It Begins

How is it that babies just know that you are going to seize the opportunity that they are sleeping?  She sleeps all day long and I go to pick up one dish and she starts crying.  Or I put her to bed for the night after she's been sleeping soundly for a good half hour, only to put my head on my pillow and pull the covers up and she's instantly awake.

I didn't make as much progress as I would have liked today, mainly because of the aforementioned reason.  The baby was fairly fussy all day mainly I think due to gas.  She would be fine if I was holding her and even if I laid her on her stomach.  But it's hard to get much done with a newborn in your arms and the doctors have pretty much scared me to death about leaving a tiny baby on their stomach for any length of time.

As for the kitchen, I was going to take before and after pictures for some motivation of having a visual of success, but I forgot until 10 minutes ago.  I did discover that emptying the dishwasher is pretty easy if it was last run about a week ago.  I'd already pretty much cleaned it out over the course of the week as we needed clean dishes.  I did get another full load ran and washed all the rest of the dirty dishes.  I didn't clean out the fridge, but as I was getting supper ready (which consisted of a hot dog, peas, and a juice box for the 3 year old and a $1 TV dinner for myself) I realized that the fridge is actually pretty clean.  There's just a couple of thing that could be thrown out when I take the trash out in the morning.  I do plan on sweeping tonight still and the trash will go out in the morning when it's light enough to see where I'm going outside.  Really the only thing that didn't get done is the junk on the table.  That will be saved for next week.

As for the 3 year old and her constant mess, my frustration had reached it's peak.  I've been telling her for days she needs to pick up the mess in her room and living room.  Which is basically picking up toys and putting it in bins.  Not that difficult and something that a 3 year old should have no problem with.  I have tried so many tricks to get her to do it.  Every night she gets to put a sticker on her calendar if she has been good for the day.  Last night I told her no sticker and story before bed since she hadn't picked anything up. She was so upset I thought for sure if I reminded her tonight of that, that she would pick it up.  Nope.  Just more whining.  I refused to let her watch tv and I refused to play with her until it was picked up.  She didn't care.  Then I told her she had to stay in her room till it was picked up.  She just kept coming out whining.  Her excuses were: "It's really too much.  My arm's aren't strong enough" or her preferred excuse, "But mom, I don't know how."  Finally as I was daydreaming about padlocking her in her room, I decided I needed something to deal with my rising anger.  I dug into my candy stash and ate a sugared covered cherry slice right in front of her (actually it was two).  I saw her starting to speak and I said no immediately knowing exactly what was going to come out of her mouth.  "But I finished my supper," was her comeback.  Finally in my last attempt to get her to clean, I said she could have one if she picked up her room and one more if she cleaned up her stuff in the living room.  "Ok," she said as she skipped off to her room.  Ten minutes later her room was clean and she got 1 slice.  Five minutes after that the living room free of her mess and she got the other slice.  Ten minutes after that the living room was once again covered in everything she drug out when I was attempting to clean the kitchen.

Oh well, two steps forward and one step back...at least we're making progress.