Challenge: Day 1.

Challenge? What challenge?? Well...I have no idea, truthfully! :) I just came upon a new site, The Adventure of a Self-Proclaimed SuperMom, and she's starting a challenge. She didn't explain what the rest of the challenges were, or what they were for, but - one day at a time - I'm game to jump in.

Day 1: post a picture of yourself and share how your day was.

Cool, I can do that. First, picture. Please know this is not easy for me. Posting? No sweat. I mean getting a good picture of me. And I don't just mean photogenically. If you see a smiling picture of me, it's probably a fairly worthwhile picture (I've learned to take other people's word on that). But I am (practically) world-renowned for getting HORRIBLE candid pictures taken of me. Announcement: I have very expressive eyebrows. Therefore, I usually look mad, annoyed, half-asleep, bewildered, astonished, or perplexed. I'm not kidding. You should see some of the slideshows from family birthday parties. BUT! I managed to get a decent picture where, at the most, I look tired. That's not unusual, and it's almost 10:30.

Second, my day. It was a pretty good Saturday. No shower, but I'm getting more okay with that (the presence or absence of a shower used to literally decide the fate of my day...poor hubby). Plus, a little later, I did manage to stick my head in the shower and wash my hair quick. (Sooooo glad I decided to buy a 2-in-1 for just such moments as these.)

I had a good cup of coffee, hubby drove MIL to work and FIL to pick up a part for their car. There was a small tiff misunderstanding about the length of time he was gone, and then it was resolved, and he took Lij to the dump with FIL. Just as they were getting back, I was getting the other two ready to go grocery shopping (this is also when the hair-washing happened) and off we went. Home from that, and we packed up again and traveled down to Bernie & Phyl's to pick up a bench. So excited! A looooong time ago, at another job, Hubby was cleaning the office when he came across several gift cards. He figured they'd been intended as "good job"s for the employees, but they were old so he was checking to see if they were still good, and he said they could have the Bernie & Phyl's one - $50! I was jazzed. And then it sat around for a while. We didn't need any furniture. Finally I dug it out again and went to poke around the website...............let's just say I was very lucky to find this bench, with it being only $55 so we had to spend very little. AND it's something I've been wanting for our kitchen table anyway. In our small kitchen, fitting everyone around the table has been challenging, so this way we can fit the three small kids along one side. (Eventually, I'd like to get this kind of set-up, but on a slightly larger scale.)

Ahhhhh....another farmhouse piece drops into place.

Or...it will. Maybe tomorrow. When we put it together.

But oh, it was fun, just piling the kids in the car and driving the hour-and-a-half to the furniture store. (It was the closest one to us that wouldn't charge us tax. Tax-free New Hampshire, woot woot!) It is - no joke - the closest thing to a family vacation that we've...well, ever had. Hubby fussed at me since I was taking too long for his liking by trying to clean a little more trash out of the car, get a little better set up for a road trip, knowing where the toys were, getting bottles in the right place, etc. I told him he has his hobby trips, this is mine. Patience, my love.

And OHHHH, speaking of bottles. I'm done with those. My 2yo might not agree, but I'm dialing down his right to an opinion in the matter. It's my fault, totally. I made my bed, and now I'm lying (but definitely not sleeping) in it. I take total blame. But I stand by my decision, because it was the decision I needed to make at the time. When children are babies, their moms have two choices: a) feed them a bottle at night, then lay them down without it, and continuously reassure their child, when he/she cries, that they are okay, and let them cry/comfort themselves back to sleep, orrrrrr...2) give the kid the bottle and let him fall asleep that way.

I've always done option 2. I'm horrible, wretched, lazy, and should not be trusted with other human lives, I know. I mean, my children could have died!! And not to mention the damage I have inflicted on their teeth... (shudder)

But I was TIRED, man!! It's so much easier - chronically sleep-deprived moms can attest - to give the kid what they want! And I remember making that conscious decision, "I will do this now, I will deal with [read: pay for] it later."

Trumpet fanfare: It's LATER!!!! I am in full-swing of Dealing With/Paying For It. Have been for a while. And it's not that I'm not ready to deal with the fall-out of Dealing With It, but Big Brother is in the same room (who, thank the Lord, has trained himself to sleep like a dead person...gee, wonder why, when your brother wakes up at least once or twice a night for two years demanding the continuance of a very bad habit), and Big Sister is...well, it's across the hall, but there's only a headboard and a sheet and a chimney between them. And I can't stand the thought of making them suffer while Little Brother has to cry it out.

Sigh. So on we've gone, perpetuating Mumma's mistake. I was thinking I'd have to farm out my older children to sleepovers so Little Brother can complain his little heart out and not ruin anyone's sleep but mine. (I probably would've had to send Hubby away that night, too.)

Till. Tonight! I have epiphed. I have had a brainstorm. It's not rocket science. But it's working rather well! Morgan likes to have me snuggle with her on her bed. This is when she completely debriefs me on all her thoughts from the day, plans for the future, and very deep theological questions. (The other night we discussed why Satan fell from Heaven.) Well, as I was lying on her bed tonight, discussing homeschooling (grin), Migs pipes up as usual. So, to help him along, I simply tell him to lie down and go to sleep. This works temporarily, then not so well. But I continue. And eventually he quiets down. When I left Morgan, he heard me on the stairs (silly old New England stairs, but they are my Kid Alarms, along with squeaky doors that I will never oil) so he ramped up again. So I sit down on the stairs and start in again on my matras..."lie down, Matthew...quiet, Matthew...go to sleep, Matthew..." very calmly, while reading Read-Aloud Puppy Stories to myself that I find sitting nearby. Eventually he calms back down and I manage to make it downstairs. (Incidentally, I have a very good dog. It was, at that point, around 9:30, and he was waiting relatively patiently for this ordeal to be over so he could have dinner.)

Success!!! Right? Of course! That part, anyway. We have not made it through the night. But I figure I can't lose much more sleep than I already do. And we have made it through one more cry session. I knew that would be the tricky part. The kids are all asleep, it's much later, do I still go up there and sit on the stairs, calling out to be quiet? Why, yes. Yes, I do. And it works. And no one wakes up.

I imagine I will be spending quite a bit of time sitting on his stairs over the next few nights. Maybe even just over this night. I will be remembering to take my phone with me so I'm not just sitting there counting the seconds. (I'm so grateful for my phone, and the Bible app that gives me reading plans. Perhaps this will be a blessing in more ways than one.) But I also figure that taking the time to retrain one's synapses, however much sleep I lose, is much better than indefinite sleepless nights, not to mention the toll it takes on our milk supply. Besides which, his newest trick is standing at the edge of his crib, turning his bottle upside down, and squirting it at the floor. The carpeted floor. Wow. GAME OVER, little buddy.

So there, I have done the challenge! Wonder what Day 2 is. :)

Strawberries.

This whole post is based on a picture on my bloggy-friend Alicia's site of her cherries. (Not the one above; those are just my pretty table flowers.) Homegrown, picked right from the tree, hand-pitted. I am, admittedly, slightly jealous. So I felt the need to post a picture of my own.

In the spirit of honesty (wink, wink, Alicia), I did not grow these strawberries. I probably wouldn't be any good growing strawberries. BUT! I did cut them up myself. :) And, to lend an air of authenticity, that knife is the very knife that my grandmother would've used to cut up any and all fruits and veggies.

And I continued on with my oh-so-domestic self, and made a Waldorf salad.

(Although growing up, I had no idea that's what it was called.) Growing up, my grandmother made it with apples, raisins, and.....some sort of white salad dressing thing? I thought it was Miracle Whip; my mom says it was mayo. I made it a few days ago with mayo (and apples from an actual grocery store); tonight I made it with Miracle Whip (and apples from Walmart). Whereas I have determined that it was indeed Miracle Whip that Grammy made it with, I have also determined that I like it better with mayo (and apples from the grocery store). In this picture, the apples oddly look like potatoes. Don't judge the edibility on the picture. Actually...you can. It wasn't that good.

I had decided that dinner tonight would be a clear-out-the-pantry dinner.

And for all this, my daughter chose tuna (not on the table), pineapple, and apple slices with peanut butter (also not on the table). My son chose chicken nuggets (one guess) and pineapple. Master Greyson and I split a can of ravioli, attempted the apple salad (r.e.a.l.l.y. not that good, but he made a full-hearted attempt), and had some strawberries.

Also in the pantry was this... (I do believe I need to invest in a 10x10 pan. And why yes, that IS a Pampered Chef Classic Batter Bowl! They're so handy. Want one??? Call me! :) )

...and this...

I need to figure out what to sprinkle on top - the fork for the criss-cross kept sticking to the dough.

For those wondering: raw cookie dough edibility of the chocolate chip cookies - about a 7 (definitely not real, but definitely edible); peanut butter cookies - not attempted.

Bonus!

And because I was a super fishie momma, I cleaned Snowflake's bowl, made it shine. I love when the sunlight hits the bubbles on the plant. It's the little things.

Snowflake says good night.

Self-reflection meets Issues.

Why do my bouts of self-reflection always happen when my husband will not to be home that evening to hash it out with me (and eventually tell me what I want to hear)? Probably because God's saying, "hello...remember Me? I think I was here first...and I care more about you than Facebook does." It's not the first time He's told me this.

It hasn't been the best day. My boys sent me a proverbial memo this morning: "You will not get anything done today." And some plans I was trying to feel out and see if they might like to be made have fallen through, at least as far as I can tell. I'm depressed, disappointed, bitter that other people get to make plans and mine don't seem to work, and - as a result - bitter that hubby gets to go off to his weekend of wife-less, child-less, hobby fun (he's a medieval fencer), and I stay home and have things crash around me.

Whether I subsconciously seek out things to crash or they crash on their own is up for debate.

But not right now.

And so I hung up from hubby's usual lunch-hour call, and burst into tears. Because he's a guy, he didn't read through the telephone "lines" and see how hurt I was. He didn't hear what I didn't say about being disappointed. He tried to suggest a solution that I exploded about the impossibility of, and he bristled at my explosion because as far as he knew, it was irrational. AND he didn't try to save the phone call by reading from my script and saying sweet and sensitive things, and offering to make it up to me in the future, and promising to bring me chocolate when he comes home on Sunday.

Hmph. The nerve.

So there I sat at the kitchen table, listing all my horrible attributes to God. I'm a selfish wife for begrudging his (almost monthly, during the summer anyway) trips to bachelor-land. I'm jealous of people who can load up the car and take off for a family vacation. I am a lazy mom who wants to spend all day on the computer. I sigh and get annoyed when one of my children needs my help as. soon. as. I start something. (Read: sit down at the computer.) I'm frustrated with God that I can't have a "normal" life, with my own house, where I can yell if I want, stomp if I want, let it get as messy as I want, for as long as I want....blah, blah, blah.

I. Have. Issues.

I have issues because I am often always unsure about what issues are my fault, and what issues I'm welcome to feel disappointed and jilted about. I'm fairly certain that a good deal of selfishness, jealousy, and bitterness on my part are involved.

Only time...real time, one-on-one, prioritized time, alone with my Maker, who knows me better than I know myself, and loves me anyway...will tell me which things are my problems to ask forgiveness for, and which things are my problems to cry heaving sobs about on His chest over. (He doesn't even seem to mind my snot stains.)

So. That is my goal this weekend: to find time to have real conversations with the One who has been waiting, and has the answers that I DO DON'T. I have roughly 48 hours before my handsome, sweet (it's true), and very talented fencing hubby returns. Go.

Wannabe productivity.

My kitchen has reached overwhelming proportions.

The table is more than half full with Stuff (mostly papers, but also things).

Every piece of silverware is in the sink, and for two days we've been washing them as we need them (wash 6 forks for dinner, wash a knife and two spoons for breakfast, etc.). The trash hasn't been emptied so there's a shopping-turned-trash bag set up on the counter, on the toaster. There are four coffee tubs on the back of the stove, two with new coffee and two with used grounds. (I would throw the used away, personally, but it seems to be my in-laws mission to fertilize our pine trees.) There is a pile of plastic shopping bags on the floor so I can't get to the hutch with my cookbooks (hence the cookbooks piled on the table), and a shirt plus some other things stacked on the breadmaker in the corner next to the hutch. On it goes...

I have routines. I <3 FlyLady to death, but I'm bad at keeping my paper of routines open in front of me constantly -- mostly because I don't have enough flat surface to set out the notebook. I have a timer, but it's usually being used to time certain urchins' Wii and computer times. I could borrow my mom's...but it's not mine and that (wrongly) annoys me.

I am lazy. Active, but lazy, because the things I'm doing, by the end of the day, don't seem to have added up to much.

This morning, the kids and I took recycling to the dump, bought pull-ups and forks at Walmart, put money in my Pampered Chef account so I can start up my website again (yay!), and then went to the park for probably about half an hour (before I decided it was too cold to stay and Morgan got a nosebleed while warming up in the car). Those were productive things.

Then I come home to my weirdo sloppy kitchen, the one I want to start simple-ly transforming into a real farmhouse kitchen, and my insides go "urgablechsighdepressing" and all I want to do is play Mario.

Can you see me? I'm pulling on my cowgirl boots (that I own in some wonderful parallel universe) so that I have bootstraps to tug on. I'm swallowing my perfectionist pride and am heading over to borrow my mommy's timer.