Can't Sleep

I've been up pretty much all night. I have that gnawing feeling in my tummy; my mind won't shut up and let me sleep. I'm sort of miserable.

Frannie starts kindergarten on Tuesday. I'm not happy.

I don't like unknowns, I really don't. No matter what decision I make I always feel like it is the wrong one. Then I ask Jason's opinion, but then his opinion sounds like the wrong one so I change my mind about it again. Then I wonder, "should I have just listened to my husband?" But then I remember how his FIRST opinion was the choice I ended up making before I tried to convince him that the OTHER choice was the right one. Poor guy can't win with me.

At this point she is scheduled for the AM K-1 combo class.

What I really wanted (after I changed my mind no less than twice on the paper and twice by phone) was to have her in the AM class that is from 8-11:45 Monday - Friday. That way I could pick her up and come home for lunch and have the whole rest of the afternoon. We would still have time to attend Tuesday Park Day together so she can see her friends. I ultimately felt that would be the best transition for her. Even though it means the end of slow mornings and will take quite a bit of focus on my part to change those habits. But it's ok, I'm ready to do that now.

But...with all of my mind changing...all of the AM regular kindergarten spots filled up quickly. They had too many parents who wanted that time too, and they only have one class structured that way.

The other option is the PM kindergarten class which meets from 10-2:20pm. The kids eat their lunch at school. The nice thing about this is that it would be a more relaxing morning for all of us and I've only heard wonderful things about the PM teachers. But I became very bothered by the fact that a dismissal time of 2:20 makes it feel like she's gone all stinkin' day. That, and seeing her old friends at the park is out.

The school has been really nice and accommodating with me. The secretary never made me feel like I was putting her out when I called. So I really appreciate that. In trying to fulfill my changed request for morning kindergarten, they put her in the AM K-1 combo class. It meets from M-F from 8-12:30 except on W from 8-1pm. So invariably in trying to have her be at school for LESS time, she is at school for the most time of any option. (Head falls on desk...)

And from what I can tell by the tentative schedule, I don't see that there is any real instructional time past 11am. It's a little odd actually because in having to accommodate the first graders, the kindergarteners end up having their snack at 10am, they have library time, music time, or computer time from 10:30-11 and then are walked up to the cafeteria for lunch at 11am. After lunch there is recess until noon. Then it seems they come back to class to do a quiet activity (she mentioned her play kitchen in the class) until parents come to pick up at 12:30. Part of me feels like that isn't so bad since it is a lot of play time and I really believe in play time. Afterall, more daily activity with friends was one of the reasons I felt homeschooling wouldn't work well for her.

But...(and here is where I start worrying) I know she is going to get really tuckered out. And when she gets tired she doesn't want to do the activity anymore. This is one of the big reasons why she started whining to me about going to ballet, because the class was at 5pm and she was already ready for dinner at that time and it was cold outside and she said she was tired. Then she started whining about going to gymnastics because it was Tuesday at 3pm and we had already been at the park for hours. She doesn't like to do gymnastics when tired and she would often fall asleep in the car on the way over. So even an activity she likes can quickly become one she doesn't like if she's being dragged to it. Knowing that she will be really tired after such a full morning like that, will she even have the energy to go to the park? Or will keeping her up like that without an after-school nap mess her up for the next day when she'll be at school even longer?

And that brings me to Wednesday. What can they possibly do with the kindergarteners for an extra 30 minutes one day a week? Honestly? Nothing. It will just be more kill-time activity. Wednesday is the school-wide minimum day so she is following the schedule of the first graders on that day. I asked about just picking her up at 12:30 and the teacher said she'd prefer the kids to be picked up at 1pm just because it can get complicated with remembering which children leave and which don't etc... I can appreciate her position on this since she does have 24 students and it is of prime importance that every head be accounted for and that the drop-off, pick up policies be air-tight.

But it just makes me uncomfortable. Even the PM kindergarten class gets a short 3 hour day on Wednesday because they meet from 10-1. I'd rather her have one day of the week like that, rather than a longer day. Even though it is only 1/2 hour longer. It's still longer. So if anything I wish it were the same pick up time, 12:30.

I've decided I'm going to try it out and see how it goes and how she does with the changes. If I continue to have a problem with the 1pm pick up time then I'll schedule a meeting with the teacher and probably principal just to arrange that I'll be regularly picking her up at 12:30 (or heck, maybe even 11 since they're just playing after that time anyways).

It is all just too many unknowns for her and for me and I can't sleep because of it. I want her to have a really good first year of school.

The Swim Teacher

This summer Jason taught the kids (well, Frannie and Adam) how to swim! He asked a couple of other dads who taught their kids and they said the trick was just to take them every single day. So Jason made up his mind to do just that. As soon as he got home from work, the kids put their swimsuits on and went with Daddy to the pool. 

Frannie started out being afraid to put her face underwater, and now she can swim all the way from one end of the pool to the other with her face down and everything! She looks like a little froggy when she's swimming. 

Adam didn't even want to go into the water, but despite his clinging to my legs and crying, Jason forced him to go in and use his floaties.

And he likes it! He now asks to go swimming everyday. 

As for me, I've been sitting around either in the house, or watching by the poolside.

Making sure Nattie doesn't plop herself into the pool. 

Or run off too far with the keys. You can see it in her eyes how she's saying "Mine!"

I am so so so happy that the kids learned how to swim. I tried to teach Frannie some things last summer but wasn't able to get very far. I find that when she is resisting and being very squirrelly, I tend to go into drill sergeant mode. But Jason has taught me that with skills like this you just have to do a little bit every single day. Just get them to go a little bit farther than the previous day and they'll make big progress. I know for a fact I wouldn't have gotten her swimming the way he did! As for Adam, I also know for a fact that I would have let him stay in the house all summer because he was afraid to go into the water. Jason knew that he just needed to get him in there and make him work it out. And he was right! It is a big weight off of my shoulders knowing that they are learning such an important life skill! 

The July Home Makeover Extravaganza...is finished

I know that is quite a heavy title there. And really when all is said and done it just came down to paint, a laminate floor, carpet, and some baseboards. But darnit everything looks so different, it's like I moved and got myself a brand new house! I love it!

The before shots:

Here we have white walls and white carpet

A little closer now...

Toddler graffiti'ed white walls

And not so white carpet...

I'm not a white on white type of decorator anyways, but I couldn't even pretend to keep this looking clean. The carpet the kids are standing on had been professionally shampooed only 3 months prior. 

The process of getting everything done involved 2 weeks of 

scaffolding and keeping the kids out of the house and away from open cans of paint. The rest of the month of July was the laminate floor and then carpet upstairs. 

Imagine my joy when I came home to this

and this

and brown carpet

and a green kitchen!

Did you know that it is more enjoyable to clean house when you like what you are cleaning? Fascinating how that works. Do you know how much peace of mind comes from being able to wipe up cat barf effortlessly and not feel even a smidge of disdain for the cat in the process? It's a lot of peace. 

I'm loving my new house!

I would totally blog more if I didn't have to post pictures!

For days and days I've been wanting to write a blog post about the home-makeover extravaganza that I am currently in the middle of.

It is one of those things where part of me wants to COMPLAIN about how hard it has been to have my life turned upside-down and not be able to be in my own house for two weeks now and how STRESSFUL it is to make these decisions about what colors everything should be when there are truly a billion CHOICES with every single item and how everything COSTS more than you thought it would and takes LONGER than you thought it would and how when you do one project in invariably leads to having to do another project and then there are ever more decisions, more choices, more money...wait a minute, I think I'm complaining.

Anyways the truth is that I am deeply grateful that I even have the luxury of making these decisions. I am deeply grateful that we currently have the resources to make these little dreams a reality. So it seems pretty stupid to complain too much. Yes, very stupid.

So we're in the middle of getting a few things spruced up around here. When we bought this townhome 2 1/2 years ago we knew we'd eventually need to repaint and re-do the floor. The previous owner had a love of white spaces and while that worked really well for her as a single woman, it works terribly for me as a mother of three. The white carpet in my living room is just plain ol' ugly at this point and the walls have various stains, hand prints, and a bit of toddler graffiti on them since it seems that the kids need to give wall art a try at least once. But I have no way of cleaning the flat finish walls and despite regular carpet cleanings the floor looks hopeless. So Jason and I agreed that paint and a downstairs floor was necessary.

But you know, if you are going to hire someone to paint the downstairs and ginormous livingroom wall, you might as well just have them do the upstairs bedrooms too because realistically, when are you ever going to get around to it? And if you are getting a new floor downstairs it sure would be nice to have a new baseboard since they'll just have to do this base-shoe thing around the existing baseboard anyways and it doesn't cost much more and the installation is included. And since we're doing the living room floor in laminate, it's just going to be another series of decisions to do the kitchen and bathroom someday and then we'll have all these different floor seams in the house so you might as well just have them do the laminate in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom too. Now, if you have a new floor downstairs and nice new paint with a new baseboard it is going to look pretty stupid to have those cruddy stained "once-white" stairs that greet you right at the livingroom entrance. You should probably just re-carpet the stairs, that way the entire downstairs will look nice. Did you know that carpets come in different die-lots? I didn't. So just because you pick one color/type of carpet today for the stairs doesn't mean that two years from now you can buy the exact same carpet for your hallway and bedrooms, not to mention that you'll have brown stairs and a white hallway for two years. And it will be another process of the house being upside-down while furniture gets moved and people get hired and contracts written. Sigh.

If you give a mouse a cookie. Right?

So we're kind of doing it all. All the paint, the whole downstairs floor, and all the carpet. I suppose it's just basic stuff but it feels like a lot.

I have a few pictures of the scaffolding that was in my living room. But it's on my camera. And as much as I'd love to have a picture of it right here, I just don't feel like getting it off my camera and downloading it and then uploading it to the blog. That right there is the biggest reason of why I sometimes take forever to post something new.

So I don't have pictures, but it's an update nonetheless. (I just love now "none the less" evolved into being just one word. That's so cool!)

When it is all done I'll try to put up a few pics.

The family gets baptized

At St. Luke Lutheran Church in Claremont on June 13th. (Jason and I were baptized on May 31st.)

It was a very nice ceremony and I'm so glad that we finally found a church that we are comfortable in and are learning in. After the children were baptized something felt complete to me, like a thin circle was drawn around us all.

Peas in a Pod

Our neighbors just left for Egypt for the summer. WAH! I'll miss them. Frannie and Omar play just about every single day and they never get sick of each other. I have to tell him to go home all of the time, and then 15 minutes later he'll be back in the garage. Omar is a good kid, but boy does he have a knack for breaking things. He reminds me of one of those puppies that chews on your favorite shoe. When you find the shoe with tooth marks and slobber all over and scold the dog, he just looks at you with this face like "Huh? Me? What did I do?" He's broken flower pots, my mini blinds, he made the roof of the playhouse collapse, he cracked the plastic pool, he's made Adam trip by chasing him with a hula hoop and then hooking him by the ankles. He runs too fast, jumps from high places, and in general doesn't think much about the cause/effect of what he's doing. He's six.

But he and Frannie and Adam play well together and rarely fight.

On one day Frannie took a bunch of pictures. These made me smile.

Keeping House

I really love learning about the art of keeping a home. I feel that for many women my age, homekeeping was pushed so far down on the list of worthwhile priorities to be taught either at home or school while growing up, that we are trying to figure it all out at a time when it should be second-nature. There were no Home Ec. classes in my jr. high or high school and for all of the math, science, literature, and history I was taught, the only lessons I learned about home and family in school were in reference to a sort of female enslavement.  I sometimes wonder, did my great-grandfather really not appreciate the efforts of my great-grandmother? Was she really seen as second class to him as the textbooks would make it seem? Or did they just have a respected division of labor? There's a lot to be done to make a household work, and for some reason the actual work-load of the home side of things has been minimized to the point that I guess people think homes can clean themselves, meals can cook themselves and children can raise themselves.

Before being in this role, I never appreciated the work involved. Perhaps I saw it as part-time work, something that could all be accomplished with just a little effort on the side. But this business of nurturing  people and the home they dwell in is a whole thing.

Fortunately, I came into wifehood and motherhood with a knowledge of how to cook, and a knack for lovin' up babies. Those things have never been hard for me. It's this keeping the home in order part that has been a struggle. It's like...work. There's a lot of cleaning. And things keep getting dirty. And there's always stuff coming into the house to sort through and stuff that needs to be pulled out. And them kids I live with keep making huge messes and interrupting me every five seconds. Hmmm...funny how that happens.

But I finally feel like I'm really breaking free! (From the house-trap mindset that is, not the kids!)

I have been getting better over the years bit by bit as I read books and blogs and apply what I've learned. However, for a long time I have been stuck at the place of doing an ok job of keeping things in order but it has always felt like a huge effort. Just thinking about the dishes that have to be done, or the kitchen that has to be wiped down was a major mental drain. I would always wonder "Why does it always feel so hard?" I know that it isn't actually difficult to wash dishes or do laundry or pick up toys. In fact when you are in the middle of it, often the mind can take a little vacation and it isn't so bad. Somehow the mental activity of just getting there took about 75% of my energy. I wanted to be one of those people that just gets it done and doesn't anguish over it. Jason's that way.

So in my quest for knowledge I ordered another home organization book from the library, Sandra Felton's Organizing for Life. Her book isn't about how to clean, it's about the mental side of things. Organizing for Life explores the cognitive patterns (and sometimes physiological issues too) that contribute to someone being a "Messy" vs. a "Cleanie". For me, the most helpful chapter was chapter 16 where she talks about the way the average successful homekeeper relates to her home. She says the number one difference between those who keep their homes clean regularly with little problem versus those who are always struggling with the house is that average successful homekeepers just want their home to look nice.

What? That's it!?

She says the average "Messie" focuses on wanting the house to "work better" and be more organized so that life will be more efficient. For example, kids will be hustled off to school with less effort, items will be found more easily, documents will be stored more appropriately. She says that the human desire for beauty is much greater than the desire for efficiency. Also, the person who wants a nice home will subsequently have a home that works better and is more efficient.

This may sound stupid, but this information hit me over the head.

I read that chapter about four times.

Want a nice home...they want the house to look nice...they want it to be pretty...welcoming...for themselves.

They just want a nice house.

I ...want a nice house.


I have never admitted that to myself or even really considered it. In fact I have always viewed myself in opposition to those who want their homes to look nice. Isn't it a vain character quality to want something for beauty's sake? Isn't it much more noble to desire efficiency? And yet, it isn't enough. A vision of efficiency has never been enough to make me want to wash any dish. I'll do it out of duty's sake because I love my husband and I love my kids and I know it is important to them (especially to him) to have a home that they can enjoy. For years, that has been the motivation I've been operating under. But desiring efficiency and desiring to please family members isn't enough to shake the emotional response that everything is such a c.h.o.r.e.

I deserve a nice home. A nice home isn't just for other people, it's for me. I deserve a nice home to live in. I feel like I need to keep repeating it over and over and let it sink in. When I keep that vision in my mind, it does make a difference. It changes the energy with which I approach the house. Rather than being a trap, it's like the mess is in-between me and MY nice house! I want my nice house back! So the mess must go! It also means letting go of my little self-identity as a "Messie". I can feel sometimes when that old mind-set is operating and when I have to switch to the new one and get my vision back. 

So if you come to my home, don't get all Inspector-Gadget on me and whip out your magnifying glass to check my skillz; There will probably still be some toys on the floor and dishes in the sink and blah blah blah. However, when the time comes to stick my hands in some soapy water or put Thomas and his Friends away for the day I think my inner-world won't be moaning and groaning through the whole thing.
I'll be creating my nice house.