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.