In the KITCHEN!

Do not give gogurts to young children and simply tell them to stay in the kitchen. You must remain with them and repeat your demand often while physically putting hands on them and turning them away from the kitchen exits. I left the kitchen for 5 minutes and returned to find Joseph now trying to eat from the CLOSED end of the gogurt tube. This resulted in blobs of yogurt on the carpet and his clothes. Even then, I was having to repeat myself about legal eating areas until the wrappers were in the garbage.

Speaking of "in the kitchen," I've spent my morning there. My fridge, though not perfect, is much cleaner. We had a bottom freezer model in our old house. This fridge has the freezer on top. It's so much harder to clean this one, not to mention finding hidden food that's beginning to qualify as science experiments. I haven't been able to bend over that far for several months and since having the baby, I'm just barely there again. So I worked on the fridge. It had been a long time since its last cleaning, but it was better than I expected.

From there, I got to sweep the floor. Nasty job in this house. Even though one of the kids is supposed to sweep each night after dinner, they seem to miss about 80% of the mess. I swept and mopped two days ago (and only felt the sting of my incision a little) because I finally decided that it felt like I was walking OUTSIDE, not in the house, in a room where we prepare and consume food.

All jobs in the house right now seem to take 3 times as long as they should as I often have to stop and comfort Sarah. She knows when she's not being held! I finally got the baby swing out yesterday and cleaned it up. I was afraid she'd be too small to like it, but it's the only way I've worked in the kitchen this morning. (As I type, I listen for her to start complaining.) I love that swing. You may remember gushing about it when Joseph was a baby. You can refresh your memory here.

Most of the house is a mess. Things have a funny way of creeping out of their hiding places while you're not looking. Two days ago, I heard Daniel say, "Now I know how Mommy feels! I just cleaned up this room and it's already messy again." A teeny tiny taste of satisfaction for the mommy with that comment! But then this morning, I walked into the library that Chad had cleaned up last night (it was so nice to walk in and know I wasn't going to step on ANYTHING) and found a big mess of books and crayons, etc. I thought Joseph had done it. No. It was Daniel. He'd started cleaning it the other day, but got tired or distracted or something. This morning, he saw that while the library was clean, the books weren't actually in the right places. So he pulled out the offending books and then left the room (again). It's still a big mess. I'm not quite up to crawling around on the floor yet.

And now for a little comment that's been on my mind since hearing a judgement relayed this direction a few weeks ago. If you think I complain about my kids too much and shouldn't have 6, then you'll probably want to take me off your blog list. I'm no saint and don't have a day job or a near-by relative to dump my kids on whenever I want a break. This (my blog) is where I get rid of the stress without leaving the house or the kids. If you had 6 kids (all under the age of 9.5), you'd not only be very happy and love each one of them, but you'd be a little more understanding and less judgemental (maybe).