What does $165 get you?

What does $165 get you? It got me two very nice people to spend nearly 8 hours cleaning my house from top to bottom. It removed the grime from my fans and bathtubs and returned white things white again. It got my furniture vacuumed - even turned my couch upside down to vacuum underneath - and even my air vents cleaned. My furniture was dusted, floors mopped, and windows cleaned. In short my house was CLEANED; I'm talking scrubbed - not just the quick version I typically do on the weekends.

But more importantly than a clean house it gave me a whole Saturday with my children lunching with them and my two best friends and then spending the afternoon at the theater to see Annie. It gave me a good nights sleep last night as I looked forward to a whole Sunday of doing what I want to do instead of what I need to do. It gave me a chance to make blueberry muffins from scratch and to read the paper with my hot cup of coffee. It allowed me to take the time to sit at my computer and type this blog post and I hope it gives me the chance to catch up on some old magazines and maybe play some games with my children today.

The cost was pricey - as it always is for an initial cleaning - but it was so worth it and I hope we can have them return (at a lower price point) every other week. We're not extravagant people but this is a luxury I could certainly get used to having.

Sleeping Controversy

This started out as a comment on one of our friend's blogs and I decided to keep typing and share it on my blog. The theme of her post was about letting her 9 week old still sleep in her bed and how the "co-sleeping" thing can be controversial. While we did not do the co-sleeping thing with any of our kids, we did put them on their stomachs. *Gasp*

The only place our son would sleep for the first 8 weeks of his life was in his car seat. I remember sobbing in the doctor's office because he wouldn't sleep (he was less than a week old) and the only rest I got was when he was in his car seat. Do you know what the doctor said? So let him sleep in his car seat . . . it was so nice to hear the doctor say that. That worked great until I woke up to find him upside down in his car seat and that put an end to that.

Turns out the kid had GERD and was only comfortable upright; he HATED to be on his back. He was a horrible sleeper and we got a lot of opinions and two really stuck out for me - my grandmother and my friend who was a nurse - and they both said to put him on his stomach. We did that starting around 9 or 10 weeks and that kid has been an amazing sleeper ever since!


With kid #2 I tried to be good and do the whole "Back to Sleep" thing - I mean, crikey, their dang clothes say it - but that lasted about 4 weeks when Josh couldn't take it anymore. He walked into the guest room (where Pickle and I had been stashed for sleeping), took her out of my arms and put her down on her stomach. She went right to sleep. I didn't even bother trying with kid #3; pretty much as soon as she was home she was sleeping on her stomach. She did sleep somewhat upright in her Boppy for a few weeks until she would slide too far down. I put a twin bed in her room and she would sleep in the Boppy next to me and then eventually in her crib while I slept in the room with her.

The thing with all three of mine is that they all slept through the night quickly so they didn't really need me for nighttime feedings. There wasn't much point for them to sleep with me. With each one I felt guilty for leaving them in their beds to go sleep in mine but they have all loved their crib and now their beds so in the long run I know they are happy sleepers. New Kid wouldn't have it any other way . . . it is her happy place. I'm not sure we will ever get her out of the crib.

Harry Potter

The make up of The Boy's class last year was a combined 1-3 grades. This was both good and bad. The good is obviously the chance and opportunity to work above grade level; the bad was exposure to some non curriculum content that he, or I, might not be ready to handle. One such topic was the Harry Potter series. From what I understand there was a great deal of time spent discussing the tomes during lunch, recess, and when they were supposed to be doing other stuff in class. He generally knows the stories through and through without ever reading the books or seeing the movies. So we decided for his summer reading he could dive into the books. And dive in he did. He had the first two books finished by Tuesday night after starting them on the way home from camp on Sunday night! Part of letting him read the books was all reading members of the household were going to read them concurrently so we could discuss. This included me. I was a day late to start and now I am a book and a half behind! It appears I have some homework to do.

21st Century

It was not too long ago that we were fully entrenched in the 20th century. I don't mean it as the 20th century was not long ago what I mean is our simple house was stuck there. We didn't have fancy flat screen TVs - we had tube ones. It wasn't until 2011 that we moved into the HDTV and smartphone world. Another modern day advancement we thought we should get was Netflix. We had it when it first came out and, gasp, you had to wait for little discs to be mailed to your house (we just recently got a DVD/Blu Ray player after not having one for at least 5 years.) The iteration we have now allows movies and TV shows to be streamed thus completely quenching the desire for instant gratification to which we have all grown accustomed. And that is where this story is going.

Our Netflix membership, although discussed for some time, was only purchased because we wanted to watch a movie right then and there with the children. Set up was a snap and we decided on Up. We sat down with some pizza and settled in to watch the movie. You need to understand that our kids are not big TV watchers. Outside of sports and a few shows watched on the weekend they do not get parked in front of any kind of screen so they are relatively unused to the watching movies. They have certainly not gained the knowledge that any movie they are going to watch will have a happy ending. So it was about 25 minutes from the end of the movie that the older 2 kids (New Kid had already been stowed for the night) stood up and announced they weren't watching any more. The Boy said he was uncomfortable because "they were trying to kill the old man," and "needed to go read," and Pickle was very concerned for the well being of the two protagonists. Both were convinced that this was not going to end well for the bird, the dog, and the two humans.

I was floored and speechless so Christi stepped in and suggested we all adjourn to get PJs on and then return to finish. So after a quick break for PJs and teeth brushing they returned to finish watching both curled up as close to Mom as they could get. In the end they laughed and enjoyed the movie and have asked to watch it again proclaiming it to be their favorite movie.

I look back on it now and think it was adorable and really highlights the innocence of youth. It gave me a little glimpse of their world through their eyes and I think I am better for it.