Be Gone With It

Thanks to everyone for the great comments on toy organization. I have a day off on Monday and a nice chunk of time set aside for some serious crap (toy and other things) editing. The donation pick-up is booked with a local charity and I am looking forward to streamlining things a bit. I particularly loved Cate’s suggestion to chuck stuffed animals and things that make noise. Seriously, what is up with stuffed animals? Where do they all come from and do they reproduce? I say, keep the ones that are really loved, you know like, for example this one:

Leo, pictured with Beloved dog Spot (excuse the dirty face, why do I also hold the photo sessions right after dinner?), dressed in Easter finery (yes those are tap shoes, just sent from Grandma Jerry, I think that’s a hint that Ellie is supposed to take dance classes).

And all the rest of you stuffed animals? Be gone with you! (I confess, I do tend to anthrapamorphize stuffed animals and lots of other non human things so parting is a little stressful.) They make me think of that heart breaking book The Velveteen Rabbit and I have to sort of shut down as I shove them all into a black trash bag. But getting rid of those retched battery operated toys-the Barney song book and the evil keyboard that I swear is possessed or haunted…such satisfaction I cannot tell you. I actually did a quick sweep of the playroom the other night and it already looks better. I toyed with holding a garage sale (I even involved Facebook on this one, goodness am I even capable of making an independent decision anymore?) but there’s just no time. And it’s not like the Brooklyn days when we actually had foot traffic. Our neighbors had a sale last weekend and granted their stuff was outrageously overpriced but I swear they hardly sold anything.

I actually filled one bag of crap from the playroom already, doing a quick sweep on Tuesday night. Speaking of the playroom, this is what I found when I went downstairs to check on Leo early yesterday morning (he likes to play down there when he wakes up early).

Nice tutu, don’t you think?

Stuff and Fears

Hey look! It’s our new playroom!



Oh, I kid. I only wish. I don’t know about you but we have

I know what you’re thinking, cue the violins, we are tugging at your heartstrings, aren’t we.

I went ahead and lost my mind, I mean to say, I bought the lot of Little People off Craiglist over the weekend. I also broke my rule which is one in, one out (bring one new toy in, put one toy away). This works well with clothes but since I stopped buying clothes I no longer have a problem with too many clothes. In fact I seem to lose at least one shirt a week to Little Miss Dirty Hands who likes to eat dinner while sitting on my nap and also staining me all over as she does this.

Oh and coincidentally that book Too Many Toys is one of the favorites in our house.

I tend to just put everything in the basement playroom (we have a few select, favorite toys upstairs in the living room where we spend the majority of time during the week): the Little People Barn and House, some cars and stuffed animals and of TONS OF BOOKS.

I know that kids don’t need so many toys, so much stuff. I doubt they even play with half of it. When I was a kid I only dreamed of a playroom. When we’re down in the playroom, half the time they just want me to read to them. But I want them to have more organized playtime. Less throwing and rifling and more actual play. There is just too much stuff.

Meanwhile I am now dreaming of Ikea containers and a day of blissful organization that will never come since I am unable to see any project through from beginning to end. All the while, I am trying to reconcile the fact that my house with children will never be organized. I need to be OK with this. I need to enjoy the time I have with them rather than cursing the chaos. And I know that this is not really about toys. I certainly can’t control these busy, messy little people that are now residents in my house, the same ones that listen to me maybe 10-20 percent of the time. But I can do my best to control their stuff, right? Oh sure.

If anyone has any wise toy organization wisdom they'd like to share. I would love to hear it. Really, really.
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In Leo news, we had a first last night. Leo was afraid and didn’t want to go to sleep. Filed right next to Your Kid Was Hurt And You Don’t Know What Happened has to be Your Kid Is Afraid But You Don’t Know Of What.

After a lot of questioning, Erin finally surmised that it was the dreaded smoke alarm. Leo is terrified of the smoke alarm that has gone off several times in the kitchen. There’s been one in his room since we moved in over two years ago but it seems that he noticed it last night for the first time. And last night he was inconsolable. He kept pointing to it and crying. No amount of hugs or cups of water would soothe him. We’ve had a couple of slip-ups of laying down to fall asleep with him and not wanting to go down that road again, I stood firm and let him whimper (after many, many hugs and lots of reassurance). And then an hour later #1 Mom couldn’t open the door to his room because he had fallen asleep in front of it, curled up in a little ball.

Poor guy.

Stream of Consciousness Check-In

Confession time. I'm a bit of a perfectionist blogger/writer (can't you tell from my usual stunning prose?). I normally write in a Word document, edit myself and then post. But lately I have been not posting at all and that troubles me, because I don't want to not post and so I am going to not really edit myself here (watch out) and just do a little check in to say we are alive. And to catch up a bit:

-Work has been crazy and busy and taxing and stressful.

-Adding to that stress is that Ellie is sick Again. I feel bad for her and I feel bad for me. I see why people have nannies/sitters at home. Not being able to go to work and having to stay home with her and miss work is feeling like a problem. This week was Not the week to miss a day. Big deadlines. Big stress. And I hate that I found myself mad at my own toddler for being sick. Ridiculous. And I find it ironic too that Leo was supposed to be Mr. Compromised Immune System and what has happened? Little Miss 46 Chromosomes has been the sickly one with never ending cold and mysterious viruses this fall/winter. Compared to her, Leo was a little healthy horse toddler. I won't even talk about the Exorcist style vomiting I was the lucky recipient of last night. Oops I just talked about it. The funniest part (if you can call vomiting funny) was that it happened at the kitchen table where Leo was eating his scrambled egg dinner. Ellie projectiled (sorry) and Leo just kept on eating his eggs as if nothing had happened. I guess when your four a little puke at the table is not such a big thing. He's probably seen it many times at school. At least I found some humor in the situation.

-Leo's sleep travails (and therefore ours) continue. He's still waking up between 5-6 a.m. every morning, but closer to the 5 side of it and sometimes a few minutes before 5 (which is r-e-a-l-l-y painful, even with buckets of coffee). I probably don't have to tell you how precious even ten more minutes of sleep is, but Leo is stubborn. Once he's up, he's up. There is no talking to him or convincing to just lay in our bed and watch some Noggin. To add to the travails, he's also waking up in the middle of the night and getting into bed with us. This is not OK but again with the risk of waking Ellie if we force him to stay in his bed (and cry) we've been putting up with it. At this point my feeling is we all just need to sleep-does it matter that much where it happens? Leo wakes up when Erin leaves at 5ish but he was doing that in his own bed too. Triple Ugh.

-It's cold here. Nine degrees last night said the car thermostat (wow!). I'm not going to complain about it because it's not that big of a deal. I mean it is January on the east coast so whatever. I do miss taking the kids outside and playing in the yard, taking walks. It's not going to last that long though. It does make me wonder how people can live in really cold places though. It's so limiting.

-Leo's in an obsessive phase. Ds? Or just annoying 4-year-old? He gets an idea in his head and will.not.drop.it. It's a little, ok A LOT maddening. The top request? Dora. Dora. Dora. It makes me want to throw that damn TV out the window. On the one hand, we need the 30 minute Dora watching here and there. It allows me a moment of peace, or the opportunity to do exciting things like unload the dishwasher, make dinner, tend to the laundry. On the other hand I don't know when he got so obsessed with watching TV. We don't let him watch that much but he just seems so focused on it. We'll be reading a book or doing Playdough and suddenly he will just think Dora, and start chanting Dora. I try to ignore it. I try to distract him. But it's hard.

-Most shocking event of the week? Ellie pooped on the potty! She is fascinated with the potty, she calls it "boppy." She crawls all over it, climbs on it and the other night when I was trying to get Leo to come into the bathroom to sit on the potty, Little Miss climbs up, sat down and did the business. I am not ready to be potty training two at once! I told the daycare people and they are going to start sitting her on the potty.

-I am trying to calm down and chill out about house duties. I just feel like we have so much clutter and everything is so disorganized and no matter what I do it's never organized enough. I feel like dumping half of our belongings in garbage bags bound for the Salvation Army. I guess it's an early spring cleaning thing. Or maybe it's just that the kids are walking mess makers. It doesn't hurt that I spend my days pouring over cleaning/organization stories at work.

OK, boring stream (hopefully not completely) stream over. So in short, we're alive. Puking. Whiney. Messy and disorganized. Cold. Trying not to watch so much Dora. But alive.

The New Normal

Remember this little girl I used to brag about? How she ate everything? I don’t think I ever wrote the post about how cute it was that she was loving eating everything out of little bowls.


She ate so delicately and with such thought. She brought to mind Albert in one of my all-time favorite children's books, Bread and Jam for Frances:

"He took a bite of sandwich, a bite of pickle, a bite of hard boiled egg and a drink of milk. Then he sprinkled more salt on the egg and went around again. Albert made the sandwich, the pickle, the egg and the milk come out even." (Note to self: Order this book for kids. OK, for myself).

Well, she wasn't sprinkling salt on her egg or anything, but you get the picture. Anyway, it's too bad I didn't write about it because the thought and daintiness with which she ate was really cute. And too bad, because it’s over.

Ellie is in that new stage called Throw Everything On the Floor But First Mix it With Milk on the High Chair Tray. Oy.

I ask you, why do I ever even bother to mop the kitchen floors (truth be told it is barely a monthly occurrence if I’m lucky, but still!)

It seems that she hardly eats anything right now as she is too busy being Jackson Pollack with food. To be fair, she has a few staples: grape tomatoes, dehydrated strawberries (I know, weird), string cheese and her bottle. She’ll graze for a few minutes on the other stuff and then begins the wiping and the sweeping of everything from the high chair tray to the floor or onto the kitchen table. Lovely.

Sometimes I think my children were put on this Earth solely to make me chill the you know what out about the state of my house. I really have been trying to lower my standards. I don’t clean the toys in the living room up every night now. I don’t freak about piles. The one thing I’m a stickler for though is the dishes (I hate a sink full of dirty dishes but truthfully, I can’t go more than two days with out running the dishwasher because I need the little glass bowls and lids and sippy cups and bottles for packing lunches). And laundry. I don’t like to let that get out of hand. I don’t do it every day but I like to at least sort it every couple of days. Having those lovely piles of dark, white and “middle,” lined up neatly in the basement give me a delightfully deceptive delusion of order.

But back to the eating. I know this is typical for 16 months. Leo was a big time food thrower. I think it’s why our poor dog is about 20 pounds overweight. I was secretly hoping we might avoid the throwing with Ellie (as was, I imagine, our dog’s endocrinologist).

In the meantime, I am just not going to mop ever again. I mean, why bother?