Am I the only one who thinks that the plastic wrap companies should go back to their old style of cutters? I hate the “no hassle”, “easy to use”, “we don’t want to get sued by someone cutting their finger” slide cutters they’ve switched to. I waste more plastic wrap because it gets bunched up under the cutter and then I have to let go of it to un-bunch it, and then the rest of it clings to itself. It takes 10 times longer to wrap anything.
Maybe I’m just not smart enough to use them.
Now that Carolyn’s room is almost done, I’ve been shopping for accessories. She needs a bookcase, and a place to put her toys, and right now this is the most likely candidate. (Yes, it’s bit more than I’d normally spend, but it’s perfect in every way. And it takes the place of both a toy box and a bookcase, which together would add up to close to that anyhow. Like how I justify these things?)
I’m also looking for something to play music on in her room – a small boombox that plays CDs, or even better mp3 CDs. Why is it, though, that every other appliance in the world – blenders, toasters, cameras, phones, etc. – come in pretty colors like pink, but CD players just come in basic black? I don’t want to put an ugly black stereo in my little girl’s pastel room. Even white would be better, but I can’t find anything that’s white, either. I did find a Disney Princess themed CD player, but it’s twice as much as a regular black one and it has very mixed reviews on amazon. (It’s a little worrisome when more than one reviewer mentions the CD player part of the unit not working after a few months.)
It’s not as though this is a life-or-death decision here. Sometimes I wonder why I’m bothering – especially since it’s not like Carolyn knows or cares what her CD player should look like. Ah, well. It’s the curse of being a detail-oriented person, I guess.
Well, they don’t quite fit like they used to, but my jeans fit again! Yippee! After having worn pretty much nothing but black stretchy maternity pants for the past 9 months, it’s kind of strange to look down and see blue. Strange, but wonderful.
We’ve been working on Carolyn’s room lately. The new closet is installed (we stripped out the shelf & rod that were in there before we started painting), the curtain rods are up, and we’ve just got a few things left to do before we can declare it done.
I’m feeling totally overwhelmed by the stuff that’s all over the house, though. A lot of it will be put away in Carrie’s closet, but there will still be stuff everywhere. We need a toy box – actually, it would be good to have one in her room and one in the living room. We need a bookcase in her room. And then we need a dumpster for all of the other stuff!
Carolyn’s baptism is two weeks from yesterday. I’d like to have her room completely put together, the entire downstairs picked up – including taking down the Christmas tree – and the craft room usable again. That sounds like a lot…
Well, like last year, my craft room is once again a complete disaster area, although this year it’s due to the baby stuff that’s all over the bed and floor waiting for the baby’s closet to be finished. Obviously, not making resolutions last year didn’t work so well. I’m not very good at this resolution thing. I do have a few goals for this year, though:
I’d really like to get my house in order. Actually, this is going to be very important, because Carolyn is going to be into everything before we’re ready! This probably means getting rid of a lot of stuff, because we just have too much stuff to put in the places we can put stuff in.
I’d like to lose some weight. But I don’t want to diet, I just want to eat healthier. I’m actually back to pre-pregnancy weight, which is a good start. I’m not planning on thinking about how far I have to go, though, I’m just looking for a general downward trend.
I need to get back into knitting and music. I haven’t done much of either since Carolyn was born, and I miss them. Neither seems to be a high priority when I can barely get enough sleep, eat, or clean my kitchen on a regular basis though.
This year is going to be about redefining myself. I’m now officially a stay-at-home mom, and I need to learn what that means. And how to answer people when they ask what I do. But my biggest goal this year is to enjoy every minute of it!
I just finally got Carolyn’s two month pictures off the camera and sized them so I could publish her two month birthday post.
If you think that’s bad, I’m also just getting around to finding a place to have a party after her baptism. Which is in 19 days. This could be fun…
The last tray of the 18 dozen cookies I baked is in the oven right now. No, that’s not a typo, I just baked 18 dozen cookies. All one variety. And most of them are going on a tray as the main dessert for our big family party tomorrow night.
Now if only all the presents were wrapped, my house was clean, and the laundry was done, I’d feel good about tomorrow being Christmas Eve. As it is, I still have to get up way too early tomorrow to frost the cookies.
Do you think Carrie would mind if her presents weren’t wrapped this year? Maybe Santa will do it when he stops by tomorrow night? Actually, I’ll make him a deal. I’ll wrap the presents if he runs the vacuum for me…
We really have a very good baby. Carolyn slept in the car for almost the entire drive – we even had a good three-hour stretch where we didn’t need to stop at all. McDonald’s is not the most comfortable place to nurse, and their changing areas are hit-or-miss, but it wasn’t too bad. I even managed to knit half a baby sock in the car before it got too dark out!
The only thing I think we forgot was the baby monitor, which isn’t the end of the world, just a minor inconvenience. I always like to figure out what I’ve forgotten – since I always forget one thing – so that I know that everything else made it. (My grandmother always leaves something on purpose in hotel rooms, so that she knows what she left and can make sure it’s not a really important thing – like she’ll leave a pair of old slippers so that she doesn’t forget her jewelry. Yes, I have a weird family.)
Now if we can just get back on a somewhat “normal” sleep schedule, we’ll be all set. That being said, she did sleep from 1 to 7 and is sleeping still, so it’s not like I didn’t get any sleep last night, it just got shifted a bit from our usual 11 to 5 schedule.
I got up at 5:30 this morning. By 7:30, I had showered, dressed, had coffee, wrapped gifts, baked cookies, and put in a load of laundry. I left the house at 8:30 (realizing as I walked out the door that I hadn’t had breakfast yet, and tossing some cereal in a ziploc bag) to start running errands.
This is the first time today that I’ve sat down when I haven’t been nursing Carolyn. (That is, except for Sit & Knit, where I only managed to spend about 45 minutes.)
I’m as done with Christmas preparations as I’m going to be. The tree isn’t decorated, the house is still pretty messy, and there are a few gifts left to wrap when we get back from NYC. Oh, and there are no stockings hung – I couldn’t even find a “Baby’s First Christmas” stocking for Carolyn. (I’m a bad mommy; I should have bought one a few months ago…) Tomorrow morning I have baby laundry to do, and packing*, and if there’s time I should probably finish wrapping those gifts and run the dishwasher.
Maybe I’d better go to bed, because it sounds like I’m going to have to get up at 5:30 again!
*I’ve never had to pack for a baby for a trip. I’m terrified I’m going to forget something really important, like diapers. Or something important that can’t easily be purchased there, like her Christmas outfit…