Trey and Cat

Ahhh, a post with a hidden list.

Posted on June 1st, 2009 by Cat.
Categories: life.

Had a great weekend with pool time Sat. and Sun., watermelon, a short nap (for me) yesterday, and some progress on the laundry monster (will conquer it tonight). I still have a couple of small ‘just get off your ass and do them’ projects for the week that I had hoped to get done, but the siren song of the couch won out last night after the kids were down. I think once I am able to watch everything saved on my DVR the couch song will be muted. Oh well, at least I cleaned up the kitchen before I went to bed. That’s progress over last weeks nightly habit of leaving a sink full of festering dishes to deal with ‘later’. It’s no wonder we are battling the tiny sugar ants in the kitchen. Trey and Margaret came to my rescue a couple of nights last week so we didn’t end up eating out due to a dirty kitchen (which is a poor excuse to eat out, but to get dinner on the table in less the 30 minutes after walking in the door I have to start with a reasonably clean slate).

There is still a smallish pile of dirt in our driveway. It’s really hard for Trey and I to work together to get all of it spread. The kids won’t stay in the backyard sandbox, won’t stay in a sprinkler set up for them to run through, won’t stay in the front yard at all without trying to ‘take a walk’. Basically they won’t stay put. I need one of those tiny dog obedience whistles or something. So I took the kids to the pool Saturday while Trey stayed behind to try and get the rest of the pile distributed on his own. He made some serious progress, but we have run out of places to put the dirt. We will probably spread the rest of it in Brenda’s (our neighbor) front yard. A load or two have already made it over there, but we weren’t sure if she wanted us messing with her yard. She came over with a gift of vodka for just the little bit that we did get over there, so Trey wants to try and put the rest out tonight (anyone want a bottle of flavored vodka?). She says she wants to do it herself to get the exercise, but we really just want the pile out of our driveway as quick as possible so we can park the car there again.

I have a long list of half-finished projects and other small maintenance things that need to be taken care of. I finally moved the towel rack to the mounts on the wall behind the toilet in the kid’s bathroom. One of the mounts where it was originally installed (on the opposing wall) started pulling out of the drywall. When we had the guys come and repair the drywall in that bathroom they misunderstood us and worked around the old drywall mounts. By the time we realized what happened it was too late. The towel rod had come off the wall a number of times in the past months, but it finally gave up something like 6 weeks ago; I am that much of a slacker. Now Trey and I have to find a new towel rod with larger decorative plates where it mounts to the wall to cover up the damaged spots. That probably won’t happen until I finally get to tear the wallpaper out of the downstairs bathroom and need to find fixtures for in there too.

Other things that are on my ‘do this instead of watching TV, you will feel better if you just get them done’ list: curtains for Delaney and Noah’s room, finish Kelly and Steven’s quilts, hang up some already mounted photos and decorations, get some photos printed and mount and hang them, pull wallpaper from downstairs bathroom, and the ever-present meal planning, laundry, and cleaning cycle. I have been putting these things off forever, but with the maintenance cleaning now being taken care of by Sandra I have no excuse but to get them taken care of.

I finally set an alarm for this morning and promised myself that I would adhere to it no matter how many times my sleep was interrupted. It totally changes my outlook on the day when I wake up for myself instead of being greeted in the morning to a facefull of “I want milk” from Delaney. I thought the extra 10 minutes or so of sleep were worth it, but if I wake up to the alarm I can take a few minutes to wake up my mind and gather my thoughts before having to be ready to face the day. It is much better than hitting the ground running with the Delaney and Noah alarm system. Hopefully this gets me one step closer to having a smoother morning routine so that I can get to work early enough to go to the gym at lunch or leave on time so I can get a little activity in at the house before starting dinner. I think Delaney’s behavior would improve if we were able to do something together when we got home from work instead of me trying to put her off to get dinner made. Something physical to get the over abundant toddler energy.

Having Noah’s crib in the room with Delaney has made such a big difference with the quality of our sleep. We are not constantly waking each other up with every cough or sneeze and he is waking up only once in the middle of the night now. There are occasional whimpers around 10:30 when he wakes up a little bit, but he had been good at getting back to sleep on his own. Somewhere between 2 and 4 he wakes up screaming and I go in there because I am afraid he will wake up Delaney. She has slept through his crying many times, but it only takes me 5 minutes to get him to go back to sleep and I am still so drowsy at the end of it I slide back into bed and am asleep before my head hits the pillow. If Delaney wakes up I am in for a full half hour of her being awake and trying to justify that she doesn’t need to go back to sleep. By the time I am done reasoning with her I am all the way awake and it then takes another 15 minutes or so to get back to sleep myself. 5 minutes or 45? I think I’ll take the Noah break.

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