1. It’s totally normal that the car you used to get detailed on the reg looks like the place Goldfish crackers go to die. Just yesterday we found the remains of a hot dog beneath our seats.

2. We’re truly impressed you prepare healthful, organic meals everyday from scratch, but don’t beat yourself up if when you lay in bed reviewing what your child actually ate, you discover his calories came from pickles and Nerds. It happens.

3. We agree that the hands-down best high (no matter what you did in college) is the one you get from your baby laying heavy in a heap on your chest. Thank you, oxytocin. And no judgement here if you forgo a night out to cash in on the opportunity to cuddle up.

4. Don’t worry if you consider purchasing a taxi cab because you heard the plastic partitions can be made in soundproof material. We already looked into that.

5. There is nothing wrong with you at all if while cleaning the nursery in a few months, you tear up throwing away the nasal aspirators because your big girl can blow her nose all by herself. These milestones come out of nowhere.

6. Don’t you dare think less of yourself if you do the sniff test to your clothes before you consider washing them. A little spit up on the shoulder? If you can scratch it off, it’s perfect for running errands. We applaud you for “Going Green”!

7. We get it if when you decide to return to the gym, you do it under the guise of getting your body back but know deep down it’s for the childcare room. We’ve seen them sanitize the baby swing. No harm. No foul.

8. We applaud your homemade cleaning products. Vinegar is magical! We didn’t notice at all that you turned to Clorox and Lysol when your little one got his first stomach virus. We thought “projectile” was hyperbole, too.

9. Don’t question your strength just because you can’t take the lollipop your precious little one has been licking for 45 minutes. There is nothing stronger than a baby holding candy. Nothing.

10. No judgement here if you consider asking your husband to celebrate your birthday or his birthday or next Tuesday with a vasectomy.

11. Please don’t underestimate your parenting prowess when your little one embraces Time Out as an opportunity to play quietly and use his imagination instead of reflecting on his bad behavior. Enjoy the minute of silence.

12. We still think you’re fashion forward after you spent the entire day with Cheerios tucked into the folds of your scarf and a chocolate kiss mark on your cheek.

13. We admire any answer you can muster (as long as it doesn’t include details about grooming shapes and vajazzling) when your cherub asks about pubic hair while you’re both squeezed into a public restroom stall.

14. It’s not lying to tell your babe that Caillou went on vacation with his Mommy and Daddy and won’t be back for a long time. We call it self preservation.

15. You’re still wearing a nursing bra but haven’t breastfed in months? There’s no statute of limitations on those things. We can’t blame you for avoiding a bra fitting. One change at a time.

We could go on and on because motherhood is the great equalizer, and we’re all just doing the best we can. Instead of passing judgement, we’re looking for strength in numbers. However, if you happen to come in contact with Judgey McJudginstuff herself, we fully support you thanking her for her insight while patting her shoulder with a hand that may or may not have poop under the fingernails.

Welcome to the club.

Today a Facebook friend of mine shared a blog post from The Orange Rhino Challenge. I’m not going to go into major details on the post I read, but this mom started her very popular blog by challenging herself to NOT YELL at her kids for 365 DAYS! To me that sounds like a totally impossible goal, but yelling has been turning into a problem for me lately, so I started reading some of her other posts on the same topic. Everything I read was great, but I came across a message from one of her readers that really stood out to me:

“Lately, I don’t feel like yelling is my obstacle, per say. Tone of voice, attitude and irritability on the other hand, BIG problems. What I realized last night, after watching a PBS documentary about children in India coming together as a community to get water for their families, was that I need to see my children.

Really SEE them.

Pay attention to their individual souls. Because when I focus on SEEing them, feeling them, my focus is not on my own childish self. My husband has gently suggested that often my interaction with the boys reminds him of a teenage sister who is babysitting her younger siblings. That was hard to hear, but so true. So much of my reaction to them has been based on my own desire to be left alone, to not be bothered, to not be annoyed, to have beautifully behaved children so my life is easier.  In other words, not because I want them to grow as individuals and get along well in life, but just so I cannot be bothered. So when they are bouncing and not listening at bath time, I can step back and realize they aren’t intentionally trying to piss me off, they are just seeking attention from me because I wasn’t available earlier in the day. I can SEE them saying, hey mom, look at me, BE with me, SEE me, I’m trying to be funny, that’s who I am, I’m trying to interact with you.

And yes, realizing that I need to SEE them brings me to the next realization, which is, I also need to SEE me. Maybe I need some time alone, some peace and quiet. But that doesn’t mean it needs to be ALL day. I can see me and take care of me and then see those two boys who are growing and changing before my eyes.”

I had tears in my eyes when I was finished reading this message. I could have written it myself, word for word, except the part about her husband – Rickie refrains from pointing out things like that for (I think) the sake of MY feelings. But it was me, to the letter. My problem is not yelling. I do yell at Zane, but the problem starts with my attitude, my short fuse, the ease with which I become angry at the smallest things. And the tone of voice that I tend to adopt even when I’m not angry.

Over the few years I’ve been with Rickie, I have learned a lot about arguing. Yelling, losing my patience, or using a mean tone of voice never worked. They all made things worse. I wouldn’t win the argument, and I would push Rickie into saying something he didn’t mean or yelling at me and then I would end up hurt or even crying. So now when the two of us disagree, I am usually very good at defusing the situation… I breathe, I listen to my own tone, I don’t yell, and I try to look at him and make sure we are both hearing each other. We don’t disagree very often, but when we do it’s usually nothing more than a conversation because we are calm with each other.

So why am I so different with Zane? I do believe there are situations where yelling is necessary. If he’s going to run into the street, jump into deep water, or sit on Sam’s head, a shout is needed to put a stop to the immediate danger. But I find myself yelling more and more about things that don’t necessarily need to be IMMEDIATELY HALTED. And this is the part that (for me anyway) is much worse: if I’m not yelling, often I sound impatient, peevish, angry, maybe even condescending. I am ashamed to admit that I have made Zane cry by telling him to do or not to do something. I wasn’t yelling, so how cruel must I sound to actually provoke tears? I’m not sure I want to know. I’m not glad when I make him cry, but it’s good he will cry when I hurt his feelings… it brings me down off my little pedestal and reminds me that he HAS feelings and the same things that hurt me, hurt him too.

I only have to look as far back as… TODAY to realize that this is an issue. Today I was in WalMart with Zane and Sam, and my grandma was waiting for us in McDonald’s while we checked out and then went to the bathroom. While I was changing into the shirt I’d just bought, Zane was trying to open the door and I had to smack his hand to get him to stop opening it (he did it three times). This is not an issue. He was told not to open the door and he wasn’t listening, and I also managed not to be angry with him. But then, when I said we were ready to go, he started fiddling with the latch and trying to open the door and because I didn’t want to keep my grandma waiting, I pushed his hand away and said impatiently “NO. We’re trying to hurry”. He looked at me and started crying, and my heart is breaking all over again just thinking about it: He was doing NOTHING wrong, probably trying to HELP Mommy by opening the door, and he got in trouble for it because Mommy couldn’t stand to keep someone waiting for 30 more seconds.

When I started reading the above quoted post, I realized that I’m guilty of the same thing: When I don’t take the time to see Zane, it’s easy for me to become impatient because the way a two-year-old works, makes my life inconvenient. That’s a callous way of looking at it, and that’s not my actual thought process… but when I look from the outside at the way I sometimes talk to this amazing little boy, I realize that’s what it amounts to. When he was fumbling at the bathroom door today, he wasn’t trying to slow me down – he was probably trying to help Mommy. When he wipes all the crumbs onto the floor, he’s not trying to make a mess – he’s trying to help out by cleaning up a mess. He wants to flush the toilet himself and put his potty back together because he’s trying to be grown-up, not because he wants to delay us in the bathroom.

The world is a big, complicated, new and scary place for him, and he’s trying to grow up and learn things – and he’s usually trying to model MY behavior. How can that make me angry and impatient?

So, my challenge to myself is more than just no more yelling. My challenge to myself is to SEE my boy. When he does something, my challenge will be to ask myself WHY he did it before I react, and not to punish him if he isn’t doing anything wrong – because if he hasn’t done anything wrong, PUNISHMENT is all it is. He isn’t trying to waste my time, get in my way, or make a mess. He’s trying to do things on his own, help me out, and make his world a better place! My hope is that as I work on this challenge, I will keep improving day by day and that by taking the time to see my boy, I will know him better and maybe… maybe even earn a tiny bit of the trust and faith he has in me.

So why do I hate laundry? Probably the first and worst reason is that it’s never done! Even if I have EVERYTHING in the house washed, dried, folded/hung, and put away, the next morning there will be Laundry needing to be done. Even if it’s just a couple pairs of underwear and socks, there’s always SOMETHING there. This probably wouldn’t bother me as much if I kept up with it and could keep an empty hamper for us to put dirty stuff into. But currently, I do NOT keep up with Laundry, so there is never a place to put dirty stuff, and it goes on the floor! I realize as I type this that if I can overcome this and keep my floors (relatively) clear, then Laundry will have a much more difficult time intimidating me.

I hate when things have to be washed a certain way. Things you can’t put in the dryer are possibly the biggest peeve… I don’t have a clothesline, and I don’t plan to ever have one as it will dominate our average-sized backyard. So when I wash a load of things I can’t put in the dryer, they are hung all over the house. In the bathroom, over chairs, over doors, you name it. It’s like an extra step since I have to gather all that stuff up later and put it away. I have been known to get rid of clothes simply because I can’t put them in the dryer, or because I refused to hang them, put them through the dryer, and now no longer fit.

I can’t stand doing socks. This has got to be the stupidest part of Laundry… I think that socks should be manufactured to a universal standard so that they can be simply thrown in a drawer without matching. You would always know that the only factor you have to take into account is color. All your red socks would be the same, all your black socks would be the same. You just pull out two of the same color and go. No more sorting, no more matching, no more throwing out single socks because you haven’t seen their mate in a year. Maybe this could be achieved if I threw out every sock in the house and replaced all of them with 10-12 pairs that are identical for each person. Would it be worth it? Maybe.

Sorting colors is dumb too. I don’t sort colors – if I’ve just bought a new pair of jeans, I will wash them alone ONCE to let them run. Otherwise, everything goes in together. Brights, darks, pastels, I don’t even look. I just throw it all in. If something gets stained from something else, then I get rid of it – obviously I don’t want it if it’s going to make Laundry more difficult. I wash in warm and use the same soap for everything. If the clothes can’t take it, then they don’t belong in my home. The one exception is whites – I OCCASIONALLY wash the whites separately and throw in a little bleach to keep them bright. I won’t even go into dry-cleaning… if it gets wrecked using a Dryel bag, it gets thrown out too. There’s actually a lot of things other people do with their laundry that I refuse to do… sorting colors is just one of them!

Another one is bleaching socks. My husband told me about this – he pointed out that since he moved in with me, his socks are not crisp, beautiful white anymore. Apparently, his mom used to wash the socks separately and bleach them to get them nice and white. I told him in no uncertain terms that I will NOT be doing this. First of all, his white socks don’t make a full load even if EVERY LAST ONE is dirty, and partial loads are another Laundry peeve I have. They’re wasteful. Maybe not wasteful of water, but definitely wasteful of electricity. Secondly, if you have to bleach something after EVERY TIME you wear it, maybe it’s time to not buy it in white! I buy only black, patterned or colored socks, for this exact reason. Eventually, his socks will all be black or colored as well. White socks are ugly anyway.

Sorting TOWELS and washing them with any kind of care is one of the SILLIEST things I’ve ever heard of. I’ve heard several people say that they don’t like faded or stained towels. This is ridiculous. We go through towels like water, and I will not develop a system just for washing my towels without fading or staining them. I wash towels (along with underwear and socks) in HOT water. This is so that any germs or mildew that might be on them will be dead and gone. Yes, washing in hot all the time fades them. To me, a faded towel is a CLEAN towel. I have dark-colored ones that I put out for people I like, they don’t show stains and don’t look that bad when they fade. For the most part, I don’t care. Did the towel dry your hands properly? Then I don’t care what the color looks like.

Folding underwear is another thing I refuse to do. You have a drawer or bin for your underwear. When you wear it, it goes inside all your other clothes. NO ONE CAN SEE IT. So why would you care if it’s faded, discolored, or WRINKLED as long as it fits right and is comfortable? Cotton underwear never gets wrinkled anyway, and if you want to wear underwear that isn’t cotton, that’s between you and your sweaty genitals. I sort out our clean cotton underwear and I shove it haphazardly into the drawer. As long as we both HAVE clean underwear we’re happy. My one exception is bras – I am willing to fold something I spend 50 bucks apiece on. If I spent that kind of money on underwear, I might be willing to fold it… then again, if I HAD that kind of money for underwear, I could just PAY someone to fold it – and all my other Laundry. Wouldn’t that be heavenly…

All of this being said, I guess Laundry isn’t too bad as long as you don’t LET it be. I set my boundaries. Towels, underwear and socks get washed in HOT water. I don’t bleach socks. I don’t sort colors. I don’t fold underwear. I don’t dry-clean. If something can’t handle my simplified Laundry routine, then I don’t want it in my home! Laundry is my arch-nemesis, and I must deal with it in the way that works best for ME (it’s not like anyone else is going to do it).

All this being said, Laundry and I have reached a precarious treaty this week. I have agreed to (a) wash, dry, fold/hang, and PUT AWAY one (1) load of Laundry each morning and (b) pick up anything from the floor that’s clean enough to be worn again and put it away, each morning. In return, Laundry has agreed to (a) not pile up and (b) not expect things from me that are unrealistic, like catering to prissy laundry rules. I guess this will be part of my Morning Routine A-LA-the FlyLady.

I think that if I hold up my end of the treaty, it could work out for the best – for me, my honey, my family and my own sanity. I have upheld my side for one day so far. Whether I CAN and WILL continue… remains to be seen.

The book brought to me by my stepmom… that seems as if it was written about me! Click the picture to go to Amazon if you want a copy.

On Sunday, May 29, 2011 my stepmom brought over a book that has the potential to start some huge changes in my life. The book is called “Sink Reflections” and is a self-help book (yes, I know, SIGH) that promises to get both your home AND your life in order. We have yet to see if it actually will start the engine of change, since it will depend largely on my ability to start with “BabySteps” as the author says, and not go on a huge cleaning spree once I’m started. I tend to “marathon clean” or “crisis clean”, and then I am so sick of cleaning that I don’t do it for weeks until my house is desperate again. I am trying to just follow the steps in the first few chapters to de-clutter the house… and I wanted to share my experience on my first day as a “FLYbaby” (this may be the last time I ever use that term).

I read the first few chapters of the book on Sunday night before going to bed. I like where the book starts… she calls herself the FLYlady because she used to teach flyfishing classes, but in the book FLY stands for “Finally Loving Yourself”. Her first few chapters have a lot to say about taking care of yourself and CARING ABOUT yourself. This hits home pretty hard for me because since we brought Zane home, I’ve been neglecting myself. It took a bright pink book with a kitchen sink on the cover to make me realize it. I have been completely overwhelmed with what I keep saying is my “new job”… caring for an infant, keeping the house clean all the time, and doing the lion’s share of the cooking. I have been feeling like I need to get EVERYTHING done… only I’m too tired to do everything at once, so I do nothing instead.

The FLYlady’s second “assignment” involves starting to take care of yourself first. (I’ll get to the first assignment in a minute). She believes that if you put the messy house and tasks like laundry and cooking first, you are completing these tasks on an “empty tank” and that’s why you will burn out! She also points out that by doing this you don’t just make yourself suffer. You also take yourself away from your family because there’s always something hanging over your head that “needs to be done”. This makes a lot of sense to me because I’ve seen Rickie come home a few nights and pick up laundry or cook when he should be coming home to play with his son. But because I’ve taken myself away, he feels like he has to help with my tasks. (Not saying he shouldn’t ever help, but there are basic things that I should just be able to handle!)

So in her book one of the first “assignments” is to get dressed every morning before doing anything else. This isn’t a joke! For the last month I’ve been getting up in the morning, throwing on sweatpants off the floor, and doing nothing with my hair unless I happen to need a shower that morning. It was like she looked into my life and based this chapter on me. So my first new HABIT has to be to get dressed every morning. She says get dressed to makeup and even shoes… well I don’t normally wear makeup and I hate wearing shoes… so for now, I will get up each and every morning and dress in clothes that I can leave the house in and make sure my hair looks presentable.

The FIRST chapter in the book is interesting. She starts in the kitchen (which makes sense because the kitchen can be the most awful place in the house if you let it!) and she says to take everything out of your sink and shine the sink. Well she is right about one thing… a clean empty sink DOES make your whole kitchen look better. But I thought about this and I wanted to start just a little bit bigger. My kitchen is already fairly organized, so I thought rather than just cleaning the sink, my goal in the kitchen should be to keep all the dishes caught up and the counters wiped. FLYlady says to adapt any of her routines to yourself… well MY kitchen problem has always been the counter, so the counter will now be my version of her kitchen sink!

So what did I do yesterday that was sooo great it made me want to write about it? Well, first of all I got up in the morning and put on capris and a tank top instead of one of Rickie’s huge T-shirts and my sweats. I didn’t even do my hair yesterday but I already felt better just by wearing nice cool clothes that fit properly and that I wouldn’t be ashamed to answer the door in! Score one for the FLYlady.

I decided that the first task to make its way into my Morning Routine would be the kitchen. When my kitchen counter is bare and clean, my whole home looks better automatically AND I feel much less overwhelmed with cleaning to be done. So after dressing, I emptied the clean dishwasher, loaded it with the few dishes sitting in the sink, and wiped the counter and sink. Let me mention that I DO like to have a clean sink… but instead of the FLYlady version where you fill it with cleaner and scrub it (a little bit of overkill IMHO) I am happy if my sink has no goo on it, no dishes unless they are clean ones drip-drying, and the dishcloth rinsed and hung on the tap. So the first item in my morning routine is to have my kitchen as described above. I also discovered that if it’s kept up, this only takes about 15 minutes to do… which brings me to another ingenious concept from the FLYlady.

FLYlady suggests in her book that you spend no more than 15 minutes doing one thing (of course this doesn’t apply to things for enjoyment, this is just a way of keeping your tasks from driving you insane). In other words, set a timer and work on one room. When the timer goes off, move to another room and work in there for 15 minutes. I did this during my kitchen cleaning in the morning and found that in 15 minutes I not only got the kitchen looking satisfactory, but also put away some CLUTTER on the counter leaving even more space! So I decided that this was what I would do the rest of the day; cleaning in 15 minute bursts.

I started out in the bedroom where I had a mountain of laundry to put away. I figured if I worked quickly I could do it all in 15 minutes. But I had to do something else first… a 27 Fling Boogie (and yes the name is stupid… but the actual routine is GREAT). A 27 Fling Boogie (I’m going to just call it a 27 Fling from now on) is when you take a bag or box, go through your house, and collect 27 items for the trash or charity. FLYlady tells you to get rid of ANYTHING that does not either (a) get used or (b) bring a smile to your face. I had no issues with this since I’ve believed this for a long time anyway! BUT I have trouble doing it in the bedroom… this is why I hate putting away laundry, because my closets and drawers are so full that it becomes a pain to actually have everything put away. So I needed to do a 27 Fling before putting away all the clothes we actually USE. I got a bag and went to work.

My FOUR 27 Flings from yesterday. A bunch of CLUTTER on its way to the car and OUT OF MY HOME!

This is where the day started to get interesting! I stood in the closet and just ripped things off hangers and flung them on a pile in the hallway. When I counted the items into the bag, I had a few more than 27 items. So rather than stuff in the extra items and call it a day… I challenged myself. I closed up the first bag with exactly 27 items in it, set it at the back door, and got another bag to see if I could get rid of another 27 items starting with those few extras I had pulled. The same thing happened again!!! On my very last bag, I pulled a few items from other rooms to complete it, so at that point I knew I was done in the bedroom and needed to do what I came in there to do. BUT I filled 4 bags. That means that in just a half hour, my house was freed of 108 items that we don’t need. AND almost all of them came from one closet and one dresser! How’s that for lightening the load.

I went ahead and set my timer and started in on the laundry. In 15 minutes I had everything put away… and it was SO EASY to do because I had freed up so much space in the closet and dresser! I have more stuff to wash and put away today but I believe I will have HANGERS LEFT OVER. This is not something that I have ever had before, so you can imagine how big it is for me. I decided to have a new rule in our closet… if we run out of hangers, WE DO NOT BUY MORE HANGERS! If we don’t have extra hangers then we should be able to get rid of some clothes. This will keep the CLUTTER down in the closet and dresser which by turn is going to keep our bedroom clean. Very important because right now our bedroom has our bed, my dresser, Zane’s cradle, a tall cupboard with office supplies, AND both our desks and computers. Big victory in the master bedroom yesterday!

My next 15 minute timer was to work on wedding invitations, and the one after that was to finally sit down and decide on our cake and write up some notes for the cake maker on what I want. YES, these are some of the overwhelming stuff for me right now. I am excited about our wedding and the day will be wonderful, but there are parts of the planning that I just don’t want to be bothered with. I worked on invitations/registry for three 15 minute stretches at various times yesterday and got more done on them than I have to date.

So what did I accomplish from the book?

1. The kitchen is clean
2. 108 items stripped from our bedroom closet and dresser and BANISHED
3. Clean laundry put away
4. Wedding cake selected
5. 45 minutes in total spent on wedding invitations

What else did these small things ALLOW me to accomplish?

Yup, I definitely slipped a photo of my son into a post that barely even mentions him. It can’t be helped, really.

1. I didn’t hate putting away laundry because I had SPACE to put it away.
2. I don’t feel guilty every time I walk through the living area, because the kitchen looks CLEAN.
3. I didn’t skip lunch because I had clean dishes to eat it from.
4. Supper and its cleanup was easy because I had clean dishes and pots and room to put them in the dishwasher as I finished with them.
5. Because I wasn’t cleaning while making supper, I had the time to make muffins while the food cooked. So now I have snack food for Rickie’s lunches.
6. I was able to give Zane a bath in the kitchen (see super cute photo on right) without having to wipe the counter first or shuffle dirty dishes around.

So what I am saying here is that by following only the first four SMALL things FLYlady says to do (get dressed in the morning, clean the sink/counter, 27 Fling, and 15 minute decluttering) I was also able to accomplish many more things in the extra time and space I had created! Not to mention, I was able to have Rickie’s dinner almost ready when he came home and actually got to spend some time with him instead of trying to get his supper in a messy kitchen. Already I am more available to my family as FLYlady said I would be. This day was definitely enough to convince me to keep going with my FLYing lessons!

FLYlady: 1. Messy house: 0.