House counseling?

The house honeymoon is over

Well, the house honeymoon has been over for about a year now, when I really think about it. I realized this the other day as I kept procrastinating taking Kaylee home one night from my parent’s house. I procrastinated so long that she ended up having a total melt-down of exhaustion.

I figured I was just lonely. Scott works late/long hours and I’m tired, so I like having help from the parents and being able to take one mental step back from being super vigilant. But then I had another day where I left my parent’s house early, and in great spirits. Kaylee and I sang the whole way home, and I was in a great mood.

Until I opened the house door. I think that was when I realized that I am no longer in love with my house. But it’s not my house’s fault, it’s what is in the house. Not only has my house descending into CHAOS (Can’t Have Anyone Over Sydrome), but it’s become to the point where I don’t want to be there.

Here’s what happens in the first 15 minutes of getting home…

Get out of the car, hear dog barking (sigh, I’m so sick of the dog barking).

Get Kaylee out of the car seat and walk inside with her on my hip.

Open the door, get the lovely whiff of dog pee and poop because the dog has, again, peed or pooped all over the place. As a result of the last year of this she is now confined to the laundry room, so while the mess is contained, the smell is just amplified by the smaller quarters.

Let the dog out of her room, curse as she barrels into me and throws out my knee. She then stops in the doorjam and just stands there.

The cat has heard the door open, so I am now left trying to keep the cat from running outside, while holding the kid, while trying to push the dog out of the door.

Finally the dog is out, the cat is in, and the kid is still with me (now I can put her down at least, and she will normally hang out in the garage playing with some toys we have set up for her in there).

The dog tries to attack another dog/running/shadow that has come within 100 yards of our house. I grab her and get her back inside.

The cat makes another attempt to run outside as the dog decides that doorways are scary, and refuses to walk through it.

Okay. Now we’re all inside the house. I put Kaylee down in her safe room so that I can clean up the pee/poop and feed the dog. She throws a huge tantrum because I’ve been at work all day and she wants mom time.

Finally, the crap has been cleaned, the animals fed, and I am able to have some kid time.

But after the 15 minutes of craziness, I don’t even want to be in my house. I don’t want to have to look at the stuff I need to clean, or the laundry that needs to get done, or the dinner that needs to be cooked. I’m tired from working all day, tired from the long commute, and tired of feeling like I’m doing all I can but getting nowhere. Add to it that I now have a headache from dealing with the last 15 minutes, and knowing that I will have to do it the next day, and the next, and the next.

So my answer is to just avoid my house. Because that totally solves the problem…

Cleaning program,,,take 2

The New Cleaning Program

Today is the start of my new cleaning program. Yes, I attempted a new cleaning program over the summer and it didn’t work so well. Yes, I will wait for the laughter to subside before I continue.

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Okay then. My summer cleaning program, while good intentioned and well planned, did not happen. Yes most of the activities I had planned would only take 15-30 minutes to do each day, but what I had not taken into account was that it would be 15-30 minutes tacked onto my already full day. Maybe prior to having a kid, I could have gotten it done. Maybe prior to having a dog who pees inside all the ever-loving time and requires carpet steam cleaning before the kid splashed through it like a splash pad, I could have gotten it done. Maybe if I was getting more than 3 hours of sleep in a row, it would have gotten done.

Maybe if I stopped making excuses….nah.

Regardless of why it didn't get done, it didn’t. One of the big points of Flylady’s system (yes, I am a flybaby, I’ve just been fluttering a bit lately instead of flying) is to find what works for you.

 (You haven’t heard of FlyLady? Go check it out at Flylady.com)

So I’m trying something else, because my old system is not working. Be it out of lack of time, lack of energy, or sheer laziness, it’s not working. My new system will be…keeping 3 rooms clean in my house at all times, and then slowly tackling the other rooms.

These three rooms will be: Kaylee’s bedroom, my bathroom, and the laundry room. Why these three rooms? Because they are small rooms that can be easily maintained, yet get very messy very quickly.

While we are still bed-sharing with Bug, she loves to go through her closet and take out clothes, or throw her stuffed animals around the room, or her blankets. Her changing table was quickly turned into a catch-all surface for random stuff (oh, there’s my bag of zip-ties!) ever since she started rolling and decided that diaper changing should be an Olympic sport. At the end of the night her floor is covered with toys, blankets, etc. and since she hasn’t learned how to pick-up yet (but we’re working on it), that leaves it to me.

My bathroom also falls victim to Hurricane Kaylee, combined with Tropical Storm Kristi. Every Sunday I hang my clothes for the week on my towel rods so that I don’t need to go into the closet and risk waking up the sleeping people in the room. This would not be so bad, if it weren’t for the 10 empty hangers from the week before, or the already worn clothes that just end up piled on the floor. Most of this is laziness, as the laundry hamper is just outside the door to my bathroom. I just need to suck it up and put it away when I’m done.

Hurricane Kaylee comes into play in the mornings. Most mornings she will wake up between 6:15 and 6:30, aka, the time when Mom is getting ready. If Scott tries to keep her in bed she will scream bloody murder, so usually after 2 minutes I hear a little knock at the door and in she comes. She will be content with brushing her teeth or playing with my (in-activated) phone for about 5 minutes, and then starts to unroll the toilet paper, or play with the trash can, or start removing all the items from under the sink. (And before you say it, she has a small container of toys and books under the sink, but we all know those are NOT interesting compared to things like, oh, mommy’s extra –and still sealed – contact solution bottle). In the last week she has grown tall enough to reach 99% of the counter top in the bathroom, which makes things even more challenging.

The room is just big enough to hold the sink, toilet, and shower, so this results in the room being nigh unusable very quickly. I keep telling myself that it should also work in reverse, so that is my goal. Easy to mess, easy to clean (just like weight, easy on easy off, no? Ah well)

The third room is the laundry room. Truth be told, this room is still looking pretty good from my summer make-over. The problem now is the dog. See, while I do like her on most days, I don’t like steam cleaning the carpet every-single-day, or sometimes multiple times per day. The vet said she’s not sick, she just can’t hold her bladder very long these days. So, now while we are at work, she has been relocated to the laundry room. This way I just have to throw away pee pads and do a quick mop, vs running the steam cleaner. But, this also means that my budding romance with my laundry room has gone back to a “ugh, you again” type of relationship. It smells like dog pee, regularly has pee on the floor for me to deal with, and gone are the days of having Kaylee in there with me while I fold the laundry.

My hope is that after a few weeks of keeping these three rooms clean, it will become habit to me to keep these rooms clean and I can start adding in other rooms as I progress. Here’s hoping!

Gluten Baby

Gluten Baby

                Why do I insist on torturing myself by eating gluten? At the end of the summer I was so happy with my weight. For the first time in 10 years I was under 150 pounds, which was an incredible feeling. I had a lean tummy, and thin legs, and my arms were pretty dang good after carrying around the kiddo all day. 

 When I went back to work all I heard was “Omg, you are so thin!” or “Wow, do you really have a 1 year old?” and it was so uplifting. And yet, now the pounds are back, and I feel squishy, and I don’t like my body, once again. 

What is the difference? A month long return to gluten.

Now, to be fair, there is another culprit. During the summer I took a lot of long walks with the Bug, and now that she is fully competent at walking she does it herself, which results in a 30 minute walk covering ½ mile of ground instead of several miles.

But really, it’s the gluten. You see, my husband was diagnosed with diabetes at the end of the summer, and as a result we filled out house with snacks for him. Granola bars, crackers, and breads suddenly invaded our pantries, foods that had been abolished back in the days when I couldn’t get pregnant, and decided to go gluten-free. And when I went back to work I was STARVING all the time, so the granola bars, crackers, etc. made their way into my lunch box (which is why they were exiled from the house to begin with!). Within a month I was squishy, and now look like I’m pregnant again. (Okay, that’s not quite fair. Here is what I looked like at 12 weeks pregnant, which is where I feel I am now. 

Most people would still call me skinny, or just say that I have the classic “mummy tummy”)

I can definitely feel the difference though, and that’s why I’m getting back on the feel-good train and away from the convenience factor that gluten gives me. It’s not only the gluten belly, but how I feel. I feel horrible when I eat gluten. It’s like a heavy ball is just sitting in my stomach and I feel sluggish. I have more frequent headaches and I’m a lot crankier (because who wouldn’t be cranky when their stomach always hurts and they have headaches). My entire body hurts and feels tense.

It’s time to put down the cupcake, granola bar, and sandwich bread. I must once again live by the mantra “The 5 minute pleasure from eating this, is not worth the weeks of pain that it will cause”