Overcoming Inertia

Well, it's a good thing I didn't make any resolutions about posting a certain amount, huh??

It took me pretty much all of last week to blow off the cobwebs of the holiday and actually get moving again. We really had a lovely few weeks of just hanging out together, not having to be anywhere at any particular time. It was long enough though, that I sort of lost my groove in terms of Getting Sh*t Done.

It's something I've noticed staying home full time now; if I get out of bed and hit the ground running, I can accomplish a phenomenal amount in a day. If, however, we laze around in the morning, it's almost impossible to get focused for the rest of the day. Not a terribly profound observation, but sometimes I forget that. It's actually become one of the defining differences between weekdays and weekends (I've mentioned before that without a 9-5, the days can really blur together). I am learning to be ok with the slower weekend starts, with not getting a darn thing done except enjoy each others' company. But if I don't make a point of starting Monday off with a bang, the whole week can end up being a wash.

So anyway, after a pretty sluggish week last week, made worse by the fact Chris was traveling all week for work (no one to appreciate a tidy house at the end of the day), I finally kicked into gear on Friday. I cleaned most of the house and got a project that has been nagging me underway. The kids' bathroom is the only one with a bath tub and, like the rest of the house, had ugly frosted shower doors when we moved in.

If you've ever tried to bathe children in a tub with doors, you know it's basically impossible. And yes, I still give my kids baths every single night. What can I say, I like them to smell good. Plus, I figure if it's never NOT part of our routine, there will be less need for those delicate conversations around the development of body odor and OH MY GOD GO TAKE A SHOWER YOU STINKY, STINKY CHILD. One of the first things I did after we moved in was have Chris take the shower doors off to allow me access to referee the bath time wrestling sessions. Removing the doors was great, but left the metal track attached to the side of the tub. I have had permanent bruises underneath my kneecaps for approximately the last 4.5 years from bracing against those damn tracks to lift kids out of the bath (we had the same issue in our last house). Recently the kids have decided they like to get in and out themselves, which, hooray for independence, but had me CRINGING every time they stretched their little legs over the side, clearing the metal by millimeters.

Anyway, very long story short, I finally got up the impetus to do something about it. The internet explained exactly what I'd need to do, and a helpful older gentleman at Home Depot set me up with the tools I needed. I got so inspired that I grabbed a gallon of paint while I was there to cover up the grubby white currently on their walls. Friday afternoon was pretty much spent scraping caulk and then over the weekend with some help from Chris, grubby white became Jamaica Bay. I am currently scouting out some things to pretty up the walls and make the bathroom generally more kid-user-friendly (why the towel bar over the toilet??) and I plan to post some pictures when it's all complete.

In other news, we received our first real kid board game for Christmas. It's called Photo Safari and is extremely well designed for young children - I highly recommend it. However, teaching a 5- and 2.5-year old to play a game requires rather a large amount of patience. For the time being they are pretty happy for me to basically direct the game (now your turn, move here, roll this, etc) and no one really minds who wins or loses. It does require me to sit with them for 30 minutes at a time when they want to play it. Which is about 64 times a day. I love that they are so into it, and it's a great alternative to the iPad/iPhone games they are more accustomed to playing. It's good for me too, to try to let everything else go for just 30 minutes and focus on helping them learn all the important parts to playing games.

I have lots more to say, but in the interest of keeping this "object" in motion, I'll save it for another post. Happy Monday all.