One Too Many...

Or maybe two too many children or maybe clean house+any child=chaos. Things didn't seem too hard when it was just Umberto. Of course the tiny apartment we lived in was never really clean cause well...I'm a slob. But it was never out of control, nasty. When you triple the number of kids who are creating the mess and it gets nasty really fast. I kept doing what worked back when I was a single college student: Let things get super messy and then have a marathon cleaning session. But when you have four kids, there is no time to do marathon cleaning. In between mopping and dusting, you have to pause to put band aids on microscopic cuts and make lunches for starving beasties. When you homeschool, you're interrupted about twenty times more than normal. I remember thinking that I could clean the house while the kids worked. I have a lovely image in mind (I have domestic fantasies). That doesn't happen in my world. In fact, I'm lucky if I'm even able to nurse the wee one while the older kids do their work.

All this is the lead up to my conclusion that I can not run a big family the way I ran a small family. And we're totally a big family now. Four kids just tipped us over the line for sure.  I decided it was time to woman up and organize our craziness into some kind of order. With that in mind, I totally ripped off a schedule from my friend (Hi Ivory and Thanks!). And then R decided she needs to eat all.night.long. I think that the longest she went without nursing was two hours. It makes it hard to motivate myself when I am so tired I feel slightly sick to my stomach.

But I pushed through it. I did everything on my list EXCEPT do work for my classes. Not good so I'll need to tweak. Plus if I had had to work today, I would not have gotten my kitchen clean. Now granted my kitchen was super nasty so if I can keep on top of it, I suspect it won't take as long. I also had to wear  R on my back for most of the cleaning which made it quite difficult physically. And of course it sucked and was dreadfully boring. I wish cleaning was enjoyable to me but it's so...not. I would much rather be reclined on the couch eating bonbons and reading. However, it rocked to have a clean kitchen. And it rocked to be able to spend some quality times with the beasties as they did their work.

Not sure yet how much of a domestic goddess I'm going to be but I feel like if we can keep the house at the least not skanky, we're doing good. I'm not looking for a model clean house. I just want to reduce our clutter and not have nasty food messes all over the place. I also want the beasties to be a part of the clean up. They're old enough now to help out a lot more. It's a pain to make them do it but I think it's important for them to be responsible for our home. Day 1 is down. I'm exhausted but still need to put in at least an hour on my courses.

Couldn't resist a parting shot...Piper has the best fashion sense ever.