What's My Job Description?

Here's a question for any stay at home moms out there:  How much help do you get from your partner?  I know Brendan is a great help and is always willing to help, but I feel like his job is going to work and making the money and my job is everything else.  And it's never ending.

My days start at 4am, when Otis wakes up for his first nursing of the day.  Back to sleep until 6ish when Ingrid gets up.  Coffee, breakfast, clean up the kitchen from Brendan's hasty rush out the door, clean up the living room from Brendan being up later than me and leaving mugs/blankets/laptops all over the place.  I deal with Ingrid, then I deal with Otis, then I maybe deal with myself.  Maybe.  The laundry gets done, the groceries are purchased, the meals planned, the floors swept, the baby worn so he naps, the kids fed, the cat box cleaned, the bills payed.  Then it's dinner, bedtime for Ingrid (which has recently become a knock down, drag out brawl every night...and can only be done by Mama) a brief pause when Otis is happy and will be content with Brendan, and then bedtime for Otis at 9pm, also done by Mama.  And then I pass out. 

I'm not complaining about my job, because I love it.  I love being home, not having to bring the kids to daycare, being able to go for long walks to the park, staying in my pjs until 10am.  But I could still use some help.  Like I said, the mister is willing to help but doesn't do it on his own usually.  I can ask for help and get it, but for example, I never come home to a fresh load of laundry all nicely folded, or a swept floor or cleaned kitchen.  And his excuse is "I had both kids."  It is SO frustrating.

He works hard, he has stress at his job and worries about providing for us, and I appreciate that.  But I don't get paid and my job goes for way longer than 9 hours a day.  And I work weekends and holidays.  And Mama is tired!  I just want help.  I have thought about hiring someone to come in and clean once every two weeks or so--but that's ridiculous!  We should be able to get things done around here as a team and I feel like I'm alone in everything house related.  Like that's my job as a SAHM, and I should just deal with it. 

Anyway, any tips on getting the help without it becoming a huge deal?  Without fighting or arguing all the time?  Much appreciated, thanks ladies!

Cleaning. Which Makes Me Want to Be a Minimalist.

So Brendan has had job interviews and hopefully will have an offer or two this week.  Which means I'm back to packing and cleaning.  I just went through every closet upstairs last week, and already they're filled with junk I moved from one spot to the next...I just packed up all my sewing stuff and found a box of wires that I have absolutely no idea what they go to.  I found dead batteries, scraps of ribbon, pieces of patterns I've never made.  So much junk!

Which leads me to minimalism.  I would SO LOVE to be a minimalist.  I want a house with no knick-knacks, artwork on the walls that looks like it was meant to be placed there (not just wherever there was a nail hole.) I want clean lines and open spaces.  Instead I have hand me down couches with tons of pillows we always throw on the floor, and baby swings and toys galore...

In some respects I think I am doing an okay job.  I will never need a walk in closet because I don't own a lot of clothes.  I have about four pairs of shoes.  I only buy one thing of shampoo at a time, and for that matter, only one face wash, toothpaste, cleaning product, etc.  I have tried to stay away from lots of toys for Ingrid, especially the ones that have tiny parts and aren't much fun.  I purge and donate monthly.  And somehow my house ends up full of crap every time I have to move. 

This time we've only been in our apartment for ten months.  I would have hoped that meant that we'd have at least two months less crap around, but we had a baby.  And I love fabric.  And thrifting.  Sigh...it's never ending.

So back to cleaning I go.  I throw stuff away, I have a donate pile, I clean, I pack.  And it still seems like we have so much stuff!!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

I'm almost six months along now, can you believe it??  And just yesterday it finally hit me FOR REAL that we are going to have another baby.  It's been all in the hypothetical up until then.  Yes, someday we'll have a baby, someday these tiny diapers will be put on something other than a Cabbage Patch Kid.  And then yesterday I stood in front of the mirror and looked at my expanding belly and felt little kicks and rolls and it hit me--there is a baby in there!!

Ingrid and I went to Salvation Army and had a great time searching through the kid's clothes.  I found some amazing things for my friend Heather's etsy shop 3RingCircus, I got some new "cozy pants" for Ingrid, and I got a little tiny newborn outfit that has a moose on it, and the feet are tiny moose, too!  It's for bringing wee one home from the hospital.  Again, it hit me that we will go into the hospital with a big belly and come home with a wriggling newborn, amazing!

I have been pretty down lately about not knowing where we'll be going next, as Brendan looks for jobs.  We're not going to be in this apartment for too long, so I don't see the point in making it very homey.  And then I get depressed because there are no pictures hung or curtains or anything.  And I have boxes of stuff for when Otis comes but I can't do anything with them, no nesting at all, because we will either move before he gets here or right after.  It's frustrating.  But yesterday I got over it and decided that I should just do little things to make myself feel at home again, even if it's only for a few months.  So I'm making curtains for my kitchen today out of this cute lemon print fabric I've had on hand.  And I have a matching yellow rug I found in the basement.

I cleaned up the basement finally yesterday--what a chore!  Ingrid used to have her play room down there and then over the summer, because we didn't have a dehumidifier, we got mold.  After cleaning all that up, I just threw stuff down there, and every time I'd go do laundry it would bug me that I wasn't more organized.  And that we had about five lamps from old apartment dwellers that didn't work shoved under the stairs.  And that we got more toys for Ingrid and they were taking over my living room and I really really wanted a place for her to go play again.  SO...a little sweep and mop, throw out old lamps, move baby boxes under stairs, move furniture around, wash rug, and move toys downstairs again, and there you go.  A playroom again!

So things will change, as they always do, and I have to remind myself that I can roll with it, deal with it, it will all work out.  Some days I just want to be settled somewhere, to know we're going to be somewhere for awhile.  And others I realize we're still in the early stages of our marriage and family, and this is what we'll look back on and laugh at how young and carefree we were.  Someday.

The Mold Attacks!

Last night I found that there was mold covering almost everything in our basement.  We have not only storage down there, but we've put a play room down there with almost every single toy we own for Ingrid!  So I had to get some bleach water and rags and scrub down what I could.  Unfortunately about half the toys had to go. 

I was sad about the talking Lola doll.  She had black all over her poor face and I couldn't wash her because she's got batteries.  Into the trash...along with a few other stuffed things that were beyond washing.  Her kitchen got a nice scrubbing but still smells pretty bad so I think we may have to get rid of that too.  Half her fake food went into the garbage, and some books were pretty nasty, too. 

After a couple hours of scrubbing and probably inhaling more bleach and mold spores than is healthy for a pregnant woman, I had all the toys out of the basement and put away upstairs.  The good thing is that Ingrid hasn't played with these toys for some time, as we've spent so much time outside in the sun.  So bringing up the toys that would stay was like getting all new toys to her!  She has kept busy all morning.  And it's nice that I cleaned something in this house and got to reorganize things that had been slipping into disaster zone. 

Unfortunately some of our belongings were hit, too.  We had to throw out the baby backpack, which was broken anyway, so not too huge of a deal.  A sleeping bag sack is disgusting but hopefully the expensive sleeping bag is unharmed.  Our backpacks luckily were not in harm's way, and all the baby stuff we have accumulated was thankfully in plastic bins and is okay.  When we were in Milwaukee last week we saw the devastation of everyone's basements flooding, so I felt lucky that we could at least salvage half of what we had down there.  And I'm feeling lucky that none of my sewing stuff was harmed!!  That really would have killed me!

So now another day of reorganizing and downsizing and we have a clean living room with a new sewing nook, and Ingrid has a new room with all her toys stashed away nicely.  It was nice to have a playroom but it will be nice to let her play in her room, too.  As long as she still has a place to store her toys without me having to step on them every two seconds, I'm okay!