Realistic Expectations: Day One

Day One of my "realistic expectations" makeover couldn't have started at a worse time. I didn't get in bed until 3:00 this morning because poor Amelia cut two (possibly three) teeth last night. We both slept in super late this morning and then spent the time before her nap just playing and singing. Usually this results in my brain going into crazytown hyperdrive:

"You've already slept half the morning and now you're playing in the floor! Don't even THINK about sitting down during Amelia's nap. You have to make up for lost time. This house is a mess, you have neighborhood work to tend to, and Amelia's birthday party isn't going to plan itself. You're going to pay for this lazy morning, Missy."

When I got up this morning, though, I told myself, Today will be different.

As I said, I spent the morning playing with Peanut. After a couple of hours, I put her down for a nap. Typically, the moment I close her bedroom door, I go into "mission mode." Today, however, I went room to room looking at what needed to be done--not what I perceive needs to be done, but what a normal human being would deem necessary.

Our bathroom needs picking up, but it can wait. I decided to just gather all the dirty clothes and towels and take them to the laundry room.

The laundry room, on the other hand, has been ignored way too long. I'm proud to say MOST of the clothes in there are clean, but they are piled so high in baskets that we can't open the dryer.

Task #1: Fold the clothes

Then I thought, Wait, this is something I can do while Amelia eats her snack and watches her afternoon episode of Yo Gabba Gabba. Sweet, I can multi-task without taking away from time with Amelia.

Then I went back to our bedroom to check it out. I'm embarrassed to say that the dog hair is starting to pile up since the dogs hang out in there so much. But Amelia doesn't go in there, so it can wait until the weekend when John can help me move the furniture.

I went back into the living room. Not as much dog hair as the bedroom but a nice little layer forming on the floor. Plus, the couch has formula stains, the front door's glass is gross and there are toys everywhere. The toys are a moot point since as soon as she's awake, Amelia will go all Godzilla again. The formula stains aren't that noticeable and they aren't going to be any more ingrained in the fabric tomorrow. The front doors have been dirty for a month. Another day or four won't hurt. The floor is an issue, though, since Amelia is crawling. When I changed her diaper earlier, her knees and legs looked like she had a mild case of hursutism. Now, here's where I'm challenged: do I just sweep the floor or do I go all out and move the furniture, sweep, vacuum, mop and polish.  Hmm... it's so hard for me not to do it all at once.  You know, though, I'm tired.  Let's just focus on the hair.

Task #2:  Sweep the floor and vacuum up the hair

I got the hair up, though it just about killed me not to move all the furniture.  I at least ran the hose under things.  I also ran the brush over the furniture to pull up the dust and hair (but I didn't polish anything--another small victory). 
With that done, I moved on to the kitchen.  I figured I already had the vacuum out so I'd just run it over the tile to pick up any crumbs that Amelia might be tempted to eat (plus the hair--always the hair).   The kitchen is always my downfall because it's the one room in the house that I feel should be clean.  It's where we eat, where we keep our food.  I can spend hours on the kitchen when I get on one of my tangents.  I decided to only address what is actually dirty and could start to smell from last night. 

Task #3:  Unload dishwasher, load dirty dishes. 

This is multi-tasking gone horribly wrong.

I noticed that I'm almost out of clean bottles and remembered that Amelia is on her last pacifier, so I decided to soak all of her "dishes" and come back to them later in the day.

At this point, I stopped and evaluated what I had done.   Did I see other things that bothered me?    Of course.  But I honestly couldn't say that there was anything that couldn't wait.  So here I am, drinking a glass of tea, eating a quick lunch, and writing a blog.  It's almost time for Amelia to get up.  I'm struggling just a little that I didn't do more while she slept, but I can admit that I was productive--without overdoing it or stressing.  So now it's time to play some more and let Amelia "help" me fold the clothes. 

Baby steps, my friends, baby steps.  It's a long way back from Crazy Town.


(I'm sure some of you will say, "WHY DIDN'T YOU NAP?"  Well, two reasons:  (1) Amelia is spending some time with her grandparents this weekend, so I'd rather do a few things now and actually RELAX while she's gone; and (2) napping is hard when I'm taking phentermine.  It doesn't "amp" me up, but I am not sleeping until it wears off unless I take something)