one..twO...thrEE...foUR...fIVE...S I X!!!

LITTLE MAN TOOK HIS FIRST STEPS YESTERDAY! Oh my goodness! It was unbelievable! He let go of the fridge and just took six big boy steps into the dining room all by himself! It was amazing! He is AMAZING! I cannot believe this! Yahoo! Little Man is REALLY starting to walk! Hooray!

As you might imagine, that was the highlight of the day. We're all still under the weather. I am feeling much better, but still not "all there." T went into work last night. He described his head as feeling "full of cotton..." MW got a tad dehydrated yesterday, so we had to push fluids. Last night she ate about eight (I'm not exaggerating here!) banana popsicles. A friend brought over a quart of the BEST chicken noodle soup I've ever put in my mouth. We all devoured it! T3, included! We've been watching lots of movies and just laying low. I'm about to go crazy. My mind is running a hundred miles an hour with things I'd like to be getting done...one of which I will tackle today - little man's first birthday invitation. I dreamed up the concept last night...we'll see if I can execute it today...

Not much else going on around here. MW's room is a TOTAL disaster! Unbelievable! I put her down for a nap a few days ago and told her she could read and that was it. She got up off her bed, came downstairs like three minutes into naptime to see if "rest time was over." T gave her permission to play in her room. She was a little miffed about the whole nap thing...well...she dumped out EVERY basket of toys she owns! There's Barbie and littlest pet shop and dress up and doctor and puzzles and baby clothes and games and did I mention dress up? ALL OVER her bedroom floor. T committed to overseeing the correct clean up (as in, no you cannot shove it all under your bed) of her room. Guess what? I'm waiting for him to. This has happened several times and I ALWAYS cave and clean it up. (I do make MW help...but in the interest of time, I normally do the bulk of this, along with threatening to throw things away if she doesn't stop playing and start helping - and I do follow through on this when she continues playing) This will be the first time T's tackled a mess of that magnitude. That mess may be there a while. I'm on a mission. I think once my family has to help clean up that kind of mess (or the coffee grounds that are all over the freezer...that I've cleaned up twice already)_...they might think twice about a few things. As things currently stand, I'm a self-proclaimed martyr, according to my husband, which isn't a good thing to be. I "die to my every need in order to clean up after my family." Well, here's the thing. I am the mom. My job is cooking and cleaning and all that jazz, but I am not everyone's personal slave. My "job" does NOT include picking up your dirty socks! Or cleaning your bedroom! You took it out of the basket; you put it back in the basket. You got it out, you put it away. Maybe I think way too highly of my time, and myself but I see these things as being disrespectful of my time and my energy and I am not "down" with that. If you put your dirty clothes in the basket inside out, guess what? They're going in your drawer, washed, dried, and folded, inside out. I am not going to spend five years of my life turning your clothes right side out. Am I mean? I'd go crazy. I take my clothes off right side out. MW has learned how to do this for the most part. T has even learned how to do this. After six years of marriage I rarely come across his stuff inside out. They are LEARNING! And how wonderful it is for me! So...do you think I'm just awful? Or can you relate a little?

Wow...I didn't mean to go there. Guess it's a little heavy on my heart right now. But - know that I'm not walking around with a scowl on my face. I do LOVE my little family. And I can almost laugh about the stagnant piles on MW's floor...almost. It will really be funny AFTER T oversees the clean up...

And one more thing - I feel a little shallow posting the above. For one thing - so many people, myself included, have so many bigger things going on in their lives than stuff on the floor and keeping a clean house. Perhaps I need to reprioritize...and also, how embarassing that we have SO MUCH stuff! The bulk of the world doesn't live like this. Our blessings are becoming burdens because we have so much. It's a bit sobering...

One last thought - I recently read this quote from Ladies Home Journal that they cited as having been written sometime in 1985. "Can we really do all the things our mothers did, and all the things our fathers did?" Hello...that is America. We want it all and we want it NOW. At the expense of our marriages and children. Gross. Is my child's bedroom a reflection of that?