Weekly Update

Story behind this one: the girls played outside yesterday while Nick put the Christmas lights on the house, and when I looked out the window this is what I saw. That's what we get for being too lazy to put the top back on the sandbox during last week's snowstorm...Audrey sure thought this was fun. It was ICY water...she's nuts! :) (Don't worry, I cleaned her up and got her warmed up right after I took this. :)

1. Nick and I got to have a date night last night! It had been nearly three weeks. We like to try for weekly, but we've been missing our piano lesson/babysitting exchange because our babysitter needed to take a break from lessons for the holidays. We split dinner at PF Chang's, and then went to Starbucks and then wandered around Barnes and Noble for a while. It was really nice. I like my husband...a lot. :)

2. Potty Training. Whew. Hannah has continued to resist training, and it's obvious she's ready. Plus she'll be 4 in April. So finally the other night I looked up potty training resistance, and found an entire school of thought on the psychology behind potty training. They say that when it becomes a power struggle (as it has) that the best way to end it is to drop out. Quit talking about it, quit reminding, and just make them clean up the mess (of course that's only their perception - really you help clean up, but make them take off wet pants and put on dry ones). So, we're trying it. They say that since the parents don't control their children's bladder, you have to make the child responsible for it. She really doesn't like having to change her wet pants herself (which is weird because she'll walk around in a wet diaper most of the day if I let her), so at this point she just holds it all day (I still make her go at bedtimes) and has about three BIG accidents. It's been two days. I Guess this is improvement? We'll try it for a week and see how it goes...

3. We had a fitting for Maeve on Saturday. It went really well - the dress is going to be the best one yet! And we got a pleasant surprise last week - a free office! My dad moved his small business out of his basement and into an office space last week, and there is a tiny closet of an office in his suite that he's letting us use for free. It gets us out of Holly's basement, and gives us a place to meet clients. Works for us! From a basement to an office, even a small one, definitely a move up! Final fitting on that gown is next Saturday!

4. Saturday was quite the day for us. After the fitting, I ran home and got the girls down for an early nap, then we went to a late lunch for my brother's birthday. When we got home it was almost time to get ready for the Christmas Tree Lighting. By 8pm I was fried, big time. What do you do when you get too tired to be nice anymore? Ideally, I think we would avoid getting that tired and quit while we're ahead, but there are some days it can't be avoided. I'm really interested in thoughts on this one...

Oh, and we got cute pictures at the Christmas thing, in spite of the bad light in the building...


And it was so fun to see some of our small group friends there! I tried to get pictures of them but none of them turned out.

4. On Thursday my Grandma ("Gramma") arrives to visit from SoCal. I'm excited to see her and to have my kids hang out with her. We're going to drive up to the airport with my mom to pick her up.

5. Finished a shirt for the stuffed bunny last week...hopefully I can get more done this week. It's cute so far!

6. I tried this bread recipe this weekend, in my never-ending quest for bread we can eat. It's not my favorite. It has that sandpapery texture from LOTS of rice flour, and I haven't yet figured out how to keep it from burning in the toaster. One good thing about it - it doesn't get that gooey center that so many GF breads get. Yuck! And it is free of gluten, dairy, soy, egg, and yeast...although all that potato starch isn't the best idea either...

7. Keeping my house clean: I have always appreciated FlyLady, but my complaint has been that my days are never the same. I don't get to go through the same routine every day, and I certainly can't follow a schedule. So, I was reading this the other day, and came upon an idea. What if I could combine the best parts of flylady with her list idea? So, I made a basic daily list for myself. On it I have the things that I need to do each day, along with places to write in two cleaning chores for the day, and a project from my list of projects to be done around here. So, my morning list looks like this currently:
Breakfast
Dishes
Feed Animals
Shower
Dressed
Hair & Makeup
Girls Dressed
Girls Hair
Make Beds
Exercise
Chore:
Chore:
Project:
Then I have some blank lines at the bottom to add more things. (Or else to write down things I've had to do and cross them off to make me feel good...come on, you know you do it too!)

So far this has been working better than anything I've ever tried. Between the kids' needs, I have a hard time staying on task to finish what I need to. When I have a list I can say, "Where was I? Oh yes..." and be right back on task. And, I can tailor it to what I want done the most. Last week my dirty windowsills were bugging me, so working on them with the magic eraser made the list. That would never come up in the flylady daily assignment, and often that assignment either does not need to be done in my house, or it's something that is low on the priority list to me. Without sounding so domestic that it's goofy, I've actually been wearing an apron over my clothes and keeping the list in my pocket. I remember I'm at work (without wearing shoes - another thing I rebel against with flylady :), I have a place to carry things, and my clothes don't get dirty while I clean. Heh...listen to me going on and on. I'm kind of excited about this. Enough about that.

I should probably go get started on my list, come to think of it. This is LONG today... Hope you had a great weekend!