Making bread

Ha!

A few hours before I had to leave to drop my kiddo at a friends house before work I thought I might actually start up some rolls to have with dinner. I ended up discovering a spill that I thought I had all cleaned up instead. An old spill.

That got under my utensil tray.

And molded.

Yuck! You are right. No pictures here. As you may imagine I have washed all of our utensils now. And the tray. And the drawer itself. And the drawer nextdoor. With bleach water. And then rooted around the other shelves to make sure I didn't miss anything else.

My kitchen is clean now.

The art of cleaning

I guess no one was interested in how I blew up glassware. It must be more commonplace than I thought.

I am finally getting somewhere with this house. Unpacking is difficult! Especially when you are trying to do laundry and dishes and cook meals AND keep TV from consuming the entire morning.

Lately I've taken to trying to involve Miriam in household chores. This has been on my mind for a long time. I've put it off as something to do later, I think. Our little baby is almost 2 and time is not slowing down. So if there is a way to involve her I try to do it! She's already pretty good at mopping up spills (drinking milk and juice from a big kid cup = accidents). I love that she'll try to clean up after herself in those instances. How long will this last?

She loves to sweep. More often she grabs the broom and hands me the mop and we chase each other in circles in the kitchen. Yesterday I cleaned out the dining room (= putting all the boxes in the living room) and she helped me clean the floor. We had a great time hand washing the floor. Basically she existed in a big puddle of soapy water from dunking her rag in and out of the bucket. But she had a great time...until she accidentally hit her head on the table. I hope this doesn't sour her and floor washing in the future. Lastly, today she helped me do the dishes. I had a storage closet door open and she drug out the step stool. "Hey, she'll be tall enough to help me do the dishes!" I thought. One of my memories is helping my Dad do dishes. I have no idea how old I was when we started. Again, she LOVED the soapy water. I gave her a new sponge and her yellow bowl and that wooden spoon got REALLY clean. She cleaned (and played) the entire time!

What are some other chores I could get her to participate in?

Motherhood is like . . .

Yesterday I decided motherhood is like juggling. This may seem obvious to you . . . you are managing chaos every day, duh! But hear me out . . .
Motherhood is like juggling several eggs and a knife. You don't really want to drop the eggs, but if you do all that happens is they crack and make a mess. On the other hand you REALLY don't want to drop the knife because you could lose an eye, a finger, a toe or get a really nasty cut.
The knife represents your children and your spouse (No they are not going to cut off your toe). You really don't want to screw up with them, they are the most important pieces! The eggs represent thing like dishes or laundry or dusting. If they don't get done all you essentially have is a mess. . . Unless you let it go so long that you have no clothes . . . or a house full of mold and mice. . . okay this analogy is really getting out of hand.
As I was at my grandmas trying to do laundry, feed a baby, change laundry, have lunch, change a baby, fold laundry while pausing to entertain baby, put baby to sleep, check email, entertain baby, load car up with laundry and baby, drive home . . . I came up with this analogy. It was my way of trying to put things in perspective. Because the baby is the one I don't want to fail with. So, it may take me several days to actually vacuum my living room floor.