The one chore I REALLY hate doing

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Ok, let's talk about the dirty stuff. Do you like cleaning? Probably not. Look,  I don't mind cleaning. In fact, I like a clean house. I sweep the floors everyday and mop every other day. I dust the house and wash the bathroom once a week, and do laundry every couple of days. I also cook every weekday, and do the day dishes.  My husband does the night dishes. The breakdown:

Everyday:  Sweep the floors, pick up around the house many times, cook, and wash dishes.

Every other day:  Laundry, mop floors, and dust around the house.

Every week:  Wash the bathroom, clean the kitchen fridge, change our bedding, dust the furniture, and sweep the patio. 

My husband does the dinner dishes, and takes our trash out.  But there's one chore that I really hate doing.  You will never find me doing this, and the only times I have done it, I really didn't have a choice.  It's so simple and so easy, yet I hate it.  I hate emptying the dishwasher.  You say, what?!  I will do anything else.  And it's not like we wait until the dishwasher is overflowing with clean dishes.  We actually put the dishes away twice a day.  Well, my husband does.  And that's my little secret about chores.  How about you?  Do you have a favorite and a least favorite household chore?

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Around here

I have also been preparing for our daughter's baptism to be celebrated the week before the holidays in our hometown of Miami. This is a sneak peek of what's to come.

Looking around the house the other day I found this cute vintage children's magazine from Parent's Magazine.  This little volume is from 1967 and it's packed with children's activities, stories and even puppet making.  It's so unbelievable that this used to entertain children for hours.  And some kids eagerly collected them.  I wish we could go back to those simpler times.  And lately, while I'm crafting away here at home, I'm hooked to Netflix watching an old time teenager favorite show, The Wonder Years.  It never gets old.  My favorite episodes are the ones that center around Kevin's family, the Arnolds.  So nostalgic!

Two things I love from my mother's Miami home are the collection of antique and modern glass bottles that sit on a built in shelf in the family room, and the solid teak table in the same room.  

And finally, Emilu's hair is growing.  She's now a year and seven months!  Just mind-blowing, if you ask me.  Here she is on the bathroom floor playing with my makeup while I'm in the bathroom. After you have kids, there's no privacy bathroom time anymore!

Cozy warm in the home

Now that temperatures are consistently low and a chill is beginning to sip through our windows, it's time to think of keeping warm around the house. So,  I'm looking for a new blanket or throw for the living room sofa.  When the holidays are over, and all the color of the festivities come to a calming halt, I will be choosing more muted tones for the living room such as soft greys, white, and black.  Like a Winter wonderland.  I want a throw that will compliment this palette.  I'm looking at these:

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Motherhood: The way we were

Before I became a mother, I used to have time to do many things.  Now it's always a race to finish something on time.  It's true, motherhood changes you in a fundamental level, and one day I will open up about that aspect in my life.  Today, however, I'd like to talk about the small things that once were, and now, not so much.  If you are pregnant or have not have kids yet, prepare for big and small changes. One of my favorite quotes, "When someone says they slept like a baby, they haven't had one yet,"  is the perfect prescription for realizing nothing is left unchanged. This is my list of things that I can't seem to get around to do [not that often] anymore.

• Remember when you'd take the whole afternoon on a weekend to deep clean/redecorate/buy fresh flowers/ slow-cook and candlelight dinner-your house in underpants and mood music? Forget about doing this EVER again. This doesn't happen here that often anymore.  I mean, how pathetic is it that my mother arranges/organizes all my closets, dusts off the big bookshelf and magic-erases the grime off the walls.  And she lives 1,000 miles away!
• I used to read more.  Reading was like a vacation, except I took one every couple of weeks. Now, I'm just as content to read the book review.
• I used to write more.  Writing was work, but at least I sat on the chair and opened the notebook, and stared at the window.  Now, I don't even know where the notebook is.
• We used to watch lots of movies. Around here it was called movie binging!  Now we have to wait until our carefully selected choices become available on Netflix.  And guess what? We can't even watch the strong/graphic content ones, because she's mostly around until we all go to bed around 10ish.
• Which brings me to this one:  We used to stay up late,  past midnight.  And even then, we slept pretty good.  Which meant that we used to wake up after 10 a.m. on weekends. Now, weekends and weekdays are exactly the SAME.

•  I used to get regular manicures and pedicures.  Not anymore.  It's not like I have let myself go.  I dress up for motherhood the same way I dress up to meet a friend for coffee or the movies. But when you don't have any hired maid service (oh yes, I would do this if I had the money) who can also cook for you, then you can't just leave everything and go do your nails.  And with many other interests always competing with each other, like reading, and writing, and doing crafts, or redecorating or taking pictures or simply venturing outside everyday with your kid, to the playground, the market, the bookstore, the library, the  hardware store, etc, then the luxurious couple of hours you do have on a lucky weekend or the extra hour that Tuesday, you rather rest, catch up with email or a friend.  These days my nails are bare, and I'm learning to embrace that.
• Remember when you could wear jeans or trousers and occasionally a top more than once before washing it?  Scratch that off when you have kids.  They will soil it with everything and anything.  Their hands, their throw-ups, their watery noses, with paint, and food or milk.  If you breastfeed, you will leak no matter what.  And those breast shields are nice, but let's be honest, they end up stinking up your bras and shirts. ( I used to change mine 3 times a day)  These breastfeeding nuances can turn exhausting.  But hey, at least your kid is drinking milk not processed with equipment that uses soy, eggs, or nuts.
•  While that kid is awake, they are constantly tugging at you for attention.  And some kids are very perceptive and demanding, like mine.  They are not content to be sitting next to you while you are in the computer.  They need your hands, your eyes, and your voice on them.  So you are basically participating in a triathlon everyday until they go to school. And by that time, you are so exhausted and have grown so much gray hair, you contemplate not having that second kid after all.

I could only think of these ones. But, I'm sure you mothers out there have a laundry list of your own. 

DIY nursery banner

I'm making a few changes to our bedroom, which we are still sharing with Emilu.  By moving the crib to the opposite side of the room and flanking it with two sets of wall shelves, there was an empty space above it, which I thought could use some dressing, but it had to compliment the shelves and crib bedding, as well as making look cohesive. I settled on a simple banner, here's how I made it:

 The final resting place is just below the wall shelving, I think it looks better there, don't you think?

Anything but bedtime

Have you struggled with bedtime before? Emilu's bedtime is late. It always has been. Being a high needs baby AND a poor sleeper almost immediately left us no options, but to basically follow her lead on this one. Our own pediatrician suggested it. Not all children are 7 o'clock bedtime sleepers. It's OK to push bedtime for when she's tired. The only problem is our nights are not are own. The good side of this: Since she's taking one long afternoon nap (usually 2 hours or more) we can cajole her to go back to sleep around 6ish when most 7 o'clock bedtime sleepers are waking up for the day. She takes her bottle at that time and we usually snooze until 8ish.

Home redecoration

Remember this post when I said I was redecorating our space to fit our growing family's needs? Well, this is how the living turned out. Since I don't own a photographic camera, these camera phone pictures will have to do. The objective was achieved: We decluttered, and now have more space.

Handing out silliness

Some days around the house can turn playful and unexpected with a crawling baby.  Today is about laundry, cooking, and organizing, but also playing and remembering to take pictures.  I still haven't finished putting up all the frames on the living room wall.  But I'm getting closer.  Here are a few shots of Emilu and I being silly around the house.