Clean-Up Saturday

The first day of cleaning went pretty well.

The kid made a good first pass at cleaning her bedroom. I then worked with her and sorted through everything to get it put away.

My husband cleaned up the living room ... sorta. At least he cleaned up some of the living room. He left the table next to the laptop for me.

I spent the rest of the day working on cleaning out the kitchen and dining room. I took everything out of the china cabinet and wiped it down. I cleaned up the kid's desk, books, games. I cleaned up my pantry. I cleaned up my pot cabinet. I sorted through the things that were laying on the kitchen counter.

The hubby helped where he could. He even made the kid pick up her toys and put them away when she was done with them. Until now, that hasn't been something he's been willing to really enforce. Hopefully this trend continues.

I wish I could say I finished but I didn't. I worked from 10:00am - 6:00pm and didn't finish. My house is, was, truly a disaster. I haven't been real great at keeping it picked up for the last couple years and last month was even worse between being sick and Christmas. So, I made dinner, got the kid in for a bath, did a load of laundry, cleaned up the entryway and crashed. I did wake up in the middle of the night and cleaned off a bit of the microwave but that's about it.

I will now take the kid to breakfast, stop to pick up some organization needs, and come home to work on the house some more. I am shooting to have the house completely picked up by lunch so I can clean the floors, work on laundry and get ready to face the rat race tomorrow.

First Attempt

Well, my first announcement went over like a lead balloon. Hubby and the kid were all for Clean-up Saturday but, when I mentioned that it was not just Clean-up Saturday it was also Keep-It-Clean all the time, he seemed less than thrilled. I did it as though I had been talking to the kid and he didn't seem happy. I said that I had told her "We all live in this house and so we all need to take responsibility for what we do because it's frustrating to go to do something and have to do the clean-up from the last time it was done."

Shortly after that, he came out of the bedroom and asked what I was making. Since we haven't been shopping as a couple in, oh, two months, I had 2 hamburger patties and some Kraft Mac&Cheese. He wasn't happy with that for dinner so he went for a burrito ... 45min ago. The going out for something other than what I've made for dinner is one of his regular moves ... but it's not usually a 45min trip unless he's going gambling too. Schmuck!

This is going to be rough.

New Year's Resolutions

I have been very bad about my blogging. It's not something I think of first but it is something that I enjoy ... even if there's only one or two people reading what I'm writing.

So, I've decided to put my New Year's resolutions in writing and hopefully they will be paid more attention.

• Get my house picked up and kept picked up. This is not an easy thing for me because, as soon as I get the main living spaces picked up and cleaned, my husband and daughter come home. By the time we go to bed, the rooms are a disaster again. The kid is expected but the hubby does not help to keep things clean. He is the one that opens the junk mail and sets it on the table rather than throw it in the garbage. He empties the dishwasher and sets the Tupperware on the counter or dumps the pots and pans in the cabinet wherever they fit. So, to get my house clean and KEEP IT THAT WAY, I will need to begin to nag when things are not picked up or put away.
  
• Pay off my debt. As of today, I have to start using only cash for everything. I need to stop using my credit cards completely. If I don't have the cash, I don't buy it or do it. As I began to discuss in my blog posts, my husband is a gambler and has given very little thought to the household and whether we have enough money. His bottom line is, and has always been, that he wants the debt paid down but he doesn't (or at least didn't) recognize how much he was spending and felt that I had all of the adjustments to make to my spending. So, he wanted me to completely stop spending but he did not change his habits at all. I tried to make him understand how much money he was really burning through and took the same amount out of our checking account that he did. We had nothing in the account in no time. After many, many fights, I began to use his gambling to rationalize my shopping, entertainment, whatever else I want to charge because I was trying to make myself matter to my husband and make him realize that I earn my paycheck and should be able to spend money too. In September, we separated our checking account. I slowed way down on my spending because I no longer felt I had to 'keep up with the Joneses' with my spending. We now have my debt, our debt and his debt. Christmas changed my shopping habits back to pre-split habits so now I have to get back on track. My post-debt plan is to put money into a 529 for the kid to go to college (regardless of what my husband thinks about helping her with college. Yes, he thinks she should have to get through college like we did ... in debt. I would like to assist her so that she doesn't have to start her life in debt.) and actually update our home and stop treating it like an apartment. We need new flooring, a new kitchen, a completely revamped basement, a new washer, new living room furniture, landscaping, etc.
• As part of the pay off debt resolution, I will be going grocery shopping on Wednesday evenings. Our original agreement was that we would go shopping together and then split the grocery bill except that it's not important to him. Just like our bills, all that matters to him is that we have food in the house but he doesn't think about how it's going to get there. He doesn't want to make the effort to go regularly. He wants to go 'when we need something' but he doesn't realize that we pretty much always need something. The trips to the grocery store every few days costs us more because we pick up a lot more extraneous items and do not stick to the short list. So, I haven't been shopping except when I need something to send for the kid's lunch because I cannot afford to buy groceries on my own for the family. Now, I will give him the option of going with me or just reviewing the receipt and paying me half. Either way, he will pay half of our grocery bill and we will stop eating out.
  
• Get back on track with my weight loss. Now, that's not to say that I've gained anything back. Before a couple days of noshing for the new year, I was actually down .7lbs from where I was at my doctor's appointment in November. I will behave myself again and start going to the healthclub on Monday after work. I need to do this for me.
• Clear out my clutter. I realize this is similar to the clean my house but I have a lot of clutter that I set off to the side or in the spare room with the idea I'll deal with it later. I will ruthlessly go through that clutter and get rid of what I can. I will do this because I am teaching the kid some bad habits and she is having problems letting go of her toys. How can I expect something of her that I am not willing to do myself?
• Blog more.
  

So, there you have it. Those are my resolutions. I will blog about them and hopefully that will keep me on track. 2010 is going to be a growth year!

Wishing Flowers

My daughter came rushing in the other day all excited. When I got her settled down a little bit, I was able to understand what she was saying. She was excited because our yard was filled with 'wishing flowers.'

I looked out and I saw what she was talking about ...

When I saw it, I have to admit that my first thought was of all of the dandelions we were going to have because of these. But, her excitement soon won me over.

As she blew the dandelion seeds into the air, I hoped she'd never lose that innocence ... but sadly knew some day she would.

What do you see ... wishing flowers or dandelions?

Goodbye, Baby Girl; Hello, Big Girl

Well, it happened. The first day of big-girl school is finally here. The day I’ve been dreading. The day my baby girl becomes a big girl.

It started the way I remember my school days starting … with the parent getting frustrated with the child for not getting up. There are times when it is completely obvious that my daughter really is MY daughter. This was one of those times. I remember my dad even going so far as to pour water on me to get me out of bed when I was older. It is obvious that neither of us are morning people at all.

But, she finally got up and after 10min of lying on the couch, she got dressed by herself. I brushed her hair and put a school ribbon on it (the cult requires their ribbon be used if one is present). Then she looked at herself in the mirror. When she came out, I said “Oh, don’t you look cute!” She gave me a look that I have felt myself give people many times and shook her head no. I asked “You look like a big girl. Do you like it?” She shook her head yes (oh, how I long for rocks in the head to rattle when the head shakes). All of a sudden it hit me. “Are you saying you’re not cute, you’re a big girl?” “Unh-hunh.” *SOB* I had to give her a hug so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

Then it was breakfast. She wanted French toast but I didn’t have any frozen stuff and I wasn’t sure we’d have time for me to make it. I convinced her to have Eggs a la Momma (eggs scrambled with cheese and milk) instead. She ate like a champ, brushed her teeth and we were off.

Oops, we have to take the umbrellas because it’s raining cats and dogs. Oh, wait, stop at the top of the stairs, honey. Mommy needs to take a picture. Snap the shot in the rain. NOW we’re off.

I had to make a couple of stops before we got to school. We ran to Walgreens to buy the 5mg tablets of Zyrtec so the school wouldn’t have to break them if there was an allergic reaction on their watch. Then we stopped at my office to make copies of all of the forms from school. I learned my lesson with her daycare about making copies of the forms. Never assume the school is going to actually file what they need in the right place … or at all.

On our way to school, I give the Mommy Lecture. Be good. Listen to your teacher. If you need help, ask.

We get to school and run in. I’ve got 5 minutes until school starts but, wait, does Kindergarten start early? I don’t know so I give her a quick hug and kiss in the hall. “Love you.” “Love you.” When we get to her room, all of the kids are seated in their chairs already. Whew! At least there won’t be a crying scene from either of us. She won’t be happy that I didn’t say goodbye again since she’s very much into saying goodbye and I Love you but it’s for the best today. I am not happy that I didn’t get to hear ‘I love you, mommy’ that one last time but, again, it’s for the best today.

I push her in and run to the office to give them her allergy medicine and the giant stack of paperwork. As I’m talking with the lady in the office about her allergies, Faith’s cousin walks by and rubs my back. I give her the ‘wait’ finger and finish talking to the office lady. I turn around and she’s got tears in her eyes from leaving her little boy in Kindergarten. He apparently told her he’d miss her and it just got her. Seeing her made me very sad because I hadn’t let myself think about it or feel it for fear of exposing too much and making my daughter upset. I got teary. On the way to work, I cried a little thinking about how she was a big kid now and how I had just another 13yrs before she’d be out on her own. 13yrs. It seems like so much and, yet, so little all at the same time.

It’s amazing how little it takes to knock down that wall mothers build so the kids won’t see how much we are going to miss them during the day and how much we are going to miss the little kids they will never be again.

Endings and Beginnings

So, I have this whole post about cheese, Cheeseland and Cheesehead ready to go except that I stopped to find a picture of cheese and never got back to it. I thought it would be appropriate for my first post on this blog considering the name but it will have to wait. I have a major life event going on in my household right now.

As of today, my daughter is done with daycare. We have had the good fortune of being able to keep our daughter in the same daycare she started at when she was 8 weeks old. This has not been without its ups and downs. God knows there were times I wanted to yank her out of there as quickly as I could but I stuck with it because she loved it there and that's where her friends are.

So, because of this, she has been dreading today. She would get upset and cry about it last month. To help her through the last day, I told her we would have a pool party the day after she was done but the weather isn't cooperating and it's only going to be a high of 74 tomorrow which is not nearly warm enough to go swimming. I needed another plan.

Last night, she and I went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of party favors, some brown paper lunch bags, and some stickers. She decorated the lunch bags with the stickers and I filled them with those odd little toys the kids get at parties and some candies ... Tootsie Rolls, Tootsie Roll Pops, and the best, all-sugar candy of all time Pixie Sticks. I threw in a pencil and pencil sharpener for good measure. We also picked up a cake for the class. This way, hopefully, she will learn that the ending of something is not necessarily the end of everything and should be celebrated as an opportunity for a beginning. She won't get the concept of it at Age 5 but hopefully the idea will sink in a little bit.

Her crying about leaving daycare has kind of tapered off this month which may be due, in part, to the building excitement about the next step in her education ... KINDERGARTEN. We go to Kindergarten Orientation on Tuesday for an hour and her first full day of kindergarten will be Thursday. She'll be going to school with two of her cousins and this helps ease some of the anxiety about changing schools. We've been picking up her uniform pieces for her move into big kiddom and she's thrilled that she will be able to wear dresses most of the time. I have told her that as long as her uniform doesn't get stained, I will let her wear it as much as possible. If the two jumpers I've bought get stained, she will need to wear pants. Hopefully that will cause her to be a bit more careful.

My hubby just emailed and said he got a little choked up when the kid said goodbye to the teacher that sits by the front door in the morning to collect the children from the parents as they rush to their jobs. Marina was the first teacher we saw the first day we brought the kid to daycare. (The picture is from the end of our first day at daycare and back at work.) She followed us into the Infant Room and told us that she would take the baby. She looked like any other parent that might be walking into the daycare. She wasn't the teacher we'd been told would be taking the baby from us and I had never met her before. I looked at her and said "I'm sure you can but, unfortunately, I don't know who you are and I'm not just handing over my child to you. I'm sure you understand." Things have changed since then (there are only 3 of the staff there now that were there when the kid first arrived) and she is a very trusted adult. She has to be to take responsibility for our child, right?

I'm so glad that hubby takes the kid to daycare. I would have been crying when the kid said goodbye to Marina. My baby isn't a baby anymore ... :(