My Real House

Not that my normal house pictures aren't real, but they're not the Usual Real. I'd like to say I keep my house pretty clean...and actually, I kind of do. But I don't rule with a commanding hand over every part of it. My kids are still kids, I still have to baby-proof for my 2-year-old, I still overlook certain things out of tiredness or preoccupation with other duties. My priorities do not always include a pristine house.

And I know I'm not the only one like this. So here's a sympathetic confession for anyone who needs a reminder that your house isn't the only one that hasn't reached Dream House status.

But one more thing. While I didn't feel fretful about taking pictures of the downright MESS that is my house sometimes, I wanted to focus a little more on the little elements that create the mess. Because that makes more sense, and I am more able to see the humor that way than when I take in the whole mess at once.

Here is Scarlett playing with a broom. That's nice! Sometimes she even gets some food cleaned up when she does this (which isn't all that often). I honestly wish I could show you the collection of food that was under the table a few days ago-- it was a complete food storage system.

This is what it looks like! A bungee cord "locking" my pantry door. And good old duct tape "locking" my fridge. Before I finally had the brilliant epiphany that led to this resourceful (if desperate) solution, Scarlett was getting into the pantry and fridge about every three minutes. No, really...I WISH I were exaggerating.

But she's cute, isn't she. :) Doesn't her twinkly face make you feel at least a little happier? And yeah, she's just in a diaper. And yeah, I don't like that. I wish she had clothes on. She loves changing clothes, loves the power to choose outfits (or choose zero outfits), and I'm slowly surrendering while I slowly figure out that it's mostly okay.

Behold! Another sign of desperation! I got this idea from the mother of my friend Lynnae. She said casually once that she had wrapped the dining table in bungee cords so her youngest would stop using the chairs to reach things that were supposed to be out of the reach of children (what does that mean anymore?). I had the same problem and spent my days running after chairs that seemed to never stop scooting around the house. This solution is a nuisance, just like you would think. But it's less of a nuisance than getting on Scarlett's case all the time.

Oh, and this! These are just some dishes. Probably just from a day. The dishwasher is nearly full with dirty dishes, too. Nothing out of the ordinary, here...in fact, this is tame compared to how they get (at least once a week they pile up like a mass grave).

I now have a stupid, bulky stepladder in this bathroom so that Scarlett can wash her hands. I'd rather she couldn't reach the sink (she PLAYS), but she's forcing me to let her potty train. I hate potty training, so I'm as hands-off as I can be. I'm encouraging her to be able to go through all the steps herself, which includes hand washing. Naturally, I had to empty the cupboard of anything or she'd play with that stuff, too. :)

This is supposed to be my classy music room. :) Okay, why not, it still IS my classy music room. At the "moment" (read: the last couple weeks and likely for the next couple weeks), it reflects my tiredness from bringing the harp in and thus neglecting to uncover it...and the tiredness of hauling the stroller around, thus leaving it in the window. Bleh, bad. But also normal.

Doesn't it look so clean? No, I mean really! It looks pretty clean! Hahahaaaa!!!

Check it out. Does this look familiar? A trail of toys leading to the kids' room?

The cuteness must be how they get away with this most days.

Aaaand...that's where the toys make a shortcut trip to the living room. All the time, guys, all the time. You bet I fight it. But sometimes I'm so tired of disciplining, I pretend I didn't see it. Plus I secretly think it's funny.

We try to make our bedroom a haven, a no-children-allowed bubble of love for parents escaping chaos. So why does it look like this?! I'm asking, why!!!

Because it's where everything goes when I want the kids to leave stuff alone. It's where I go when I want the kids to leave me alone, and when I'm feeling like that, I'm not feeling like revamping my room into a magazine picture. Thankfully, when it's clean, it lasts longer than any other room before it gets messy.

That's my real house! There are more real corners, piles, overflowing trash cans and baskets of laundry that don't star in this post. But I promise they're there. This is just my normal, real, honest house. Sometimes it's a pigsty. Sometimes it does look more like a magazine picture (for half a day, although there is ONE spare room I keep locked that provides great sanity in its constant order when the rest of the house is a wreck). Sometimes I maintain a pretty commendable level of cleanliness. But I'm a mom, which means that I have a plethora of priorities that ebb and flow from day to day. I am tired or busy or both. Sometimes I'm so cool that I sit and read encyclopedias to my son while I ignore the fact that my coffee table is halfway across the room and I haven't made anything for dinner. Other times, I get cranky with my kids and shove the coffee table back again and again and throw some food together. I wish I could have the best of both sides ALL the time. Sometimes I have a magical moment when I strike the balance and it happens. But just sometimes.

I'm normal. I'm like a lot of moms. When your house seems to lean more towards Nightmare than Dream, don't be hard on yourself. I won't think it means you want your house to look like that, or that you're even ok with it looking like that. I'm not going to see your house and think it represents you. It simply represents that your life has a lot going on, and you have to go with the flow of ever-changing priorities. That's real.

I'd like to thank my "sponsor," My Little Pony, for making this blog post possible. Thanks for entertaining my daughter from the Netflix window on my computer while she sat in my lap so I could enjoy some blogging. This couldn't have happened otherwise. Oh yeah...and we must thank the massive pile of LEGOs she decided had to watch the show with her...you have to picture this: 

I'm stretching across a sea of LEGOs, around my daughter who is crowding my lap and has her hair in my face, just to reach the keyboard. I have to keep moving my head around hers, and she keeps sticking her diaper-bum in my face while she leans forward to stare straight into the ponies' eyes instead of watching from a normal human distance. *sigh* 

She finally slid off my lap! Leaving the LEGOs for me, of course...

Uh, and now she is plugging random things into the outlet. Bye!

Clothesline Timeline

Ender posing by one of our first loads of line-dried laundry.

After moving into our beautiful home, we found out our dryer is a gas dryer and will therefore not work in this house. Oh! Well that is just one of those things that slipped under the radar this summer. It was funny to me in a tired way. I laughed and shrugged.

My father-in-law installed some clotheslines before flying back to Rexburg. My first time hanging laundry to dry was a little bit discouraging. It was all so time consuming, handling every item of clothing, arranging it with clothespins to the line, making room for a typical, large load. Wasn't laundry already time consuming?

I sighed a lot, and I sweated a lot (Arizona is ideal for drying clothes and wetting people). But since I figured this would be the new way of things, I decided I would do my best to like it. I purposefully looked for the love in my work, in my slow motion of touching each item of clothing. Once the clothes were hung, a quiet little smile crept up as I surveyed my work. It was pretty, a little display of a finished task. I went to bed tired but satisfied and grateful.

When morning came, I rushed outside while it was relatively cool. In the still air, in the partial shade, I sweated and smiled while I pulled the clothes off the line, one at a time, folding them and placing them in my basket. Birds sang, and somehow the work went quickly. I felt that my attitude had made a complete turn; I really did like it, I couldn't help but like it.

This morning, I shuffled outside to pull down and fold some stiff towels. The lines had slackened under the weight of the towels and lifted as I pulled them away. A weak breeze kept the worst of the heat off as my apron pockets filled up with clothespins. It all took me back in time, and looking at Scarlett, it seemed she was also a scene from a different time. She sat in the dirt by the fence, in her little white dress, chattering about the leaves she shuffled in her fingers. I imagined a mother of years ago tsk-tsking at her gently, shaking her head at the dirty white dress. Maybe she would draw a bath for Scarlett and set to work cleaning the little dress, sighing at yet more laundry to be done. Or maybe, like me, she would just smile.

Laundry now feels like a little window of time travel. The clotheslines extend their fibers down the line of time, and I connect with women who years ago worked their fingers deftly over clothespins, perhaps sighing at the size of their laundry load and perhaps smiling at the lovely linens lifting in the breeze, clean and drying.

Hello, Home!

Remember when I said we were moving somewhere hot? I was so ready to spill the beans, but we hadn't really announced it to anyone yet. But now pretty much everyone knows! Arizona. It's definitely hot. And you know, I don't mind.
How could I mind? We are so blessed-- this is a sweet little neighborhood, quiet and safe. The houses have been described by a couple people as birdhouses or dollhouses, which is quite true! They're cute and unimposing. Perhaps small, but with vaulted ceilings it feels very spacious.
It's not quite real for me yet...this is my house now? Really? :)
We move in this weekend. Things have been crazy all summer, but in the midst of certain stressful craziness there has been exciting, good craziness. This is one of those times. I LOVE moving into a new place, and I'm especially excited to move into THIS new place.
You'll be hearing from me more, but possibly not for a while yet still. I haven't really been able to pull my brain together for any blog posts, even though I so desperately wanted to share my Russian adventures (I still will!).