Catching My Breath

I can't believe I really just went almost a month without posting. That's so unlike me, but the last month has been busy. Not remotely exciting, but busy. Ree started kindergarten (well, I suppose that is exciting!) and we've mostly just been juggling things trying not to slip too far behind in everything.

Things have been off-kilter at our house for awhile. We just cannot find our groove. Things started getting weird last October. They got a little worse in November with vacation, Disney World, the boys' birthday, a wedding, and Thanksgiving all crammed into a week. We didn't expect December to be any different, and it wasn't. January and early February are also crazy in our house as we celebrate three birthdays and the kids love Valentine's Day. But we really thought we'd find our groove after that. Only we didn't.

By February I was an anger ball, and by April I was barely holding on to my sanity. The summer we had, all seven weeks of it, was a complete blur, especially when you factor in swimming lessons, vacation, and the death of our air conditioner. We squeezed in a few trips to the beach, but it felt just like that. Like we somehow took a shoehorn and squeezed them in to the few minutes we could find. They were okay, but not exactly relaxing.

So now we are trying to reclaim our sanity. I started by switching preschools for the boys. The preschool Ree went to was a wonderful place and very affordable, but it's a parent-run coop employing two teachers and no other staff, and there is a substantial work requirement for the parents. We had planned for Leon and Michael to go there, and I was president of the board for the upcoming year, so extracting ourselves was a little difficult. But when our first choice for an alternative preschool happened to have two openings for three-year-old boys on the days we wanted, we knew it was meant to be. And the boys are very excited about attending St. Mark Montessori Preschool next year, and each refer to it as "MY preschool," as compared to Ree's preschool.

The other thing we did was finally boot Natalia out of our bedroom. She has her own bed, but most nights I would wake up between 11 and 11:30 to find her climbing up into our bed with her blanket and sometimes a stuffed animal or two. Her sleeping with us was fine when she was little and cuddly, but she is now all knees and elbows and head butts. The challenge was figuring out where to put her. We have six people and two dogs in a three-bedroom house, and she refuses to sleep in a crib or really stay in her bed. She is also a fan of eating toys with small parts and has been known to literally devour a book, eating the binding right off while ripping a few pages along the way. And so last Saturday became the great house Tetris.

We started by cleaning out the sunroom which previously held toys, the dogs, a dresser filled with craft supplies, and a work desk that was used more for storage that work since Leon long ago established that chairs and toddlers are not a winning combination.

The sunroom before:

 

We decided to make this Leon and Michael's room and we attempted to sell them on the fact that now at least they would be in the same room as all their toys. We did not realize that we would need to spend an hour and 45 minutes de-spidering the place (EWWWWW is all I will say about that) and another half hour removing black mold from the windows and walls, but I suppose that needed to be done anyway.

So this is the room now. We are a long way from a true "after" picture, but at least it's a start. (And conveniently, we have not yet had time to move anything on the walls, making it easy to see how spaces changed.)

Leon is most liking the new space. Michael hates change, and consequently hates it. But that's just how he is.

Moving them into the sunroom freed up their old bedroom. This is what it looked like before:

We made this into Natalia's room, and she is loving having her own space. I have still ended up sleeping in there for at least part of the night for two out of the three nights she's been there, but at least she's not climbing into our bed. So here is the tan room now.

Yes, Natalia has a futon, pendant lamp, and jungle print rug. What every toddler has, right? The futon gives me a place to sleep, the pendant lamp is up high enough that she can't yet remove the light bulb (I shudder at the though that someday she and Leon will learn to team up), and the rug needed a home. At the same time, it all kinda just fits her personality. And the rug coordinates well with her Dora bed.

These changes also led to changes in the master bedroom, living room, dining room, and garage, but being that those rooms are still complete disasters, I will wait to share pics. For now, we are working on catching our breath.