Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Cleaning

Oh how I hate cleaning up oft-used baby equipment. But alas, it has to be done, so today I am washing Emily's carseat and high chair. The high chair we plan to put away now until we need it for the next baby, so while I HATE taking these things apart and scrubbing the gunk out of every piece, at least in the high chair's case the reward will be getting back about 9 square feet of my kitchen for a time, and that is good news. Cleaning the carseat just gives me horrible flashbacks to the week we spent in Bar Harbor where I had to disassemble and wash the whole thing twice in 3 days. And you'd think that it would've stuck with me how to disassemble the thing, but it hasn't so my fingers are already sore and my knuckles are torn up from unhooking seatbelt loops located in ridiculous places. I did a thorough cleaning of my car this week though, so after removing about 5 bowls worth of cheerios from my car, I guess it makes sense to remove the 6th bowl hiding in the carseat too. And the raisins. And the dried apples that just melt right onto everything and form a sticky disgustingly crumb-covered glue.

We are at that frustrating time of the year when it gets tantalizingly warm out during the day, but still drops into the 30s and 40s at night. The time of year when I get quite indignant because I realize that we actually have 6 months of winter, and our spring, summer, and fall weather is all crammed into the remaining 6 months of the year. So not fair.

But the warmth is definitely luring Emily outside. The girl wants to spend all her time outdoors these days, and while I will appreciate that when she's 6 and old enough to play outside by herself, I don't really appreciate it now when she's so young I have to stay out there with her practically the whole time. It really bites into the amount I can get done when I spend 3 hours a day outside, but I'm not going to tell my daughter to stop playing outside so I can do some cleaning, especially after we're just emerging from our 6 months of winter. I know I sound incredibly spoiled. The girl's lucky enough to be able to stay at home with her kid and she's complaining that she has to play with her all day? The truth is, I do have fun with Emily, and I do enjoy playing with her, but I just can't get over the fact that my house falls apart when I am not constantly cleaning it, and I am not really an "outside" person, because "outside" is where there is a lot of dirt and bugs and dog poop. I know I'm a prissy pain in the butt. On top of that, kids are not really into doing things that you find interesting, and it is not acceptable for me to read a book outside while Emily plays, so I spend all my time pretending to be excited about rocks and telling her not to throw sand. Also when I'm outside a lot, #1 I notice all the things that are irritating me about my yard (mostly caused by dogs) that it's too early to do anything about because there's still the risk of a freeze and #2 I get bitter because I get to witness the maid services pulling up to all my neighbors' houses and it makes it that much more difficult that I can't leave my child alone outside so that I can go in and clean. Note to self: Must get a grip and focus on treasuring these fleeting years in my daughter's life when she actually wants me to play with her...also work on your psychosis about needing to have a clean house.

Tomorrow is Wednesday, therefore it is Emily's day with Grammy, and my day to do all sorts of things that I usually have trouble doing with a toddler in tow. I plan to hit a few grocery stores, do some work on the house, and go to the gym. We got a free 7-day pass to Gold's Gym for this week, so we're trying it out to see if we like it enough to switch from our old gym. It's way closer to our house, which is totally awesome. It also has cheap massages for members, a women-only workout area (so if it's crowded and I'm having to wait for machines, I can just go work out there), and it's got much nicer decor. It seems to be a more "hardcore" gym than our old one. I was aware of BodyPump classes, but apparently there's a whole line of Body-something classes. "BodyFlow" is yoga. "BodyJam" is cardio dance. There's even a class called "BodyAttack". Haven't checked that one out yet. On top of that, there are posters all over the gym that say things like "When your body screams, tell it to shut up!" and "Push yourself beyond your limits" and "Be the hammer, not the nail". All very tough and inspirational :-) So we'll see if it turns out to be impressive enough that we'll switch over. It would definitely save us lots of time and driving, and it would allow Will to accomplish his goal of being able to bike to everywhere he needs to go.

Speaking of Will, he seems to be descending into the abyss of sickness once again. I was hoping April would be like February, the one month we've been healthy this year so far, but that's not how it seems to be shaping up. So Will's back on antibiotics, only this time it's a longer dose of a stronger drug, and it's fabulously expensive. Emily however has enjoyed quite an uncharacteristically long bout of good health (knock on wood) so it seems that Will is taking the fall by being sick as often as Emily used to be. I guess next year it'll be my turn to be slightly ill all the time.

Now I believe I will head to bed. Wouldn't want to get too tired and stress my immune system.

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