A Day in the (Messy) Life

I think we are all finally on the mend. In addition to the colds Matthew and I developed a couple of weeks ago, last week Dean developed a fever for two days and then broke out in a rash. I think it was just roseola -- Henry had the same thing at this age -- but he was not his usual happy self for about a week. It really gave me empathy for parents of kids who are naturally more fussy-tempered than Dean.

Weekend before last (man, time is flying by) we drove to Uncle Wil's camp on the Bogue Chitto River. It rained the whole time, which we expected, but we still enjoyed the respite from the city. The weather was cooler, and I loved listening to the rain on the roof. Henry chased frogs and explored the river's edge and practiced darts with Matthew. As much as we enjoyed it, I always find that after a trip -- no matter how brief -- I love being back in my house and in the neighborhood. I love that I can go all weekend without getting in my car, walking instead to the library, the grocery (we finally have a little corner store three blocks away), the wine shop, the park. And our home really feels like a refuge, a place I can rest...most of the time.

Which leads me to the subject of today's post -- how to keep a house neat? I am not talking about clean, not because I don't think having a clean house is important, but because it is so far down on my list of priorities that it borders on endangering my family's hygiene (please don't use the microwave). No, I'm talking about how to keep the detritus of our lives from taking over -- the legos, the balls, the dirty clothes and ice cream dishes, the screwdrivers and pacifiers and junk mail and camera equipment and magazines and tiny magnetic refrigerator letters...we've pretty much given away and thrown away everything we reasonably can at this point in our lives. Lots of stuff has to be kept for now because Dean will be growing into it. And I've tried my best to organize -- almost everything does indeed have a place...it just doesn't usually end up there until I throw a fit at some point over the weekend and insist that we all clean up the house. I'd like to accomplish that on a daily basis, minus the fit.

We've realized that we haven't been expecting enough of Henry. That is probably for a couple of reasons, and they both go back to one thing -- our own laziness. It is so much easier, less time consuming, for us to clean up his messes ourselves than ask him to do it. Asking once is sometimes enough -- he's usually very prompt and polite about responding to a request. But then you have to herd him like a dazed sheep -- he just can't seem to stay on task. And often I don't get get to the point in my day where I can start cleaning until it's almost his bed time, and I usually decide that getting him in bed is more important than hovering over him for fifteen minutes while he puts away his toys and dirty clothes. But we attended an open house at his school this week, and it drove home to us how little responsibility we ask him to bear around the house and how capable he is of doing more. At school, he cannot start on another project until he has put away the first. He must always push in his chair when he leaves a table. He must wash his own cup and plate after snack. We have a few chores he's regularly expected to complete -- set the table, put away the silverware from the dishwasher, empty the bathroom wastebaskets -- but that's pretty much it. He's not learning to keep up after himself on a regular basis, and so we've decided to make that a new priority. It will undoubtedly take more time right now, but I don't want him growing up thinking it's okay to live in daily mess.

I also thought I would take this opportunity to offer, for my own ailing memory as much as for anyone else who could possibly be interested, a snapshot of Dean's schedule these days. He'll be eight months in a few days, and he's learning to do so much, even pulling himself to standing in crib this week. He'll be in kindergarten before we know it, and then it will be hard for me to remember this brief stage in all of our lives.

Henry still wakes up earlier than Dean -- Matthew's day usually starts when he wanders into our bedroom and says, "Daddy, it's seven o'clock!" I doze off for another half hour or so until Dean wakes up. I pop my caffeine pill and nurse him in bed -- by the time we're done, I have the mental stamina to face the day vertically. Matthew gets Henry ready for school while Dean plays on the floor and I get dressed for work and eat breakfast. I leave at about 8:30 and they head out the door to get Henry to school shortly thereafter.

Back home, Matthew feeds Dean a small breakfast at 9:15 and then he's down for a nap at 9:30. Most days, he naps until 11:00. Then he gets a bottle while I pump at work. Not entirely sure what they do at that point -- sometimes they run errands, sometimes they give Dinah a bath, sometimes I think they see who can burp the loudest...then Dean has lunch (usually applesauce or cereal or some other kind of pureed fruit, plus cheerios) and takes another nap at 12:30. On good days he sleeps until 2:00, when he gets another bottle (across the river, I put up the "DO NOT DISTURB" sign on my door), and then he and Matthew get back in the car to pick Henry up from school at 2:30. I get home a little before 3:30 and if we don't have a playdate or Henry's swim lesson or a doctor appointment (the calendar is getting awfully cluttered these days) I play with Dean and give him an afternoon snack and then he goes back down for a nap at 4:00. Then I help Henry with him homework and "clean" the house (see above) like a mad woman. Dean wakes up a little after 5 and I nurse him and then and he and Henry and I go for a walk or Dean and I sit on the porch while Henry jumps on the trampoline or we just sit on the floor and play with toys. Matthew starts supper at 6:00 and we usually eat at 7. Dean sits with us in his high chair and in addition to his pureed veggies or some other glop, he usually eats bits of our food (he loves whole baby peas, cheddar cheese, pretty much anything safe for his little baby mouth to eat -- I have yet to see him turn anything down). Then it's time for Dean's bath, then Henry's. I nurse Dean and get him to bed by 8:00, then direct Henry to clean up his things, read him a story, and then Matthew brushes his teeth and we say prayers (he has insisted on the Lord's prayer since we read about it in Little House, and we also spend some time naming the people we love and things we love about them or hope for them). And then he's off to bed at 8:30. Whew. Then I drink some wine or get in front of the TV or read a book -- apparently, anything but post to this blog.

Errands Envy

Stealing some time at the computer while Dean is bouncing up and down in his jumperoo and Henry is rediscovering his toys after spending the night at Bob's and Pampaw's.

It's been a quiet holiday weekend, mostly because Matthew and I have been sick with head colds. This afternoon we're going over to Chase and Tricia's for some barbeque (we seem to have established a tradition of getting together every government holiday) but that will be my fist outing since I took the boys to the pediatrician Friday afternoon. Boy was that fun -- they both had to get shots (I also got a flu shot) and Henry devolved into a caged animal. It was unlike anything I've ever seen, and I definitely wasn't prepared for it. Ultimately, reasoning and cajoling proved ineffective and the doc and I had to hold him down on the floor to get him immunized. It SU-U-UCKED. But surprisingly, he was perfectly understanding about the whole incident -- it's like his five year old brain could comprehend the fact that the government makes the rules that see he has to have these shots for school, but just couldn't manage to keep himself sitting in one place to endure it. He didn't seem to harbor any hard feelings at all toward me or the doctor about it. Matthew and I haven't decided whether or not to give him the H1N1 shot if it ever becomes available, but now at least I'll know to bring knee pads and other protective gear if it comes to that.

The doctor visit also confirmed that Henry has allergies. He's been coughing for more than 3 weeks now, but without any other symptoms. And he's long had an itchy nose. I just didn't want to medicate him for it unless it began interfering with his life, and recently the coughing has been so severe it;s keeping him up at night and we started to worry he would gag. Matthew has also had a revelation about the powers of allergy medications, having started taking Zyrtec and discovered his fatigue and malaise disappeared overnight. So Matthew, who I think would have been completely against medicating Henry for allergies just a few months ago, was overwhelmingly in favor of Henry taking Zyrtec as well. It's too soon to know if it is really helping, but we also put away most of his stuffed animals and washed all his bedclothes and vacuumed the nursery just for good measure.

In the world of Dean news, these days Dean has two things he loves to do while eating: pooping and talking with his mouth full. Lucky for him he's so cute.

Matthew and I have been talking lately about how cramped our lives feel right now, emotionally. Everything on paper is where it should be -- we have our two healthy boys, our careers are going well, finances are not the challenge they were for so much of our married lives, we love our house, our neighborhood, our city. Yet we still feel overwhelmed. We've concluded it's just the nature of parenting right now. There's certainly nothing amiss, and we very much appreciate all the good we have in our lives. But when 8:30 rolls around and both of the kids are finally in bed, we are just so exhausted, physically and mentally. And as good as the advice to "take some time for yourself each day" sounds, when you are the parents of two small children, there's no such thing as "free time." And time for yourself just doesn't feel as relaxing, as nourishing, when it's stolen. We steal it nonetheless -- a bath here and there, a half hour of reading for pleasure -- but the time doesn't have the same quality it did before we had kids. And we're okay with that -- as I reflected in an earlier post, we both know how brief this period of our lives (and our children's lives) will be. But when you envy your spouse for getting to go to the grocery store by himself -- well, you know you've left carefree days long behind.