Life on a new planet...

Ok, so I should have called this "how I'm doing on my goals" but the other title was catchier...

So day 2 of trying to live up to some of my own goals. And here's how that going...

Yesterday I took the boys the park. It was pretty cold, but bearable, and we were all having so much fun, and getting fresh air, and the kids were playing...then James decided to climb on the big playground (there are 2, one for little kids and one for older kids) and he almost fell off, so I grabbed him and took him over the the little playground where he would be safe. Only problem is, the moment he got there he tripped on the steps and fell and bit his lip really badly. So here I am with James bleeding and crying, and me not even able to examine how bad the damage was because the baby is in the frontpack and Joseph is running around...so I carried James home in one arm, holding Joseph's hand with the other and carrying the baby on my front (and OW how my back hurt). We got inside and I examined him; his tooth had pierced all the way through his lip, but the bleeding slowed quickly, he stopped crying after a while, and we decided he didn't need stitches. So one disaster averted...but I felt very disheartened after trying to take them outside!

We survived outside, a little the worse for wear, so I decided to exercise. My mom gave me a 10-minute pilates tape, and my back was hurting really badly (from carrying all that weight) so I decided to do the stretching exercise. That went so well that I was inspired, and decided to do the abs one as well. Well, that was great...except I woke up this morning and EVERY muscle in body was killing me!! I stood in the shower for 45 minutes before I could even move. I guess that's what a month of illness/inactivity coupled with overdoing it will do to you...blech. I really need to do it again today, so my muscles will loosen up...but...but...I don't wanna..

I did NOT eat any dessert last night. So put that in the "success" category...at least for one day!

As for today...well, let's see. I was almost done with Perelandra, CS Lewis's 2nd book in the Space Trilogy, so I just had to finish it. I know - that was a mistake. But I just can't put him down. So around 11, we finally managed to start Bible. At the end, there was a word I wanted to look up in Robert Greek/English Bible, so I came into the office to get it. And then he showed me this program on how to map your family tree and geneology - it's totally cool. It's called Geni. I got sucked in - it's way more addictive than any video game I've ever seen! - and now it's almost 1. I've ignored the kids for the last 2 hours...I'm afraid to think what they've done to the house. (I know for a fact that they have sprinkled an entire box of Raisin Bran over the living room...beyond that I'm afraid to look.) And now, instead of cleaning it up, I am hiding in the office posting my blog. Sigh. Today has pretty much been a failure on all fronts. I guess all I can do is work on my last goal: "Be thankful for what I have and complain less."

Or however I phrased it. Ok, off to remind myself that children are most important than carpets...

My goals

So I've been challenged by my sister's last post to come up with some goals of my own. Yes, I am a mom, but I am still a person if my own right (even though I often don't feel like it!) and I think some goals, both personal and for my family, will help me to focus and see more "big picture" accomplishments than laundry or dishes.

Here are some of my goals:

- exercise at least 3 times a week (if I accomplish this I'll bump it up to every day!)
- go outside every day
- watch less TV - me and my kids!
- eat less sugar
- take a class from Noah Webster College
- read one classic work of literature every month
- work at decorating my house in child-proof ways that also make it beautiful
- remind myself how thankful I am for my children every time I look at the stains on my carpet and the crayon on my walls
- be braver about encountering and even seeking out new experiences: try wearing different clothes, eating new foods, talking to people, and going places I haven't before
- join a book club (or start a book club!)
- finish one of the many books I've started writing
- do Bible study and schoolwork with my kids every day
- spend some individual time with each of my children every day
- do Bible study with my husband
- sew clothes for my children
- clean out all our stuff and donate the things we don't need to someone who does
- talk less and listen more
- have a thankful heart instead of complaining!

Some of these goals are things I need to work on every day, while others may take me months or even years to accomplish! But these are some things I would like to do. I'll add to it as I think of more goals. Or I'm open to suggestions!

Odds and Ends

I got frustrated with my last post, mostly because I couldn't figure out how to efficiently place the photos where I wanted them, and it was taking forever. So I gave up on it and left it half-finished. (I seem to be sensing a pattern here...half-painted red front door ring a bell?) So onward to a new topic, and if I ever get back to my black and white post, I'll let you know.

In today's news: my entire house is finally clean, so I am rewarding myself by sitting down with a Coke (which I know I should not be drinking) at my computer. And for you skeptics out there, I must admit that by "entire house" I am not including the office because that's Robert's domain, or the closets, because let's face it, those are just not going to happen in this mommy's lifetime and I hardly think its fair to count them. I will organize closets when my children are all grown up and move away and I am bored. And yes, by "clean" I mean I picked everything up and vacuumed the whole house, and the kitchen is clean. So stop nitpicking (I can hear you doing it) and be impressed with me!

I was sad yesterday, though. I found some chairs and a table on Craigslist:

http://albuquerque.www.craigslist.org/fuo/1601812566.html

They looked really pretty in the picture, and I had this brilliant plan to buy them, paint them black and stencil gold leaf patterns on them just like in the picture from Sense and Sensibility in one of my previous blogs. They were also very cheap, and Robert actually said I could buy them if they were in good shape. So we finally drove all the way to the South Valley to look at them, and they were not nearly as nice as they looked in the picture. They were pretty old and a bit shaky and smaller than they looked. So there goes that plan. Now I'm coveting these chairs from Overstock.com:

This is my favorite chair shape - I think they're called "empire chairs" - and we had some that looked like this but were folding chairs when we first got married, but now they've all broken. I think $150 for 2 chairs is pretty good. however, I am afraid that they will be broken in shipping, if we buy them from an online site. hmmm...

In other news, Gabriella has declared that she wants to eat with the rest of the family. She will be 6 months old on Monday and she has started throwing a fit every time we sit down to dinner and just give her toys. So she's trying all sorts of new things - tiny bits of meat, peeled grape halves, apple slices, and even cheerios - and she likes everything so far...except banana. Ahh, Ellie-girl, you are truly a daughter after my own heart!

daydreaming of living at Norland Park

Guess what? Still sick today. Yes, that's right..yesterday I thought I was getting well, and felt better than I had in a week, so I decided to clean up my house. Unfortunately you cannot undo an entire week's worth of unsupervised toddler disaster in 1 day. I did make some progress, and I decided to reward myself by going to the grocery store with my mom (so my definition of reward has changed a lot since having kds, okay?), which meant I ended up totally overdoing it and had a major relapse today. Add the fact the Joseph got sick last night and I got not sleep.

So today it's back to square one, and I am watching Sense and Sensibility on my laptop on the couch. It's the new one - at least, new to me, not the one with Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson and the guy who plays Snape in Harry Potter (which always cracks me up). And I just have to gush about the set because it is all so gorgeous! I want to live at Norland Park....no wonder the Dashwood women are so upset about leaving it!!

Two things in particular that I want: first of all this room.

Yes I know...I want the whole room. Does that seem a little greedy? Ok, fine, I will settle for just the floor. I love black and white checkerboard floors. They are so elegant. I pretty much love black and white everything. I keep trying to convince Robert to let me re-do our bathrooms in black and white, with just a hint of accent color like red. So far no luck. It is an ongoing argument.

Second, I want these chairs. You can't see very well in the picture (I had to make screenshots straight out of the movie) but they are black, look like Queen Anne style or something similar, and are painted over with gold leaf patterns. So pretty!

You have to look just past Marianne's right shoulder and you can sort of see...

These chairs, unlike the room in the other picture, might possibly be achievable. You could get some old - or new - Queen Anne chairs, paint them black and wipe most of it off so you get that artique look. Then get someone artistically talented (unlike me) to paint on the gold leaf designs. Or maybe even stencil them. Daniella - we should explore this. That would be an awesome thing to do with garage sale chairs.

Ok that's all for now. More pictures as I fall in love. Of course this is all theoretical because I haven't felt well enough to even clean up my own house, much less decorate it. So Daniella, go ahead and steal my ideas, cause you always seem to have time and energy to decorate. I will live vicariously through your house.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired

Still sick.
No sleep.
Killer headache.
All out of optimism...try again tomorrow.

Valentine's Day...with kids

After 5 years of marriage, I have to admit this Valentine's Day is not exactly what I was hoping for. First of all, I've been sick all week with one of the worst colds I've ever had. I am just now starting to feel better than death and my voice has started to come back a little, although I still sounds like a teenage boy whose voice is changing. And coughing up the crap that has kept me from breathing all week. Not exactly setting the stage for romance. I didn't get to the store to buy anything for my husband, and he's had more than enough on his plate trying to work and take care of me and the kids when he's not working. Not to mention, even if we had, I couldn't eat chocolate, smell flowers, or enjoy any of the other, ahem, married people things that go along with Valentine's Day. I don't even want to kiss him because he is still well and I don't want to give my cold to him! (who would take care of the kids then?) Real romantic, huh?
Even if I were well and everything were going according to plan, there is still that pesky matter of the 3 kids we have, ages 3, 2, and 5 months. Nothing like toddlers beating each other up, getting eggs out of the refridgerator and smashing them on the floor, baby wailing, and constantly exclaiming "I'm a bouncy tigger!" to kill the mood. It is really tough to hold on to those romantic feelings when your kids are constantly interrupting. I think it's called "the tyranny of the urgent." Yes, it's important for us to spend time together. But when the kids are screaming, you usually have to go check if there's blood this time, or if they're just fighting over a sandwich again.
I remember the first Valentine's Day Robert and I celebrated together, just a few months after we'd started going out. It was actually the first Valentine's Day I'd ever celebrated - at least in a romantic sense. I had a bad experience in high school, when a bunch of my basketball teammates invited me out to dinner and it turned out I was the only person there NOT with a date...I pretty much hated Valentine's Day after that. But this year things turned out very different. Robert and I were both in the chorus of an opera, and of course we had rehearsal that morning. We would usually meet at the library and carpool (more because we wanted to see each other than because we needed to save gas, I'll admit). A few weeks before my doctor had put me on a no-wheat, no-dairy, no-corn diet. Ouch. Robert greeted me that morning with cookies he had made out of almond flour (they were actually really good) and homemade chocolate-dipped strawberries. He'd stayed up half the night making them! It was the most romantic thing anybody had ever done for me and totally changed my perspective about Feb. 14.
Fast forwad 6 years and here we are today. I think I've been either pregnant or just had a baby every Valentine's Day since we got married. There have been some nice ones, but it seems to get a little tougher to celebrate every year. With each kid we have, it gets harder and harder to find some romance left in our lives. Most often our idea of a date involves falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV after the kids are in bed. Or driving through Starbucks and drinking it in the car and talking for 10 minutes while the kids take a nap in their carseats. Sometimes we play cribbage (the only 2-person game we know) while the boys watch a movie. Don't get me wrong - it's great to spend time together. It's just not exactly the fairy tale version of romance you imagine when you get marriage.
(And now Joseph gets ahold of my laptop and publishes my post before I'm done...)
Where's was I? I was feeling sorry for myself, so I did some research (yes, I know, I'm a geek - I love doing research!) into the origins of Valentine's Day. St. Valentine was a Christian bishop who was martyred for defying Emperor Claudius's decree that young men couldn't get married. Claudius thought it would make them better soldiers: since they wouldn't have wives to come home to, so they would fight with less concern for their own lives. Valentinus married them in secret and was thrown into prison when the emperor found out. Legend says he restored the sight of his jailer's blind daughter, and when he went to his execution he left her a letter signed "from your Valentine." (enter Hallmark's million dollar industry...) He refused all of Claudius's attempts to sway him to worship the Roman gods and even tried to convert Claudius to Christianity. He was executed on February 14 - for defending marriage. So apparently Valentine's day is a celebration of Valentine's courage as a martyr...hmm..not exactly the flowers, hearts, chocolates, and romance we think of today!
So today isn't quite what I wanted. So I won't get to wear my pretty red outfit, or my super sexy red high heeled sandels that I haven't worn since I got pregnant (I love those shoes!) Sad...but so what? I have a wonderful husband who has taken care of me all week and told me I'm pretty (even though I look like death and clearly he is lying...but its a sweet lie). And who is an awesome father to our kids. So we will just celebrate Valentine's Day another day, once I'm well. Meanwhile, today, my husband made me a delicious breakfast of vanilla crepes. And my in-laws brought us dinner - granted, it's pizza, which I can't eat, but it was very sweet and made me feel loved. And I get to spend the day with the 4 people I love most in the world!

Toys are taking over our lives

I have toys on the brain (and under the foot) because we (and by "we" I mean Robert, since I am still sick) are cleaning out the toyroom today. First of all, note that we have a "toyroom." Yes, that's right: an entire room dedicated to toys. When we moved into our house, we had 4 bedrooms, one of which was really small. Once our room, the boys' room, and the guestroom were claimed, we thought "oh, we'll put the kids' toys in the small room and they can play in there; it will keep the toys contained so they won't get all over the house. It will be so nice."
2 years later, I don't think "nice" is quite the word for it. More like "chaos." Or "disaster." The room is literally knee-deep in toys. The floor is so completely covered that you can't see the carpet, let alone walk in there. It is a health. fire, and saftey hazard. The kids can't even get in the door to play in there. Nevertheless, they try, which just results in more chaos and lots of bumps and bruises. Robert and I just looked at each other and asked "how did this happen?"
The worst part is, we have not just left this room alone for 2 years. We regularly cleaned and straightened it. We bought buckets to organize the toys and had great plans to rotate them through so the boys would just play with one bucket at a time. Shortly before Christmas, we built some shelves to hold the buckets. The problem is, we never QUITE finished. So the toys got put away, the boys dumped them all out again, and the mess just grew and grew. Sigh. The best laid plans...
We have finally come to a conclusion that we probably should have reached a long time ago. It is simply a matter of sheer volume. We have WAY too many toys. Evidenced by the fact that Robert has filled 4 80-gallon trash bags full of toys and he isn't done yet! How did we get so many toys? I guess that's what happens when you have the first grandchildren - on both sides. Plus numerous aunts and uncles, and great aunts and uncles and grandparents. And a few well-meaning friends. Don't get me wrong - I am not blaming any of them for their generosity. It is our fault for never adopting the "out with the old, in with the new" philosophy.
Growing up, one of my favorite series of books was the Laura Ingalls books. She grew up on the prairie, in small log cabins and covered wagons. Their possessions were kept to the minimum. I remember one Christmas when Laura and her older sister both recieved their OWN tin cup to drink out of (they previously had to share), a stick of candy, and a shiny new penny. And they were THRILLED about this Christmas - it was their best ever! Clearly, our standards have changed. But sometimes I wonder if their attitudes weren't better than ours. We have all this stuff and it has become more of a burden than a blessing.
We have got to minimize. By an order of magnitutde! (ask Robert what that means because I use the expression without fully comprehending it) So here's our new plan. We will keep all the new toys. Every birthday - or Christmas, or whatever holiday they might be getting toys - we will keep the new toys, and maybe a few - a FEW! - old favorites. But the old stuff has to go. Less is more. That is our new motto!
I think Robert's up to 5 trashbags - not including the big toys like dump truck and workbenches. That's 400 gallons of toys. 400 GALLONS! Good grief. But on the upside, you can see the floor of the room again. And lest you think that he is getting all the work, once I get well, I am the one who gets to sort through them and make 3 piles: toys to keep (smallest), toys to give away (bigger), and toys to throw away (biggest). Then each child will get 1 small bucket of toys to be put on the shelves. The toyroom is going to become a schoolroom instead. At the very least, books and pencils will take up less room, right? ;-)
Wish me luck.