10 Things I Love About You

Corbin. You are my first born. Every stage you go through is a first for me and that doesn't always make things easy. I get frustrated with you and sometimes expect more from you than I should. I'm working on that. The very same things that can be frsutrating about you are the same things that make me love you so much and that will help you out down the line. So be patient with me and I'll try harder to be patient with you as we grow together.

So here's my list for you today. I feel like I could name a million little things but here, my baby, are 10 things I love about you:

1. Your cuddles. I'm so glad you haven't outgrown wanting to snuggle with me yet. I'm not looking forward to the day you do.
2. Your passion. You never feel anything halfway. Whether you're mad or sad or happy you do everything over the top.
3. Your love of learning. You always want to know everything about everything. You remind me of myself that way and I love you for it. Even if your never-ending questions do sometimes drive me crazy.
4. You love to help. And you really are a big help.
5. You're a terrible liar and generally tell on yourself if you've done something wrong. I hope you always stay that way.
6. You don't try to be someone you're not. It doesn't always win you the most friends or make you fit in the best but you always march to the beat of your own drum. I hope you always stay that strong.
7. Your love for your sister. Sure you fight sometimes because all siblings do but you really do love her. She is so lucky to have you.
8. You always give me another chance. I screw up. A lot. But you are always my biggest fan. I know that won't last forever.
9. You have made me grow so much. I am a completely different person than I was before I had you. You have changed me for the better in so many many ways. Thank you so much!
10. You are you and you are perfect. I couldn't ask for anything more. :-)

One Month Since School Let Out

Corbin's last day of school was June 9th so its been one month since he got out. In that time we have:

Had family visitors (my sister, brother-in-law and niece) for a few days
Went to Downtown Disney twice
Went to Epcot once
Went to DisneyQuest once
Went to Magic Kingdom once
Went to Typhoon Lagoon once
Celebrated his 6th birthday
Went to the zoo two or three times
Went to the Seaquarium once
Went to the beach a couple times
Swam in the pool a few times
Went to the movies 3 times - Cars 2, Yogi Bear (free) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Saw an Aztec dance show at the library
Been out to lunch or dinner at T-rex Cafe, Bongos in Downtown Disney, to a greek restaurant where a belly dancer danced on the table, at a sushi buffet, to Golden Corral (his favorite lol), to a yummy Italian restaurant and to smaller places a few times
Read countless books, played tons of games, did lots of crafts, did several science experiments, worked on memorizing addition facts, did a few projects from his Nature Journal, went on lots of walks and cuddled up to watch cartoons many times

It's been a fun busy month and I've got just as much planned for the next month. What a life we live. I wish his summer break could go on forever :-)

Sweetness

Alora has been sleeping at least part of the night in her own room for the past couple of weeks and sometimes stays there all night. I'm excited about how well she's making the transition, especially since she initiated it on her own, but I do miss her cuddles sometimes.

Last night she came over to our room at about 2:00 am and said, "I found you!" with a huge smile on her face. I was still awake and told her "I'm glad you found me. I love you" and she says, "I found love!"

Awwww. My sweet little girl :-)

30 Days of New

This week Pat's family was here visiting and we went down to Key West over the weekend and camped out at a KOA campground in Sugarloaf Key about 14 miles north of Key West. The kids had so much fun and so did I. Even though I've been living in Miami/Homestead for 7 1/2 years now it was my first time going all the way down to Key West and I enjoyed getting to explore a new place.

I love trying new things, eating new foods, and going new places. But with Corbin in school and just the every day work, school, cooking, cleaning, entertaining the kids routine it sometime becomes just that...a little too routine for me. We do get out and go somewhere fun every weekend and I'm constantly looking for new recipes to try so our lives aren't completely dull or anything but I love variety.

So I'm going to try to do something new every day for the next 30 days. Some days will be simple things like trying a new food or exercise/workout (my fitness life definitely needs a shot of something new because I've been slacking off the last couple weeks). Other days we'll hopefully get to go explore new places we haven't yet been. Let the fun begin! I'll try to check in about once a week or so and maybe even figure out how to add pictures to my posts for once. LOL!

Girl Meets Bike

Over the weekend Pat started to talk about wanting to get a bike so he could go out and ride with the kids. What?? And leave me at home? Not that I couldn't use a break from time to time but I've had it in my mind for a while that I wanted to learn how to ride a bike and it sounds like a fun way to spend time together as a family. Besides, now was a perfect time for me to learn because Corbin's been going with his training wheels for a while so we can learn together and, frankly, because I still have health insurance right now. It will be ending soon when my job does and if I'm going to learn something that is fairly likely to result in me breaking something it's better to be insured when I do it.

So we went to a few places to look at bikes on Sunday and Monday when I got home from picking up Corbin from school Pat was there with a surprise...my first bike! So it's official. At 28 years of age I am finally attempting to learn how to ride a bike. I barely tried as a kid. Actually, if I remember correctly, I think I was rocking the training wheels, tried one time without them for about 10 minutes and decided it wasn't for me. But as an adult I'm a lot more confident and determined than I was as a child so I have that on my side at least.

Of course I wanted to ride it right that minute. Riding a bike looks like so much fun. So Pat took me out into a grassy area beside the club house in our community and ran behind me holding onto the back of the bike to help me balance like you would a little kid. I tried to pedal some but mostly just kept putting my feet down despite him telling me 500 times that I should use the brakes when I wanted to stop. I feel like I learned a lot that first day even though none of it had pretty much anything to do with me actually riding the bike. Here's what I learned in no particular order:

1. It's not as easy as it looks.

2.  Bikes are heavier than they look.

3. They don't actually help you stay upright at all. In fact, they seem to think you look better thrown on the ground.

4. If you're not used to riding a bike that seat is really flippin uncomfortable. Like someone kicked me in the crotch 20 times in a row uncomfortable.

5. I don't actually need to keep the steering wheel steady and straight. I don't know why I thought that. Unfortunately, Pat didn't think to tell me until the end of the lesson that I should be actually steering it to help keep my balance. It sounds obvious but it wasn't to me and its been so long since he learned to ride he forgets to tell me things like that.

I practiced for about half an hour or so before we had to give up because our kids kept trying to run away while Pat was helping me.

Later that night I looked online at websites describing how to teach an adult to ride a bike. The thing I kept seeing over and over was to lower the seat all the way so that your feet can touch the ground well, find a sloped area and  ride down without pedalling over and over to help teach you to balance. I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to compute to Florida terms. For those of you not from here, Florida is the flattest state ever. The closest thing we have to hills is landfills.

Not to be discouraged though I did have Pat lower the seat all the way and started riding the bike more like a scooter for the past couple days and I feel like my balance is improving. A little. Nowhere near as much as I'd like. It gets frustrating after a while and I just want to be able to put my feet on the pedals and ride at more than 0 mph. Every once in a while I'll actually get myself coasting and balancing for a few feet and get some false confidence and try to really ride...and then fall over.

So after two days of this I've decided tomorrow I want to go out on my own with the bike while Pat watches the kids. I mostly believe his intentions are good and that he's following me aorund because he wants to be close by in case I fall to my doom but sometimes I look at him and he's got this smirk on his face while he's watching me like he just wants to laugh at me so bad but knows I'll kick him in the nuts if he does. Plus Corbin keeps making smartass remarks about how slow I am. Easy for him to say. He still has training wheels.

But mostly I want to go on my own so I can yell at the bike. Pat sees complaining as weakness and seems to think an angel dies every time I utter a curse word so I can't say half of what I'd like to tell the bike. I want to be able to yell out things like "You stupid piece of shit! How dare you throw me on the ground!" without him glaring at me or unintentionally teaching Alora a new favorite phrase.

So thats our plan for tomorrow. Just me, the bike, and a lot of yelling and crashing and hopefully a little more balancing. Wish me luck.

Not a Baby Anymore

You'd think that parenting a second child would be less surprising than parenting the first but that's definitely not the case. Not only is every child different, but parenting styles tend to change over time. With Corbin I sometimes feel like I rushed everything. Not that I didn't enjoy him being a baby but I was so excited to see him do new things and he gave me a lot to be excited about. He felt so grown up to me all the time. I think partially because we didn't have many friends that had kids so we started going to playgroups when he was only 8 months old. The kids there were all at least a few months older than him but I didn't see it that way. I kept thinking he could do anything they could do and he proved me right time and time again. He started walking at 8 1/2 months and running everywhere shortly after. He was an early talker and knew things like recognizing all of the letters of the alphabet by sight before he was even 2 years old. It all just went by so quickly and it still does. He still amazes me every day with the things he does and all that he understands at such a young age.

I don't really think I understood how fast it had all happened though until Alora came along. Seeing her tiny little body next to his made him seem so big. Having to take care of the needs of a newborn after a few years break made me realize how grown up my little boy had really become. He didn't need me anymore the same way Alora did.

And Alora did really need me for everything at first of course. But now she's nearly 2 years old and its hard for me to accept that she's just not a baby anymore. Where I was in a huge rush for Corbin to accomplish every new milestone, I was more than happy to sit back and enjoy Alora being a tiny baby. She did not share these feelings. She quickly put to rest any ponderings I had about whether I had pushed Corbin to do things earlier than he would have on his own. She started talking just as young as him, started walking a week and a half after he did at 9 months old, and surpassed him on some milestones like crawling, climbing the stairs, feeding herself, learning her colors, etc.

But in my eyes she was still just a baby. No matter what she did I'd look at her compared to Corbin and think "Corbin can do that but Alora can't yet. She's still too young." Who was I fooling? Certainly not Alora. She just keeps right on growing up and I'm finally catching on.

She does new things every single day but the past couple weeks have just been a huge eye opening time for me. First we bought the kids as Plasma Car. If you don't know what they are, look them up because they're tons of fun. You sit on it and move the steering wheel back and forth to make it go. It's made for a little older kid than Alora but she ended up learning how to ride it faster than her big brother! Pat bought her a scooter. Corbin has had one for a few months and struggled with it and wasn't as interested in it as the bike...until Alora got hers. The first day out of the box she figured out how to ride it and keeps getting faster and faster at it. Now, of course, Corbin is learning to ride his really well too because you can't let your baby sister learn something before you.

Oh and the clothes. She has to pick them out on her own. We took her shopping this past weekend to get some new clothes since she was outgrowing everything. Pat sat her down in a store and told her "Go pick out your clothes" and she really did. She'd go through the racks looking at each thing, even checking the tags (no doubt copying what she sees us doing) and pick out the things she liked. She wanted to carry them to the cash register herself and hand them to the cashier. At home she picks out what she wants to wear pretty much every day and refuses to let me put clothes on her if I try to talk her into something else. She definitely has her own ideas.

And then there was today. I used to take Corbin to story time at the library around Alora's age so I got the idea that I'd take her once and see how she did. She can generally be a pretty spirited child so I had pretty low expectations and thought we'd end up leaving part way through but she did awesome! The story time lady read the kids 4 books, did a couple mini-stories with magnets on a white board and had them sing 4 or 5 songs with dancing involved. Alora went right along with it all! Most of the kids there were quite a bit older than her but as soon as we went in she ran right over and started trying to play with the big kids. When the story time started I waited to see if she would sit with them on the rug or come and sit with me. It took Corbin months of story times before he would sit with the other kids but she showed her independent side once again and joined the group without me. When they danced, she danced. Not always the same moves they were doing but she had a great time. When they sat for the stories, she sat for the stories and stayed (mostly) quiet and really seemed to pay attention. I wasn't sure if she was fully getting what was going on or not but then on the car ride home she said "I had fun!" I told her "Today they were talking about the letter H and hugs. If we go another time they'll talk about something else." A couple minutes later she asked me to sing the alphabet with her and when we were done she says "H mom! Hear H?" so she must have got that they were talking about H a lot :-)

So I get it, Alora. You're really not a baby anymore. Just don't grow up too fast and remember even if you're getting bigger mommy still needs lots of hugs and kisses.

What I Do When I Should be Looking At Jobs

I know I've mentioned a few times that my job is ending in a few months. Most days I really don't feel very stressed about this at all but when I look at available jobs from home I start feeling like I'm about to have an anxiety attack. They mostly look boring and pay far less than what I was making which wasn't a high income to begin with. So mostly I don't look. Great solution, right?? So I thought what better way to waste time and procrastinate on my job search than to make up a list of (fake) jobs I'd like to have and would qualify for. 

Note: These are not serious. Unless you want to hire me. Then I'm serious.

1. Shadow Man Destroyer. See previous post. If you live far away I could email you ideas on how to get rid of such a thing or at least entertain you and/or your child (most likely your child) until it goes away. Or if you lived close enough I could show up at your house in an "official" uniform and do some kind of elaborate routine to hopefully trick your child into believing it was gone. Yippee!!

2. Talking about my kids all day. I'm really great at this. And really, who doesn't want to hear several hours worth of why my kids are so great?

3. Master Procrastinator. I'm pretty sure this post is proof enough that I have a lot of talent in this area.

4. Teaching workshops on how not to make or keep friends. Another hidden talent I have. Oh I talk to everyone I see and things are usually going great, "Oh, you have kids? I have kids too. You like eating food? Me too! We have so much in common" until I throw up some freak flag like "I gave birth to my child at home and like using cloth diapers and breastfeeding for 50 million years" or something equally out there. Every once in a while some weirdo still keeps talking to me, most likely because they have nothing better to do, and we become friends. In that case I have to pull out a trick like saying we should get together 500 times and never following through on it and forgetting to call them or email them for many months at a time. Yeah. I'm a pretty poopy friend and with my help you could be too!

5. Tea taste tester. I'm obsessed with tea lately. Hot herbal tea, iced tea, green tea, bubble tea. Mmmm...tea. I could branch out and be a taste tester for other things too like beer or wine or chocolate.

6. Writing pointless blog entries. Does your blog say too much that people might be interested in? No problem! Let me have at it for a few days and I can make yours look like the diary of an insane person too.

7. Toy assembler. I've had a lot of practice at this. A lot. I worked as a babysitter through college and a nanny for a year after and those families always left toys for me to assemble so I had lots of practice before my tots even came along. And I actually like doing that stuff. It's a sickness.

8. Research Queen  I leave no question unanswered. Anything I wonder about I must look up right away. I never buy anything without reading 500,000 reviews first. I actually enjoy doing things like literature searches. Have I mentioned that I'm odd?

9. Breastfeeding cheerleader! I'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about breastfeeding and a lot of things you didn't want to know too :-)

10. Just being me. Because I'm obviously so fabulous that someone should have started paying me for that a long time ago :-)

Death of The Shadow Man

Corbin had been doing really well at staying his room all night for a while. Then a couple weeks ago he started coming over to our room in the middle of the night sometimes. He kept telling me there was a "Shadow Man" in his closet. I had no idea what he was talking about. I tried making sure I left the doors on the closet all the way closed to keep that Shadow Man inside but he still kept talking about him.

And he really believed it. I'd hear him running to our room - really running as fast as he could, panting, terrified that the Shadow Man was going to get him. He started taking a toy light saber and Nerf gun to bed with him to protect himself, set up "scary" looking stuffed animals like a bulldog and bears and panthers at the foot of his bed, and made up more and more elaborate routines of all this crazy stuff I had to say to scare away the Shadow Man and bad dreams. I'd yell "Go away! You're not welcome here! If you come in Corbin's room I'll make you smell Alora's stinky diaper and eat brussell sprouts and do Corbin's homework for a month and scrub the toilets!" Ok, maybe I threw in the scrub the toilets part for myself. But no matter what we did or said that Shadow Man just kept coming back. Persistent fool.

There were nights he wouldn't come and other times he would. I had tried looking in Corbin's closet with him and talking to him about it but couldn't figure it out so I assumed it was just one of those weird imaginary monsters kids make up or something he had heard about at school. I went along with all his protective measures and we cuddled him when he'd come to our room. What else could we do?

Yesterday he was talking to me about this Shadow Man and said something very odd, that the Shadow Man wasn't very tall and had no arms or legs. Really?? Where the hell was he getting this stuff? A short man with no arms or legs? I tried very hard to take it seriously but couldn't keep from laughing just a little which of course made him mad. I told him that was good news because how hard could it really be for me to catch an armless and legless man. Never mind that I thought this had no basis in reality. I had given up on convincing him that the Shadow Man did not exist long ago.

So I figured I would come up with some elaborate trap to set for this Shadow Man and somehow convince Corbin that it worked and be done with it once and for all. I was sick of this Shadow Man scaring my kid and interrupting the little sleep I do get. So I had been thinking about it today but hadn't come up with any concrete plans yet. Then this evening I was getting Corbin ready for bed. We had read our book, brushed his teeth, tucked him under his covers, and secured the closet doors. I sat down in the rocking chair in the room to sing him his goodnight song and all of a sudden he jumps up in bed yelling "There he is!! There's the Shadow Man!!!!!!" (this is worthy of several exclamation points because he was seriously freaking out)

So I look at the closet door and wouldn't you know, there's a shadow on there about 3 1/2 feet tall; slender rectangular "body" with a round "head" on top. No arms or legs of course. Being the (somewhat) rational adult that I am I realized immediately that this Shadow Man had been a cheap imposter all along, nothing but a shadow made by something... but what?? So I start moving around things in Corbin's room and it turns out it was the side of one of the little chairs that goes with his table and chairs. That explains why the Shadow Man only appeared on some nights. The chair had to be at a certain angle and location between his night light and the closet door for that shadow to show up. And turns out me closing the closet doors to keep him in was just making it worse since it made a place for the shadow to show up.

I moved the chair and showed Corbin what was making that shadow and he seemed so relieved. Hopefully that's the death of the Shadow Man for good now. May he rest in Shadow Hell.

My Love Hate Relationship

No, I'm not talking about Pat. LOL! I'm talking about something that in recent years I've attempted to form a good relationship with many many times...and yet every one of these attempts fails. Oh sure, I go in all enthusiastic, wanting to do it every single day, and then somewhere around a month my love starts to falter.

I'm talking about exercise. I mean actually working out. I don't count things like going out for multiple walks a day with the kids and the dog or running up and down the stairs 500 times to get whatever it is I forgot or dancing around in the kids' rooms listening to music. That's just every day life. What I'm talking about here is me trying to keep myself motivated to want to workout more than once in a blue moon when the mood strikes.

I signed up for a fitness challenge this year logging my hours. I'm supposed to try to get to so many hours for the year. I can't even remember how many. It breaks down to being about 150 minutes a week. When I signed up this really sounded like nothing and it's really not bad. Except that I live a real life with a lot of distractions and lack the internal focus to want to stick with anything for more than a couple weeks.

So I've made it through the first month and was doing pretty well but now that we're getting into the second I feel my interest waning. This past week Alora went on a sleep strike for a few days. She woke me up literally every half an hour for a few nights in a row. By Wednesday I was exhausted and by Thursday I felt physically ill from sleep deprivation. Thankfully Thursday night she did finally let me get at least 5 1/2 to 6 hours of sleep. But my exercise mojo took a big hit from feeling completely drained.

I know everyone has weeks like that but in the past a week like that has always completely derailed me. The next week I'll keep thinking of reasons to put it off and then next thing you know it's been a couple months since I really worked out. Eventually I get back to wanting to do it again...for another month or so until something happens to distract me.

Seriously I don't get it. I pretty much never want to work out. Unless I'm feeling incredibly stressed. Then sometimes the mood strikes. But if I do make myself work out by about 5 minutes in to it I'm feeling all excited about doing it and then afterwards I feel so much healthier and calmer. I know this. So why the hell is it so hard for me to stick to it??

I think I need to mix it up again. I've been doing primarily Zumba, cardio workouts via Netflix, and yoga. I like them all well enough but I get bored of things easily. I'm going to have to branch out a little more. Part of my problem though is its hard to find times to do some of the things. Pat's been working more lately with getting his agency going so he's never home anymore during Alora's naptime for me to go over to the fitness center like I had been at the beginning of last month. Anything that involves being on the floor a lot is out when she's awake because mom on floor = mom wants to give me a pony ride in Alora's little mind. And I was reminded again this week that workouts that involve too many exercises like squats with my legs spread plie style results in my hips killing me all night long since I've had hip problems since birth. So I'm on the lookout again for something new I can do at home.

I'm determined I'm going to do this. This is my year. This fitness challenege is my goal and is going to help me stay on track. Unless I see a shiny object and get distracted. No wait. This is going to be my year :-)

Mommy's Guilt

When we decided to start trying for a second baby I had mixed emotions. Mostly I felt excited about it but a not-so-small part of me was worried about the dynamics of two. Not so much about how they would interact with each other, but how I would interact with them. Prior to having Alora, Corbin was my little man. My one and only. We went everywhere together and did everything together. I knew that that would change with a new little one in the picture. No longer would he have my undivided attention. He would have to share me. Of course my love would grow enough for both of them but what about my time?

Well, almost two years in I'd like to say I've put those fears to rest but I haven't. It's not as all consuming as it was right after I had Alora. I honestly think I had postpartum depression for the first few months after her birth. She was a much more demanding baby than Corbin had been and I just felt like neither one of them ever got 100% of me. Where Corbin seemed to take to the changes like it was the most natural things in the world, it was not an easy transition for me. I cherished those sweet moments when I'd get to cuddle up with the two of them and loved watching the bond between them right from the start. But there were times when Alora just needed so much from me that Corbin's care fell more to Pat and it killed me that I was having to give up some of my precious time with him.

As months went by and Alora got bigger things became easier on that front. I figured out her dairy intolerance and her colic disappeared. She learned to crawl and walk around and I quickly discovered that she was more independent than her big brother and liked to do things on her own for a few minutes, giving me time once again to do things one on one with Corbin like playing games, doing science experiments, etc. And then she got big enough to do fun things too and things got even better. Creating masterpieces with chalk and playdoh with two kids instead of one meant twice as many artworks to admire. Pretend play with two kids teaches valuable lessons in sharing and taking turns for both. And holidays are extra special for the both of them because they have a sibling to share it with. I watch them teaching each other new games and laughing at each others' silliness and I know deep down that having a second baby really was right for our family.

But there still are those times when I feel some guilt for one or the other. I realized tonight that I haven't taken Alora to have a professional photo taken since she turned one. She'll be two next month. When Corbin was that age we were members of the JCPenny picture club and took him for every little holiday that came up, Halloween, Easter, Christmas, Mother's Day photos with Mommyy, Father's Day photos with Daddy. I meant to take Alora as much. I really did. Her first year we went at least 4 or 5 times but nothing since then. Corbin has had his picture taken a few times since then for school and sports and we're just so busy I keep forgetting that it's been so long. Even though we take literally hundreds of pictures of the kids every month on our own I still feel bad for her that he had that and she didn't.

But really I have to stop and put this in perspective for myself from time to time (ok, more like daily) that both of our kids are extremely lucky in all that they have. And I'm not just talking about material things like toys and books stacked up all over the house. They have the wonderful bond between them. They have love. Endless amounts of love. They have have a daddy that gets to spend way more time with them than pretty much any other daddy I know because his work has always been flexible. And they have a mom that adores them so much it sometimes drives me crazy enough to obsess over these small things.

Where's the Sugar?

"Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice. That's what little girls are made of."

Or so they say. I think someone put in a little extra spice and skimped on the sugar when mixing up Alora. Oh, don't get me wrong. She can be the sweetest little girl in the world...as long as she's getting exactly what she wants the second she wants it.

I think the thing that surprises me the most is the jealousy though. While pregnant I worried that Corbin would be jealous of the new baby. No worries there. He is the most caring big brother in the history of big brothers. Well, most of the time. Not when slamming his sister's hand in the door to try to keep her out of his room. But really, he loves her so much and knows we have plenty of love for both of them so he never acts jealous of her.

Someone forgot to give this memo to Alora. Not once when I was pregnant did I think "What if the new baby is jealous of Corbin?" I just assumed that since she'd be growing up with a big brother that sharing would come along with the second child role. Not so. In her mind it's Alora against the world and she's determined to win.

Don't be fooled by those innocent eyes and that sweet little smile. Beneath that cute little girl exterior lies the heart of a tiger going in for the kill. Last weekend Corbin took some toy Alora wanted. She threw a little fit and then appeared to get over it. Really she waited a few minutes until he was unsuspecting and then put a metal Matchbox car in a plastic bag and started wailing on him with it while laughing like a mad woman. I kid you not. Poor Corbin didn't know what hit him. We did manage to pry it away from her but a few minutes later she skipped the bag and just started throwing the cars at him instead.

And it's not just toys. She thinks everyone in our family belongs to her and only her. I should have seen this coming about a year ago when she was just learning to walk and shoved a little girl in Corbin's class away from him because she didn't want the girl to hug him. Things have gone downhill in that department since then. If she sees Corbin on my lap, even if she had no interest in me 2 minutes before that, she will come running across the room crying and screaming and try her hardest to knock him off my lap. If she's trying to cuddle with Daddy and me or Corbin tries to get in on the hugging action it goes over about the same way.

This all leads up to my very rude awakening in the middle of the night last night. Alora still sleeps with us all night every night. She nurses to sleep but outside of that rarely has any interest in actually cuddling either of us while sleeping. Corbin on the other hand sleeps most nights in his room but occasionally comes over to our room in the middle of the night because he's a very cuddly boy. Last night was one of these nights. First he came over saying he was cold. Pat took him back to his room and gave him extra blankets (he already had 3 on, the child has no internal heat source at.all). A few minutes later though he was back saying he was having a bad dream. I could see this wasn't going to end so I had him climb in bed on the other side of me.

 I cuddled up with him and fell into a deep peaceful sleep....until Alora woke up to nurse an hour or so later. She gets up, saw me cuddling with Corbin and grabs a fist full of my hair right by the roots and yanks as hard as her little body will let her pull. I wake up in pain and looking into the glaring face of an angry toddler. She leaned over me, gave Corbin a little shove and then gave me a look that could only mean "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Oh my. For the rest of the night every time she woke up she'd try to get over to the side of me Corbin was on and push him away until he finally gave up and moved away from me.

I used to worry about how the boys would treat her when Alora starts dating as a teenager. Now I kind of feel for the poor sap she lays her claws into someday. LOL!

The Things They Say

My absolute favorite funny things the kids say right now:

Corbin overheard me calling one of his pair of pants windbreaker pants. He must have misunderstood because now he keeps calling them his woodpecker pants. LOL! He's so excited about them being woodpecker pants (he loves birds) and its so funny I refuse to correct him.

He also combines the phrases "drives me nuts" and "drives me bananas" and says "That drives me banana nut bread."

Alora loves helping me sort laundry. While we're sorting she'll name off every piece of clothes and who it belongs to. For example "mommy jammies, daddy sock." So a couple weeks ago we were doing this and it goes like this:

Alora says: Mommy shirt. Daddy shirt. Corbin reindeer.
I look in her hand and she's holding his underwear.
Me: Those aren't reindeer. It's underwear.
Alora: Corbin under-reindeer.

LOL! I've corrected her several times but she doesn't seem to hear the difference and just keeps saying under-reindeer for underwear. I love it!

Good-bye Un-Motivated Mom!

Our house is a mess. Not just right now. 95% of the time. The only time it really gets clean is if we have company coming and even then its nowhere near perfect. Honestly the only things I stay on top of is cleaning the kitchen regularly (almost every day) and laundry. There are some things in the house such as cleaning the toilets that don't get done unless someone is coming. But I'm tired of it. I'm tired of not being able to have friends visit. I'm tired of being embarrassed to have someone like the exterminator stop by unexpectedly and see our mess. I'm tired of not knowing where anything is. I'm just done.

Growing up I was one of those oddball kids that actually kept my room clean and had a place for everything. Even in college I kept my dorm room pretty tidy. Somewhere around the time I had Corbin though it seems like my cleaning motivation went way downhill. It made a brief appearance again after moving into our townhouse three years ago. Everything was brand new and shiny and I loved keeping it clean...for the first few months. Then the newness wore off and I got pregnant with Alora and things started to slide again and its just been a bad cycle ever since. I clean like a crazy person for the day or two before company comes and can even usually recruit help from Pat and Corbin on those days but then a few days later its back to being a mess.

The problem is I tend to clean in spurts. One day I'll wake up, look around the house and think "Yuck." I get too motivated and clean and clean and clean until I can't clean anymore. Literally. I get burnt out. And then I look around the house and see that despite cleaning all day the house is still nowhere near clean because it was in such bad shape when I started. So then I feel frustrated and overwhelmed and don't clean pretty much anything for a couple days. Rinse. Repeat. Over and over. I'm also not the most effective cleaner even when I do clean because I completely lack focus. I'll start to clean the office an then find some toys from Corbin's room so I take them in there and start tidying up his room until I find something else that belongs in another room. At the end of the day, even though I made some progress, nothing actually got finished because I just bounce from one thing to another.

I really want to get a handle on this though because I'm going to have to find a new job soon and I'm not sure how it will change my schedule so I'm hoping to get into some better routines before that happens. Last night while reading on some parenting forums I happened to come across a program called Motivated Moms. I had never heard of it before but after reading a bunch of reviews about it I decided to give it a go. It's basically a daily chore list set up like a to do list with boxes to check beside each thing as you finish it. I like boxes. I like that little sense of accomplishment I get each time I check one off. I actually tend to get a decent amount done if I make to do lists for myself but I rarely remember to make the lists. Now I don't have to!You pay $8, download a PDF file and print out the chore lists for each day of the year.

I started today and so far it seems great. There's a list of things you're supposed to do every day like empty the dishwasher, clean the kitchen counters, do a load of laundry, sweep the kitchen floor, wipe out the bathroom sinks, etc. I like that they included some reminders like "take your vitamins" or "lay out tomorrow's clothes" that I have trouble remembering to do every day on my own and that they put "read to your children" on the daily list. I read to my kids every day anyhow but there's one box I can always check without feeling like I actually had to do any work. Aside from the list you're supposed to do every day there are extra chores for each day. Some of them are on a rotation. For example cleaning the toilets and vacuuming the living room on Monday, cleaning bathrooms mirrors and vacuuming the bedrooms on Tuesday, etc and other things just pop up every once in a while like cleaning crumbs out of the toaster or cleaning light fixtures. You know, things I would never think to do.

I actually did everything on the list today (ok, not everything, I'm waiting to sweep the kitchen until after dinner since the kids drop food everywhere). From what I read most people seem to spend an hour or two each day cleaning with this system. It took me longer than that today which I expected. Tomorrow will be easier already. Today something simple like "wipe the bathroom sink and counter" took longer than it should have because there was all kinds of stuff sitting all over our bathroom counters that I had to put away first. But if I stick with the system I wouldn't have so much clutter to deal with on a daily basis. My big news for today is that I dusted the office. Of course I had to clean up the monumental stacks of papers, books and toys all over the room first but I did and then I actually dusted. I really don't think I've dusted any room in the house in months so that's pretty darn big news in my book! Even though it took a little longer today I feel like I've actually accomplished something for once and I still had lots of time to play with the kids, read to them, take Alora out for a walk/ride with the new scooter Daddy just got her, help Corbin with homework, etc.

It was hard for me to resist the urge to clean some extra things honestly. While in the bathroom cleaning the toilets and counters I thought about just cleaning the whole thing at once but then I remembered that's what got me into this mess in the first place, trying to overdo on some days and do nothing on others. So for the first couple weeks I'm really going to stick pretty much exclusively to the lists and see how clean our house starts looking. After that I'll start tweaking it to include things that need more work, like the areas that need decluttering. I know its not going to be a perfect system but it does give me a good foundation to start from.

So that's my plan and I'm sticking to it. Hopefully. I will check back in with you in a couple weeks to let everyone know if I'm still liking the program or not. Now on to more important stuff, Playdoh play until dinner... :-)

First Try

Around the start of the year one of my friends posted on Facebook about choosing focus words for the year. I chose Peace and Flow not knowing how much I would need them. I've never been great at dealing with changes or letting things go so I knew I needed to work on that. Between two kids and working from home life is always a little crazy but it's been extra crazy lately. It's definitely a time of change. Pat was finally able to get his own agency up and running. It's definitely good news but means more work for him to get things going. I recently learned my current job will be ending in the next few months so I'll have to find something else. And of course the kids are always learning and doing new things. As if we don't have enough going on I've also decided to make some personal changes lately and started working out again and decided to try to get a handle on the mess we call home. Some days are more stressful than others but I'm trying to slow down, focus, and enjoy every one :-)

And this is my first blog post so I have no idea what I'm doing. I'll try to make it look better soon.