Charitable Giving

I'm pretty proud of my boys tonight.

This morning, as Nate was searching for a missing "wormie fuzzy animal," he tore apart his room, leaving it a complete mess.  When I walked in, it was overwhelming.

I talked with him about how he needs to be better about keeping his room organized, and was surprised when he was eager to "reorganize his room."  What more, he wanted to donate some of his old stuff.  I was happy to oblige.

Nate's clean organized room!

Then, after lunch, I asked Nile if he could do the same to his room.  To my surprise, when I suggested he and Nate do it together, they jumped at the chance and had his room clean in less than 10 minutes!

Nile and his clean room!

Maybe more impressive was the fact that they then went to the basement and cleaned it up as well.

our perfectly clean basement!

At the end of it all, we had a large moving box full of toys to donate to Goodwill.  To recognize all the hard work they'd done, they each earned two "mom points" and I took them out to dinner after we dropped off the box at the Goodwill Store.  

I'm pretty proud of these two tonight. :)

Cleaning closets

This is what happens when I go on a cleaning frenzy...  Each of those hangers (yes, I know there are a LOT) had a shirt on it this morning.

I packed away all Nile's 3T clothes and brought out the 4T (they are in the washer right now).

I'm determined to have these clothes organized when they get handed down to Novak.  It's been chaos for way, too, long.

I still have a ton of work to do in Nate's closet, and in Novak's whole room, but things are starting to look up.

I also cleaned the laundry room.


What has gotten in to me today?

calm within the chaos

I'm sitting here in the recliner in our living room, nursing Novak. All around me is laundry. In one basket, a load of Nate's clothes I folded this morning. In another, a pile of Nile's clothes, clean, but needing to be folded. And in another, a half-folded load of diapers. The rest of the diapers are on the floor partially sorted, patiently waiting for me to stuff and fold them. And, I can hear the washer entering it's final spin cycle on a load of swim trunks and beach towels (we have swim lessons tomorrow). All of these will need to be put away, hopefully before Tom gets home from work. Hopefully.

The kitchen is a disaster from Nile and my baking experiment this morning. (peanut butter oatmeal sandwich cookies - which are very, very good! Maybe too good...)

I have a to-do list a mile long, some things that I should have already done (preschool registration papers for next year), and some I would just like to do (scrapbooks are way out of date, I need to set up the boys' college savings accounts...)

But I'm not complaining one bit.

I am exactly where I want to be. And I wouldn't change a thing.

Unless, of course, you know of any laundry fairies that are available...?

Baby Fish's Room

It is starting to come along...

Today is one of those rare days when I actually don't mind doing four loads of laundry. That's primarily because two of those loads are tiny baby clothes, and the third was new baby crib bedding.

Of course I still have to fold and match about a hundred tiny socks when these loads come out of the dryer...so ask me again in a few hours if I still love the tiny baby things (I bet I still will).

Amazing Moment of the Day

While I was typing up the last post, Nate was goofing off in the office. Then he said, "Mom, this glass is pretty dirty. Do you mind if I clean it?"

My answer after I picked my jaw up off the floor? "Nope, go right ahead!"

What's more amazing, is what he did next.


Yep, he actually cleaned it.