Cleanliness

Yesterday I went to the next town over to visit my good friend. She recently quit working to be a SAHM of her 3 kids. I can really tell a difference in her mood, she’s much happier, much friendlier to the kids. From what I can tell, there are four good things that came out of Hailey and I going for a visit.

1. Hailey had a blast playing with her kids. She’s got 2 boys, ages 6 and 3, and a little girl that’s 7 months. Hailey ran around like crazy with the boys and got into tickle fights and even ate some chicken bites and ketchup with them. She loved it there, she made herself right at home.

2. I made my friend happy. She’s always trying to get me to come down on the weekends, but I’m generally too busy to drive that far out of my way and I always have other stuff I need to be doing (or sorry to say, that I’d rather be doing—like spending time playing with Hailey at home).

3. I got my $50 back that I loaned her when I had some extra money. Now she has extra money, and I needed it back pretty bad.

4. Bless her heart, her house is a disaster. The last good thing that came out of visiting her, was the strong urge to go home and clean my house and my child. I put Hailey down for a nap when we got home and went to work organizing all the clothes in our bedroom. I threw a ton of old stuff away, got 2 laundry baskets and 1 hamper cleaned out (including being wiped down with Clorox wipes—not that they needed it, but I’m a germaphobe). I organized my clothes into piles—a pile of clothes that I wore after I had Hailey, so they’re all way too big for me now…I’m going to pack those away with my maternity clothes. A pile of clothes that are sentimental to me, that I need to pack away. I got quite a few things hung up, and I found quite a few more shirts and pants for my niece that are way too small for me now. It felt so good to just get the little bit that I did done. And one thing is for sure…I will never, NEVER feel bad about my house again. My house may be a tiny bit cluttered. But it’s not dirty by ANY means, and there aren’t piles of trash and crap everywhere. We just need more storage space. I feel so much better about my house now. And I feel really bad for my friend!

Speaking of house cleaning. Saturday my living room had clean clothes all over the floor, there were clean dishes in the dishwasher that needed unloading and dirty dishes in the sink that needed to be loaded into the dishwasher. I needed to vacuum. And about 10 million other things including laundry. I felt like my house was a disaster. And it was TOO STINKING HOT in there to do anything about it. I laid on the couch, because the heat is just sucking the energy right out of me. Hailey slept til 9, and then she watched Shrek and we read books. When she went down for a nap at 12:15 I thanked God and laid back down myself. She only slept for an hour though, but it was just enough to give me a bit of energy. My mom came over after she got off work and we went to eat. We didn’t get to the library in time, they close so early on Saturdays! So that was a bummer, but we’ll try to take her next weekend. My husband got home while we were gone, he’d played in a tournament that day. Hailey and I got home about 7 or so, and I about died when I walked in the house. It smelled nice and clean…the floor was clean…laundry was done…kitchen was clean, dishes were clean, and my husband was griping at me with a huge smile on his face to put my clothes away(haha, I am always griping at him for this!) He had been so busy cleaning that whole time. Ok we all know my husband doesn’t usually do SQUAT around the house, so this is amazing. I was so stressed to come home to my disaster of a house and I came home and it was ALL DONE, and I didn’t even have to ask him to do it!!! Amazing. Last night he even cooked us dinner while I was putting Hailey to sleep! I don’t know what’s gotten into him.

This heat is ridiculous. Over 100 degrees w/ heat indexes up to 107 and 110??? It’s crazy. Our air conditioner has been running NON STOP and we only have it set on 76 or 77! Yesterday it was 81 degrees in our house. I finally broke down and called the emergency maintenance number. They sent somebody from an air company over and the guy cleaned out our air conditioner and changed the filter and said other than that everything’s fine. Um, yea, it’s definitely NOT fine when it’s that hot in our house and it’s running constantly and the air isn’t being pushed out of the vents! Basically, our air conditioner is too small for our house. It would be fine for the little 900 sqft apt. we used to have, but not for 1200 sqft of open house. I’ve been keeping all the blinds and curtains closed to shut out the heat and it’s still been crazy hot. We’ve had the ceiling fans and the regular fans going in the front part of the house during the day. Thank God we don’t have to be there today. I only hope I can get it cooled down enough once I get home today to be able to cook dinner. I have a mountain of laundry to do since I cleaned out our bedroom yesterday (all the clothes I had packed away that I can now wear I feel like I need to wash first). But I can’t run the dryer because of this heat! It’s supposed to be even worse this week than it was last week.

I’m loving toddlerhood. Hailey’s tantrums are getting fewer and farther between now--the occasional tantrum lately is usually due to the fact that we still cannot go outside becuase of this heat and she wants to play outside so badly! Hopefully this decline in tantrums continues. She’s learning more and more words every day to let us know what’s going on in her little head. Her new things this weekend were “I see….” As in her talking non stop about the hot air balloon we saw Friday night. “I see balloon!! Balloon?? I see balloon??” Because it went behind some trees. I explained to her “The balloon went bye bye, it’s hiding behind the trees.” She said “Bye bye balloon.” And then she was asking to see it again. This went on for 2 days. She always wants to “Read books mommy! Read books!” She also learned “Got it” this weekend. I was looking for her lotion and I said “Got it!” when I found it. So she went around the rest of the weekend saying “Got it!” when she’d find something. She knows up and down, on and off, in and out, hot, warm and cold. She knows all her body parts, including her butt which I think is funny because we’ve never “taught” her that part. And it’s so nice because she can entertain herself now. On one hand, I’ve been feeling sort of down about this lately…here I plan to actually PLAY with her all weekend, and other than reading books she pretty much just does her own thing unless she comes up for a cuddle and a smooch. I am feeling like she needs me less and less these days. But on the other hand, it’s nice because I can actually take a shower while she’s watching her movie or reading her books now. I don’t have to wait til she’s napping or have somebody watch her! This means showers more often for me now, YAY! I love this stage she’s in so much that I really don’t think I want to have another baby for a while. I want to enjoy Hailey as much as I can and spend some good one on one time with her before we add another member to the family. Right now, I’m really enjoying all the time I get to spend with her, and I’m loving her “nose kisses”!! (this is what she calls Eskimo kisses) :o) She's just such a good little kid!

Oh and I almost forgot, I've LOST my check book. And I can't find the rest of my checks! They're not where I have always kept them for the last 5 years or so!! I need to pay a couple bills, including the sitter, and have no checks! So that's a pain in my butt.