Every thing in its right place.

A confession: I am a neat freak*. My wife, Nancy, is not. When she was the house parent and I worked full time, coming home from work at 9:30PM to our bombed out disaster area of an apartment was almost enough to send me into a catatonic depression. It was a serious (but not the only) strain on our relationship, but we got past those hard years and don't look back. When I became a full time stay at home Dad almost three years ago, I made some serious changes, believe me! I made vast, dizzying sweeps of our condo and purged it of everything that was broken, not used, or clothing we didn't wear. For some reason, I find myself purging unworn clothing twice yearly, even though I don't purchase more than 3 or 4 items a year. (NOTE: this does not including shoes and boots. Those are necessities for a person with an active lifestyle) Once that first mega-purge was done, I had a written schedule of which rooms got cleaned on which days, and keeping the place in  good order was easy-cheesy and freed me up butt loads of time to run, bike, explore new places, and still be home in time to get Kole off the school bus. After Elliette was born 15 months ago, obviously I had a bit of a harder time keeping up with it all. Having to take a baby into every room with you while you work isn't ideal, or sometimes not even practical. My laundry room is in desperate need of a nice hard purging, but it's very cold and there is no place to let her play while I work my magic. On top of having to lug the baby around with me, I broke a bone in my foot in September, temporarily disabling me and leaving me (for all intents and purposes) couch bound and allowing WEEKS of house work to fall to the wayside. The place is a MESS. It has been VERY stressful. (I have an appt with my doctor to talk about anxiety meds, but that's a topic for another day)
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 Having an emptier house works for me in two ways:
1: It's very calming to live in a minimalist house. There is just something about not being overwhelmed with clutter and knick-knacky crap that puts the soul at ease. When I see a big mess, I need to see it go away. It's like a sneeze. I CAN ignore it alone and go on with my day, but it is very unpleasant, and as it goes on longer it gets uncomfortable, then painful. If I can nip all that in the bud by cleaning, or just NOT making a mess, so be it. Case closed.

2: It's less cleaning. Which means less work. I HATE work. I want to play all day. But this isn't very realistic. So, when my house is "very" clean, I can get away with about an hour or two of straightening up everyday just to maintain.

Over the past week, I've made significant headway into getting the place back to ship-shape, and getting my head to shut up and not scream every time I walk into a room. I even had a sit down meeting with Koletrane and Nancy and discussed things we can all do to make life a little neater. Kole is doing well with the general rule of simply "NOT making a mess!!!" Well, as long as I'm there to remind him. Nancy, not so much. She thinks that since shes going to come home from work and put on her sweatpants right away, that it is perfectly OK to leave them on the couch all day. But she is making an effort to change the trash when it needs it, and not just pile trash up next to the sink. I'll take what I can get for now. Small victories, no matter how small, are still victories.

*I am not a germophobe, down on all fours scrubbing out corners at 3AM like an ODC poster child. I don't very often use chemical cleaners, often opting for warm water with vinegar. I simply abhor mess, and clutter.

Christmas in Connecticut

Considering the unholy times I hear that other parents get up on xmas morning, I'll consider myself blessed to have slept until 7:45am. Nancy's family arrived promptly at 8:00am to see the kids open their gifts, and to share a holiday breakfast. Kept it pretty low key throughout the day, went to my grandparents house for a wonderful brunch prepared by my womderful Grandma Helen, then home for a little "spiked" hot chocolate and some much needed downtime. These are the highlights:

 

 

 

 

Kole has been practicing his guitar a lot more as of late, he has even taken to writing out simple melodies and playing them to me. I think I'll use this as much as he will!

Found the pickle!

All the girls...

Elliette showing her new teeth to Papa...

...then checking out his old ones!

Grandma Helen and I.

 

 

 

My crazy uncle Doug found this widow maker hanging off the roof.

Currently taking up prime real estate in my living room...

A very nice, thoughtful gift from our friend and neighbor, Lisa.

Experimenting with new(ish) camera

I bought my first digital camera a few months ago, an Olympus Stylus "Tough 8000". Nancy and I are going to be going on our honeymoon in April (almost in time for our 3rd anniversary, and just after our 9 year "being together" anniversary) and thought a real camera might be a wise investment. I'd read a ton of reviews for pocket-sized point and shoot units, and this one seemed to fill every requirement we had and then some. Waterproof? Yup, down to 33ft. Shockproof? Ayuh, drop it from 6ft onto concrete and it'll still work. And 12 mega pixels isn't anything to shake a stick at, especially since it only costs about $320. But aside from dropping it a few times, I haven't really put it to the test yet. So today while giving Elliette her bath I decided to give it a whirl in the water. Unfortunatly, I didn't have the foresight to take the bar of soap out of the tub before filling it with water...so it was too murky to get a clear shot while submerged. Otherwise, it did pretty well in the water. I mean, it still works, and I consider that a win. I'm not really up to writing a full on review, so I'll just let the pictures do the talking. Most of these were edited, but nothing crazy, just to get the light right and crop out any baby pee-pee parts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Young Punks

Well, flu season is officially upon us. Elliette came down with a light fever yesterday, and this morning when I was busy trying to get Koletrane's bag packed for school, she barfed all over herself and her playpen. Man, if I had stuff in my belly that smelled that bad I would ralph too. It looked like curdled milk, and smelled about 100X worse. We usually drive Kole out to the bus stop in the winter since our driveway is VERY long and icy (its about 1/8 mile from our door to the bus stop), but this morning I had to send him out alone. There are other kids who wait out there, so I wasn't worried about leaving him alone on the street. Anyway, once I cleaned Elliette up and got some Motrin in her, we shared some saltine crackers and her mood improved a great deal. She still hasn't had much of an appetite to speak of, but she's been getting plenty of fluids and isn't acting very sick.

The boy has been crawling up my butt to start putting studs in his leather jacket ever since he got it. For some reason, people (including me, I'm ashamed to admit) told him that it may not be appropriate to go ahead with doing it since he wears it to school, and the administration might find it "inappropriate".  But the more I thought about it, it just seemed incredibly hypocritical to not let him modify his clothes and dress the way he wants to. Especially since I have a denim jacket covered in patches and studs. It just seemed to me like we were sending a message of  "don't stand out, keep your head down and don't do anything that would draw attention to yourself". That is NOT the way I want to raise my children. Haters be damned, he's a good kid, and he should be able to do and wear whatever he feels is "cool" as long as it's not endangering anyone else. THATS the message I feel is most important for kids to grow up with.