supernatural. This was a pregnant woman's SuperMan episode. I wouldn't have had the means, or the will, to do what I had done on my own without something else working on me. And what was it that gave me these superhuman abilities? Hormones. The same thing that made me tear up the other day when hubby was teling me a funny story from work (serious.), the same thing that makes my hair look amazing when I do little more than wash and towel dry it, and the same thing still makes me unable to eat supper if I look at the fish tank... they all come from the same source. Granted, this nesting thing is probably much more welcome to my hubby than a super emotional wife (I honestly think he's getting weirded out by how many times I've had to say, "I have no idea why I'm crying! I'm so sorry!") but it's rooted in hormones all the same.
Now all I need to worry about is that those hormones get the rest of my house and my life in order before this baby decides to come! And hopefully I can channel my nesting urges towards the more pressing matters at hand before it turns full force to the more trivial tasks (for example, I need to clean my bathroom before I clean my furnace room...)
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
With baby number two there was less of the joyful anticipation of meeting the baby and finally holding him, and more of the "I'm so ready to be done - get this baby out of me NOW!" feeling. But again, I had to wait until his actual due date, and then my body essentially forced him out - ready or not.
Now we're on Round 3. I'm nearing the 37 week mark, at which point they declare your baby 'full term' and everything should be in working order. And all I can think is, "please not yet, please don't come now, just a few more weeks..."
This is very likely due to the fact that we just finally got moved back into our bedroom. We haven't even hung pictures in it, or put away all of the reno materials that are still piled in a corner of our dining room and hubby and I are still recovering from the exhausting process of being displaced and home renovations (I haven't once heard the boys wake up in the night since we moved back up to our room, so poor hubby has been on night-time duty thanks to my exhaustion). I just don't feel like our house, or our lives, are ready to welcome baby #3.
However, it's not for lack of trying. You see, my nesting instincts have kicked in. Now, for those of you who haven't had a baby, you need to understand that nesting is more than just getting ready for your baby. Nesting is a borderline sickness. What else would make a pregnant woman think that 11:30 at night is the perfect time to make rice krispie squares and clean the kitchen to perfection? Or convince her that the dishwasher needs to be cleaned RIGHT NOW? It's one thing to get your house tidy and check off your to-do list, but nesting is a whole other thing.
I have a friend that knew she was nesting when she got the uncontrollable urge to clean the fan in her bathroom. She'd never thought of doing that before, so she didn't even know how to disassemble it, but she eventually got the cover off, cleaned the inner workings, soaked and scrubbed all the dust and grime off the cover, and slept much better that night knowing that the bathroom fan was clean.
It makes no sense that when your body should be at the peak of exhaustion, you suddenly get these urges to bring your house to perfection. I'm exhausted from the above-mentioned home renos, not to mention my pregnancy-induced anemia and the fact that no one really sleeps well when they have something the size of a melon tucked in their tummy, kicking and punching their bladder and ribs at all hours. But despite the lack of 'sense' involved, it happens. And it strikes when you least expect it.
Now, I'm not saying I hate nesting. I just plain don't understand it. It's actually quite handy... You see, yesterday I woke up feeling like there wasn't a hope that I could get the living room tidied to the point I wanted it, let alone put away all of the clean laundry we failed to put away in our time living in the basement, and yet by the time I went to bed last night I had washed, folded and put away all of the newborn clothes that I dug out of storage, I cleaned the basement, folded and put away about 6 other loads of laundry, I'd cleaned the kitchen back to perfection (including the dishwasher), tidied the bathroom and packed my hospital bag. Not bad for a prego. And as I stood there in my newly renovated bedroom, rolling receiving blankets so they looked cuter when I put them in little baskets in our change table, I realized that this was something supernatural. This was a pregnant woman's SuperMan episode. I wouldn't have had the means, or the will, to do what I had done on my own without something else working on me. And what was it that gave me these superhuman abilities? Hormones. The same thing that made me tear up the other day when hubby was teling me a funny story from work (serious.), the same thing that makes my hair look amazing when I do little more than wash and towel dry it, and the same thing still makes me unable to eat supper if I look at the fish tank... they all come from the same source. Granted, this nesting thing is probably much more welcome to my hubby than a super emotional wife (I honestly think he's getting weirded out by how many times I've had to say, "I have no idea why I'm crying! I'm so sorry!") but it's rooted in hormones all the same.
Now all I need to worry about is that those hormones get the rest of my house and my life in order before this baby decides to come! And hopefully I can channel my nesting urges towards the more pressing matters at hand before it turns full force to the more trivial tasks (for example, I need to clean my bathroom before I clean my furnace room...)
Mrs. VanderLeek ;)
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