Not quite sleeping

The last few nights, R.Soup has not exactly been sleeping.  I'm pretty sure she's in the middle of a growth spurt because the only way to comfort her when she wakes up is to feed her.  I know this is a fact, because I had D.Soup take her for a little while at 3 am on Monday night, and she just stared in my direction and screamed the entire 15 minutes until I gave in and took her back.  The little angel.

The last two nights were poorly placed (for me) since I'm still trying to recover from last weeks 5:30 every day wake up call culminating with Friday's no-sleepathon.

Let me start over.

D.Soup went away for work last week.  So while he was gone, instead of trying to get the girls and the dog into the car every morning on my own and still make it to work before 10 am, I stayed on my parents couch.  Each day I got up at 5:30 and snuck out before anyone was awake. 

(Side note, is snuck not a word?  I'm getting yelled at by spell check)

The problem with this is that I would still stay up until 11 or later each night, so I wasn't getting much sleep to begin with.  Then the last day we were there, L.Soup decided she didn't want to go to bed, and laid in her bed singing the ABCs until about 11:15.  I waited a little while, and went to bed around 11:45.

At midnight I heard R.Soup.  Of course.  And OF COURSE, every time I tried to put her back down, she would wake up and cry again.  So she and I ended up snuggling the rest of the night morning.  When I went to tell my mom I was leaving, I noticed L.Soup wasn't in her bed.  I had a moment of panic, before I found her snuggled down in between my parents in THEIR bed.

So it wasn't a good sleeping night for anyone.  

I got a little reprieve Friday and Saturday nights, and some extra time in bed both mornings while D.Soup handled the girls downstairs and made breakfast.  But I was finally coming back out of my haze when Sunday night hit and she woke up every 2 hours on the dot.  And then Monday night was basically the same.  I was in the middle of staining a crate in the basement when I heard her.  I had D.Soup go try to rock her back to sleep, and it worked for a while.  Just long enough in fact for me to get the stain off my hands (more on that later).

I pretty much spent the whole night sitting up in our brand new bed.  Until that 3 am situation, and I just couldn't muster the energy to sit up anymore.  So then I woke up to this:

I sleep great when I'm right next to mom.

And when its time to get up for the day.

Last night I didn't have the energy to even think about anything but sleeping by the time the girls were in bed.  I managed to make my way back downstairs, only to trudge right back upstairs and pass out.

At least she's cute.

I need a system

The biggest thing I forgot about having an infant is how much time you have to dedicate to just being with them.  Between feedings, diaper changes, playing, and just holding them in between activities, there's no time for me to get anything done until she's in bed.  I love playing and spending time with her so I'm not really complaining, there's just a ton of things that I need to get done around the house. 

The few times I'm not holding her during the day, I don't really want to work on cleaning up the house.  I either want to relax for a few minutes, or more often, play with L.Soup. 

Needless to say, any amount of housework either gets done by D.Soup, by me one-handedly (always entertaining) or in minimal amounts after the girls are asleep. 

I've tried to make a daily to do list of things to accomplish on the cleaning front each day, but I always end up behind.  Or distracted.

I did a little googling, and I found Todoist.  This site allows me to build to do lists, set due dates and even recurring due dates so I can set up a cleaning schedule for myself each week.  There's even an app so I can look at and check off action items on my phone as I'm doing them. 

I've transferred my regular document full of things to do over, and I'm going to test it out for the next few weeks to see if it actually helps me stay on track.  Its nice to be able to assign specific dates to everything, so I only have to focus on what's up that day when I look at the list in "calendar" format.

I've also scheduled in those "once in a while" tasks, like adding a cleaning tab into the water tank of the toilets and running a cleaning cycle in the washing machine once a month.  Those are things that I always think about doing at the absolute inopportune time.  So hopefully this will help me to be better about actually keeping up with them.

D.Soup is coming home today from a work trip.  So I'm going to really start keeping up with it tomorrow.  I've been trying to do some stuff here and there this week, but we'll see how it actually works out starting tomorrow.

In addition to a cleaning list, I've created a "Projects" list.  I've listed out all the steps I need to complete for all the different crafting projects I've got planned out currently.  I'm hoping this will force me to actually finish (or start) the projects I currently have going before I decided to start working on something else.

For example, I currently have 31 steps listed out in the Projects list.  

 Reel yourself in MzSoup, just stop.

6 month recap

It's been so long since I've written here, everything is blending together.  So I'm just going to make a list of the things (that I can remember) that have happened over the last few months and quickly recap them.

1.  We finished getting L.Soup's room together

2.  We had a baby!

3.  D.Soup took L.Soup and his mom on a road trip in May.  My mother in law's best friend had a daughter graduating from high school.  They live in North Carolina.  She really wanted to go be a part of the celebrations, but didn't want to go alone.  D.Soup decided it would be fun to take L.Soup and spend some time with his mom.  He also thought it would be nice for me to spend some quality alone time with R.Soup.  It was definitely nice to have just one baby for a few days, but I was so happy when they got home.

4.  While they were gone my mom and I attacked the girls rooms, and the computer room.  We took advantage of having only one baby, and spent a majority of the 5 days they were gone frantically cleaning and organizing the upstairs in my house.  It had turned into a complete disaster area - all the girls clothes were in laundry baskets or on the floor, boxes were piled everywhere, things got carried upstairs and just left in the hallway.  A. mess.  And the worst part of everything was the computer room.  There was a single path of walking space in that room.  It took most of the time to clean, but we got it 95% accomplished.  I have big plans for that room in the near future.

5.  I went back to work.  I got an awesome 3 months at home with my girls after R.Soup was born.  I'm happy to be back at work, if only because I have adults to talk to again.

6.  I started making time to work on crafting/house stuff again.  It may only be an hour after the girls have gone to bed, but I'm sure soon I'll be able to devote more time to working on my crafting projects.  Currently I'm working on four crates - two for the girls bathroom and two for the bottom of the pantry in the kitchen.  More on that later.

7.  I decided to decorate my bathroom.  When we moved in, all the rooms in our house were the same color.  For the most part I'm okay with that on the main level.  Most of that level is one large open space so the consist wall color isn't terrible.  Upstairs though, every wall in every room is (other than the girls rooms) the same and it was starting to wear on me.  Additionally, I had put no effort into decorating the bathroom other than a few (black - what was I thinking) rugs on the floor and a pretty shower curtain.  I'm over it.

Hopefully this will be a good kick-off point for me to start writing here again.

L.Soup's New Room

When I disappeared, I was in the middle of clearing out the new space for L.Soup's room.  So I'm going to try to pick up from there.  Months of time have passed and I now have double mommy brain, so bear with me.

What had become a disastrous mess in that room ended up being an even more disastrous mess in the new computer room (a completely different conversation).  I finally got enough maternal nesting into my system that I got myself in gear and motivated.  We moved the rest of the stuff out of L.Soup's future room.  But the only place (other than the trash) for it to go was into the new computer room.  At this point I didn't care, it was time to move.

Before

Months ago, during a trip to the fabric store, I found this cute white curtain fabric with blue, pink and green circles all over it.  It became the center piece for all decisions made about the bedroom.  Interestingly enough, the curtains have not yet made their debut in L.Soups room yet.  I'm working on it.

<picture of fabric>

Once we had pulled every last piece of mess out, we made a trip to Home Depot for paint and supplies.  All the walls in our house were a bone color when we moved in.  Considering I was putting white furniture into the room, I didn't want the walls to look dirty.  So the walls and ceiling in L.Soup's room got a fresh coat of white satin paint (for easy dirty removal, which has come in handy more than once).  I had D.Soup help me with the ceiling, but I did most of the walls.  We left the trim alone because it actually didn't look bad once the white paint was up (its also a bone color).

After

I then took pink, green and blue paint and painted three different size circles onto the wall.

<color names?>

I snagged my old dresser from the basement at my parent's house...

D.Soup doing some sanding

(One of the feet on the dresser had been severely damaged over time, so we took some wood filler and basically created a new leg for it.  I wish I would have taken pictures of it in progress, but I guess I forgot.  Pregnancy brain.)

Gnarly foot from water damage

...and spent some time painting that white with pink, green, and blue dresser drawers.  I also covered the top of the dresser with some wallpaper that matched the color theme as well.  I have the mirror that goes with this dresser as well.  But I figured L.Soup doesn't really need it just yet, so I can hold off on that for a little while.

White drawers before taping and painting the colors

New hardware from Home Depot

Disney Kids Paisley Stripe Wallpaper

We also picked up this ClosetMaid Cubeical from Target, along with some color matching storage bins for books and trinkets. Her shoes go in one bin, bathing suits in another.  At the moment most of the bins are empty, but that's a good thing.

Once all the painting was finished, we headed out and got L.Soup her very own BIG GIRL BED!  Her twin size mattress is currently sitting on the floor, which is probably for the best because she continues to fall out of it on a regular basis.  We made a point to pick out some fun sheets for her, to help convince her that the big girl bed was the place to be.  It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be to transition her to the new room.

Ladybug sheets! (from Target)

There's still a few things that need to be done before I'm calling the room complete, but it's working out well for her right now, so I have time to work on the other things.  First, and most importantly, finish the ceiling fan.  We got it 95% of the way up, and the electrical box started wiggling around, so now D.Soup has to climb up in the attic to fit that back against the beam.  I was also trying to paint the blades to match the room, and I messed them up, so I have to fix them before they can go up.  Secondly, hang some paper lanterns above the bed.  Third, the curtains.  They should be easy, I just have to find some one on one time with the sewing machine.

She loves her room, and that makes me happy.

Migrating

So this post is from 6 months ago. There is too much that has happened between now and then, so I'm just going to post it as is...........

2/5/14

I've spent the last few weeks slowly getting everything situated in my new craft room.  I miraculously "finished" sorting and boxing up all the millions of baby clothes that had littered the floor in that room for months.  Then I promptly found MORE clothes that needed a home. 

Sigh. 

It never ends.  Those clothes are currently stacked on top of the mountain of boxes, because there is no more space for them in said boxes.  Of course.

Once that was done, I had a whole new world of space open to me.  I have a few of these tables hanging out in my garage, for parties and whatnot.  I figured I could just use two of them and make a nice long wall of just table space.  Previously, I had everything in my craft room set up on one of them, and the Silhouette and sewing machine had to share space.  It was not really working for me.  Especially considering I don't clean up ever the other things that have taken up space on the table over the last few months.

I had D.Soup lug one of the extra tables upstairs and we set it up.  Then we decided to measure to see if two would fit.  The wall is just over 11.5 feet long, the tables we had were 6 feet each.  So putting two in that space was not an option.  The next idea we had was to buy one 5 foot table.  But the width of the tables is different, so that would have driven me insane.

So I bought two 5 foot tables at Sam's Club (because they had them for the cheapest price).  Now I have separate areas for my sewing machine, and my Silhouette.  And I have a the perfect size gap between the tables and the wall for a tall storage cabinet!  I'm so excited!  We've got the plans all set out for how it's going to get built, just need to find the time.  Considering we still haven't finished the other nightstand, we'll see when it actually happens.

The plan is to build the cabinet with enough storage spaces for each color family of paper to have its own space.  I'll also have a bunch of extra space underneath for anything else I want to put down there!  Compared to where my paper has been stored in the past (all over the floor), it's going to be AMAZING!

I also cleared out the closet in that room in preparation for all my fabric.  The goal is to put a shelf in there and have the fabric stored neatly on the shelf.  Again, compared to where it was before (all over the floor... are we seeing a pattern here?) its going to be like heaven.

But, more importantly.  The goal here is to get everything cleared out of what is to be L.Soup's new room.  Progress is slow, but its happening!  All of my big craft stuff has been transferred, next up is the actual office supplies.  During this migration, we are downsizing.  We hardly used the computers that we had set up in the old craft/computer room.  One of the two has been moved to the new craft room, because I use it for my crafting.  The other one is most likely headed for the basement.  D. Soup sometimes does crazy workout video things, and could use it for those.

This also means that the actual computer desk is no longer necessary.  We're probably never going to need it again, so we'll pack it up and save it for whenever we decide to yard sale.  Or something.  After that is gone, its really just finding new homes for all the small stuff in my new craft room.  Simple.  Yeah.  Right?

Well, we're going to take our time, and slowly shuffle through the mess.  But I feel like we're on the right track for moving L.Soup.  I have the plan for her bedroom in my head, and I can't wait to start working on it.  I have so many things that I need to get together for her space.

I feel a little in between a rock and a hard place in this moment.  I want to get L.Soup's room finished before the baby gets here.  But I need to get the craft room organized in order to get things ready for L.Soup's room. Not that my old craft room was organized in any way.  I think it's just that now I know what I want, but I have to choose one room over the other.

Of course I'm going to choose L.Soup's room.

But the picture of my craft room in my head is soooo beautiful.

30 Day Little Black Dress Challenge from 30 Day Fitness Challenges

Yesterday, Pinterest kindly sent me an email full of 30 day challenge workouts.  I guess it noticed I had been pinning things to my "If I ever get motivated to work out" board and decided to help me out a little.

Well, it worked, and today I decided I'm going to start a 30 day challenge, mainly this one:

source

The 30 Day Fitness website is pretty cool.  They have a bunch of these challenges.   They even include videos of all of the workouts included in the challenges so you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing.  They even have an app!  Which I think is awesome.  Hopefully it helps keep me motivated.
I'm going to track my changes, so I'll try to be good about posting when I'm done.  I may even take pictures.

But that's a scary thought so we'll see. 

She's here!

Yeesh, I've been gone for months.  In that time span I got my house spectacularly cleaned in preparation for the baby.  Then I had the baby (more on that momentarily).  Then I watched as my house quickly degraded back to and then worse than its former self.  We're slowly getting back on our feet, but it is a painful process.

Anywho, on to the important things.  BABY!

Little Ms. R.Soup entered the world at 1:47 pm on April 9th.

8 lbs. 7.5 oz
19.5 inches long

Exactly one week before her sister's 2nd birthday.  L.Soup is an AWESOME big sister.  She's super sweet and so good with the baby.  I'm actually really impressed.

She is 4 months old, and I still haven't gotten birth announcements out yet.  The saddest part is I have all the pieces, just no time to put them together.  Who has time to do anything when there's teeny babies around??

...not us.


Everyone is adjusting to being a family of four.  I forgot how difficult it is to do anything when you are attached to a small person for a large majority of the day, so there was a bit of a learning curve there for me.  Especially when dealing with L.Soups needs while I was home on maternity leave.  We got it figured out though.

She is perfect and beautiful and we love her.