Small Successes-January 5th

Celebrating the little things in life that add up.

1. Katie seems to be on the mend.  She's still not back to her usual self, but she's breathing better and hasn't needed the nebulizer since Saturday.  She was still very congested up until Tuesday but as of right now [late Wednesday night] she seems to be doing much better.

2.  Despite being sick, Katie has been sleeping through the night almost every night.  On Tuesday morning I actually had to wake her up since it was getting close to when I needed to take Ellie to school.  I won't argue with that!  Maybe she'll be like Ellie and like to sleep late.  Madeline was an early riser and it drove me crazy that we were up at 7 or a little before.  That wouldn't bother me now, but it did back then because she was an only child and we didn't have to be up early like we do now.

3.  Bryan and the girls were home for 11 and 10 1/2 days straight, respectively.  A few times I felt like I was close to the brink of insanity (a messy house will do that to you if you're a neat freak) but they all lived to go back to work/school and my sanity, though a bit tattered, is still mostly in tact.  I did get the house mostly back in order between Monday night and Tuesday, but you'd hardly be able to tell thanks to all the papers the public schools have graciously sent my children home with these past two days.

4. I tackled the laundry.  I've got a nice system going and everything is getting washed, folded and put away in a timely fashion.  You could say that things are moving so well that it's likely that Madeline will wear the same outfit to school twice in a week.  Yes, this child has actually attempted to wear the same clothes to school twice in a week.  While you can get away with that in a school where you wear a uniform, it's never a good thing when you go to public school, but Madeline doesn't understand that.  What I don't understand is why a kid with a closet packed with clothes wants to wear the same few items over and over.

5. Katie has outgrown most of her 0-3 month clothes sniff, sniff and I am now in the process of swapping out her drawers and closet with 3-6 month clothes.  Moving up to the next size of clothing is always bittersweet to me.  I love 3-6 month size clothes.  I had so many favorite items that I couldn't part with from Madeline and Ellie that I could clothe Katie in those outfits for at least a week or two.  Between that clothes I saved and the ones we were given by three generous families, I have more adorable 3-6 month clothes than you can shake a stick at.  Actually, I think you could shake a stick at any amount of clothing.  It's really not going to do anything other than make you look a little odd if you think about it.  Better to do things like that when no one is around to see you doing it.  You don't want people to think you're crazy.

6.  Typically when someone gives me a gift card or money as a gift I spend it on the kids, unless it's something like a Starbucks gift card.  I am not about to buy those girls coffee and have them run around like supercharged lunatics.  I can barely keep up with their non-caffinated escapades.  Anyway, back to me not ever getting something for me with MY gifts.  I decided on New Year's Eve that I was going to buy myself a new lens for my camera.  When I told my mom what I bought with the gift card she and my dad gave me she was happy.

7. Remember when I said I didn't go insane with everyone home for 10 1/2-11 days?  Ok, maybe that was a bit of a lie.  As I recall another "success" for this past week, I'm realizing that maybe I did go crazy and maybe my sanity isn't as present as I claimed it is.  You see, I got on an organizing kick on Sunday and decided that I HAD to find all the pieces of  two Lego sets that Ellie got last Christmas (2010).  Ellie is a scatterer and Madeline has no motivation to organize, both of these "personalities" clash with my neat freak perfectionist tendencies.  So I spent roughly 5-7 hours sorting through approximately 3.5 million legos to find the correct 250 pieces combined that made up the two sets (we are missing 3 or 4 pieces).  Bryan told me several times that I didn't need to find the pieces, but I couldn't accept that.  Those $7 or $8 sets were going to be whole again.  So yeah, I was heading off the deep end by the end of Christmas break, but I didn't do anything crazy like try to find all the pieces of a 700+ piece set.  Who cares if the $80 Lego sets are in tact?  I don't.  Apparently I'm too busy worried about the cheap sets.  Oh and the rule I made about only having one Lego set out at a time?  Yeah, the kids obeyed that one for roughly 3 hours.  Sigh.  One day they'll tell stories about how I was so crazy that I sat in the family room sorting through Legos to find the pieces of sets that no one even wanted to build.