Thinking… thinking…

So, while I cringe to admit it, Olivia will eventually start crawling. While I love my Norwex mop, I’m strongly considering upgrading to a steam mop before that happens. Our entire upper floor is and/or will be hard flooring and that is a LOT to do with a Norwex mop. This is the one I’m looking at right now:

Do you have a steam mop? What do you think of them? I know my mom has one and likes it. This one is very well reviewed, thus far.  Would you stone me if I said I also like the color of it? It’s kindof got a retro vibe to it, even though I’m pretty sure steam mops were not around the last time this color was in style for home appliances.

The Scholar and the Raging Lunatic

So, after The Incident I popped out my other lens and declared my glasses a prop. Since Olivia had her pictures taken by a photographer from Canadian Baby, Nicole was more than willing – for once – to do a mini shoot with me. So I mean, in case you thought I was playing favourites with all the Olivia shoots, I’ll clarify that. Olivia is the one who can’t move fast enough to get away from me. Thus far.

If you’re curious, her jeggings (ha, I love that word. And those things. All of us ladies in this house own a pair.) are from Target and her shirt is from The Children’s Place. You can’t see it in these picture, but it’s got a long ruffle on the bottom, and it’s tunic length in the front and dress length in the back. PERFECT with leggings, and I love it dearly.

I love that laughing picture so much. It’s very “Nicole.” Speaking of Nicole – which clearly we are, since her pictures are littering the page – she’s taken some developmental leaps drawing-wise suddenly. I’m very pleased. She’s started drawing grass and suns in her pictures, and her people inside of a house, and also she’s starting to notice details and add them to her pictures. Details like hair. Or bums. Yup, of course bums. Today she was drawing a picture of “mommy and grandma and Nicole” and I hear her muttering to me about “your big bum.” Which, first of all, medium sized, I’ll have you know. Not pancake patootie but not exactly badunkadunk either. Anways, I go investigate and there is this giant C shaped thing sticking out the side of my person. Not wanting to jump to conclusions – I mean, she mentioned a backpack, too – I casually inquired as to what it was.

“That’s mommy’s big bum,” she replies just as casually, adding some pink to the red roof.

Awesome.

Does anyone else find they start spring cleaning in February? Perhaps its just because the snow doesn’t start to melt here until somewhere in May most years, but generally at some point in February I just get sick to death of cluttery closets and suchlike and turn into a raging lunatic. I mean, my dog threw up all over my house last night so that definitely contributes to my urge to sanitize every surface. But right now I’m taking a break in between ripping things out of closets and putting them back in in a better fashion and wishing I had one thousand baskets that magically fit in every cupboard and drawer because everything just feels much better organized in a basket to me.

Anyways, don’t come over, you’ll think you walked into an episode of Hoarders except that all the cupboards and closets are empty. And also, I am keeping up on my Project 52, sortof, I just need to edit and post the last few. Yay me.

Helping Hands

You might be surprised sometimes where you might find some helping hands. What started out with me finding something for Nicole to do to keep her out of Chris’ hair while I was doing the dishes turned into me being impressed by her eagerness to help. In my urge to always get things done quickly so I could move on to the next thing lately, I had forgotten what I had previously considered So Important… letting her help. Letting her help at this age does not necessarily mean tasks are going to be done faster or properly. But it does set good habits that I will be grateful for when she is a bit older, and she is already starting to surprise me with how helpful she can actually be.Last night, she first helped me load the dishwasher. This does mean that I set aside certain dishes for her to load, like cutlery and plates and cups, that I could load myself in the same amount of time. Oh well! She enjoys helping me, and I enjoyed her eagerness to help. She’s been helping me unload for ages, and even gets annoyed at me when I do ‘her things’… the cutlery (after I pull out the knives) and the big pots, which go in the stove drawer.

Then I started doing the hand washing. “What’s next, mommy?” I would have handed her a few things to “dry”, even though I tend to let things drip dry, but the laundry monster had eaten all the drying towels. (hehe… I’m mostly caught up, honest! But since I let things drip dry, those hit last priority.) So instead I let her wash the table for me (after I gave it a quick wipedown first so it would really be done.) “What’s next, mommy?” I am going to endorse another Norwex product here… the mop. The handle easily goes from long to short and back again, so I made it Nicole-sized and let her go at. If you observe the lines on the floor, clearly my floor has not been mopped to pristine. But hey, if I let her do it every day, it should be clean by the end of the week, yes? LOL

Once she dubbed that complete, I assigned her to wash the windows in the livingroom, and she did a pretty good job of what she could reach. Then she moved on to wash the walls, or at least a portion of them, and once I ran out of other things, she washed the chairs. (This was probably more ‘water play’ than actual cleaning, but it entertained us both.) I finished the hand washing at some point in there, but her eagerness to work inspired me to scrub down my cupboards as well, plus a few other tasks I don’t need to do every single day.

I have resolved to make a point of letting her help me more often again. In the craziness of having a baby I forgot to do some of that kind of thing with her, but it really is so important. Done in good spirits, it allows us to bond, while setting good habits for her future. It also sets good habits for myself, I’ll admit I leave a lot of tasks for the next morning that I would feel much more refreshed in the morning if I just did them the night before! So, I can keep her busy after supper and before bedtime, without getting her hyped up or setting her in front of the tv. (Which she has watched less than three hours of in the last two weeks, yay for us!) I’m sure a lot of you are like, “Well, duh.” But for me it was a bit of an ‘oh, yeah…’ ;)

And of course, lets not forget my other little helper, who helped me fold laundry after the first one had gone to bed. Yup, she can already do short spurts in her Bumbo chair! Little turkey… I don’t think she realizes she is not even two months old yet. My babies really do not like to stay babies… Nicole was the same way. Actually, I think Olivia is a little “worse” for it than Nicole was! I’d like to take a moment, too, to be grateful to be very blessed with a good sleeper. This girl likes to have a late bedtime, but she goes down before midnight every night (generally around 11) and does not get up until 5:30, and she’s done it since she was four days old. I’m also already able to sleep train her, and now have her to the point where I can lay her down sleepy and she’ll put herself to sleep unassisted. Most of the time without even a soother! I’m so very, very blessed that my second is such an easy baby.

zip zip zip

Okay so today is hectic and a wee bit crazy. I sliced my finger and used a condom pocket as a bandaid. I swept and mopped my entire first floor in a move-the-furniture kind of way, so count on another Norwex rave soon because I did not realize that my life was incomplete without that mop.

I am in an exceptionally good mood because between my floor and the fact that I took my new Norwex window cloth to EVERY REFLECTIVE SURFACE WITHIN SIGHT, from windows to microwave to oven front to laptop to door handles to sink, my house is SHINY AND BRIGHT. It is just amazing how much brighter your house is when it’s clean and shiny. And how much better you feel. Maybe that’s the post-workout buzz from scrubbing everything.

Okay so I was not going to rave right now but I just have to put it out there, my house is shinier and cleaner looking with just Norwex stuff and water then it normally gets with el-cheapo generic microfibre cloths and cleaning products. JUUUUST SAYING. Also, Mickey Mouse helped me clean my floors. If by Mickey Mouse you mean a Mickey Mouse stuffie whose arms are being wrapped around my mop when I’m trying to clean. Not super helpful but funny so I let her ‘help’ until she got bored and wandered off.

I’ve also been sewing and that sort of thing. Nothing new in the shop yet but if you want to see some finished custom orders or the sneak peeks, those can be seen on the tw*nkletw*nkle fan page. If you look over to the left sidebar there’s a nifty little widget that will take you there. That way I won’t spam you up with photos of items for sale unless you’re wanting it, because I am  a pretty lazy considerate person.

Now if you excuse me I’m going to go break into song about I WANNA TAAAAKE YOU THERE and bake some cupcakes. Don’t think you could get away without me forcing pictures on you. You’re in for a treat. We’re talking a dramatic photo montage. Otherwise known as my way of entertaining myself while playing Little Peoples with Nicole.

ENJOY. Except this is a serious and dramatic story told in photos so maybe try to feel adequately subdued.

 

In other news, if some Norwex executive is out there googling Norwex and happens to find me, YOU’RE WELCOME. Send flowers. (Flowers is french for cash, for the record.)