Oh Honey

I know I don't tell him enough, so here it is -

I love my wonderful Honey because:
- he is the most even keeled person I know
- I can talk to him about everything and he listens to it all
- he brings our compost all the way out to the yard composter in the snow!
- although I do feed and care for Pumpkin at night, I never have to get out of bed to do so
- he does laundry and cleans without me asking - he is really a far better housekeeper than I
- he is a wonderful father
- I am balanced by his practicality and realistic views
- he is so patient with my "new ideas that we should try" like changing our diets, clearing our house of EMF's...
- he understands and values my work as a stay at home mom
- I can be just myself and know that I am loved for all of what "just myself" includes
- he is loyal and true - as a friend and family member, he is always there when he is needed
- he is thoughtful, and wants me to take better care of myself
- he tells me he loves me and that I'm a hot mama!

Honey, it took some time - thank goodness I at last got it right.

Living in quadrant II

I've decided to take back my electronic life. I have been trying to carve out a little more time for me, and realized how much time I was spending sifting through my email accounts. I used to have a great system with folders that certain emails went to automatically, but somehow the inbox is completely overrun and the folders are of no help. As a big believer in Stephen Covey, I was thoroughly dismayed to see how much time I was spending on the "not important, not urgent" tasks in Quadrant IV rather than the "important, not urgent" tasks in Quadrant II.

Over the years, I have gotten on so many lists for daily, weekly, monthly newsletters and special offers that I now either skim or delete without reading. The past two days, all of my free time has gone towards getting off of all of these lists! It's been pretty easy (albeit time consuming) so far - most of them have an instant unsubscribe or a quick check box. Only one has been troublesome in that I had to log on and change my preferences - which meant I needed to remember the user id and password I used for something I probably signed up for 10 years ago... They all say it takes a few days to get cleared in their systems, but this morning I had less email than usual so I can already see a difference!

Since it is the holiday season, I am getting email from pretty much every place I have ever shopped at or in as well, so I am hoping to get rid of all of those in the coming weeks. The plan then will be to stay on top of it - if I get a new promo from a store I recently shopped online, I need to be sure to unsubscribe right away. Better yet - I'll look for the box I'm sure must be there when I place my order that says "please don't send me any stuff besides this order". Yeah right.

Now if I could do the same thing with all of this paper around here...

THE most expensve paint job EVER

Apparently green is a tough color. I have had several green rooms over the years and have not had much trouble picking the color I liked.

This bathroom has been a nightmare - I realized about three shades of green in that it was likely due to the fact that there is not yet a light that works in the bathroom, so we are working off natural light from the solar tube and that just isn't cutting it. I have found a few colors I like, then I see them in the morning and hate them. The glass tiles are beautiful, but the iridescent finish is making it tough to find a complementary color. Here's the tile - OOOHHHHH so pretty!

Our contractor painted one green one day, another green the next day, and I have painted the room twice now with two different greens and done several swatches to test a few others. We bought 7 cans of paint. Yes seven. I think we will most certainly have another green room in our home soon... Thank goodness they are all no VOC - can you imagine the stink of 7 cans of regular paint???? I told Honey that I may open a green boutique (pipe dream, but a good one!) and paint all the shades of green in a mural all over the walls.

So here is one shade - I think it is a little too beachy - like the weird seafoam green that you could get on a Ford Taurus...

And here is the winner - well I think it is the winner - it is still drying. But honestly, it's the winner because I am just not going to paint another color again. I need to do one more coat and then touch up the ceiling and trim where I got green all over them...

Dancing Queen

Since we got sidetracked by renovations, I neglected to fill in the gaps on the dance classes!

Well, Peanut had her first class last week - she woke up on Tuesday talking about her dance clothes and shoes ("my shiny pink top, my tights and my ballet shoes!" and going to dance class. It was all I could do to keep her occupied for a few hours before we had to go! In the car, we listened to "ballet music" aka classical music to get in the proper mood for dancing. Oh who am I kidding - that is the only music she wants to listen to at all this past week!

I walked her to the door after we met her teachers and she went in all by herself. I could see her through the little window, and after about 10 minutes of just standing still and eyeing herself in the morror, she did actually begin to follow along. The girls were really cute practicing their stretches and tumbles and following the leader. They joined in with the younger class (that's right - there is a younger class - 18 months and up!) to do parachute games and some fun songs. She was beaming when she came out of class. I'm so happy that she enjoyed herself!


She has been talking about dance class all week. She tells me "you sit outside and only I go in". So I had thought it might be difficult, having her go in to her first class on her own, but she was a pro - I think she might even be upset with me if I dare enter the classroom. My little miss independence. Peanut has been dancing more this week too. She has even had her full dance outfit on a few times to twirl, but she makes sure to let me know that her ballet shoes are "only for the class mommy". Sorry these photos are not great - it's hard to take pictures through the little window!

Zen like spa bathroom...or not

I am a do it yourself kind of girl. I have a really hard time sitting back and letting someone else do something that I know is going to be screwy. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I can be controlling, but I try so hard not to be. Sometimes, I err so much on the side of caution that I could just kick myself for not being more controlling.

Once again, our tile is screwed up. This bathroom that seems like it will never be completed is causing me heartache and pain. We are still waiting for the rest of the tile mosaic to replace the mosaic that got trashed in the last debacle, but meanwhile the rest of the tile has gone up and looked good. So yesterday, the grout went down. I should have known something was amiss when the tile guy had to get a second bag of grout to finish the shower floor. A 25 lb bag of grout should have handily covered the shower walls, floor, and the rest of the bathroom floor. At 6pm, I discovered that he needed more grout because he had grouted the river rock shower floor so it was all level.

That is right - river rock covered in grout to the point that you couldn't really even see it. The point of having a rock floor is so you can have a zen spa like shower experience. You want to feel the rocks beneath your feet. We even had the rock in our house for a few weeks before deciding to use it to be sure we were OK with the bumpy feel. So he made us a grout shower floor like you see in a really old grubby locker room shower.

Well, he stayed and removed some grout. Then he removed some more. Then at around 8pm, he went home. This morning I looked and while you can see some rocks, there is still way too much grout and when you stand on it you can't feel any rocks. So what's the point? Why did I pick out this great rock floor if it is just like regular tile? Oh boy. There was a grout haze still on all the tiles too, which I know is a bad idea because I have made the mistake of letting it sit too long myself. We have a perm ant haze in our hall bath, and there was no way I was letting that happen again here - I washed the shower walls and bathroom floor this morning before honey left for work and they look much better. So this morning I called to talk to the "boss" and they will fix it....of course they will. But honestly that is not the point. The point is that I am paying for someone else to do this and do it right. There is NO REASON that I should have to be a fly buzzing and buzzing around to be sure things are done right. Nor is there any reason I should have to be reading grout and tile specs when others have not checked them out themselves... I should get a cut of the labor cost at this point as I am acting GC most of the time.

So now the shower floor has to come out. And we have to order more tile. And it needs to be reinstalled. And re-grouted. I think I won't do the math because it might make me ill, but I bet it would have been much less expensive for me to have them get to the point where the bath was tile ready, hire a nanny for two weeks and just do it myself. We still have no closet and our clothes are all in the guest room where we will have guests next week. We have no light fixtures or switches installed as of yet. We have no paint on the walls...it seems while we are dealing with all the tile headaches that we could have made some headway on the other parts of the work. I am so close to just doing the wiring myself. I think if I wasn't blogging right now that is what I would be doing.

How weird are we?

As we dive deeper into this new way of eating - or old way of eating depending on how you look at it - we have lots of ups and downs. When I make pork chops with a salad, steamed cauliflower and cucumber slaw, and Peanut eats her cauliflower first, and asks for more, I know we are on the right track. When she doesn't know what to do with a food that most kids her age have eaten before (lollipops for example) I am so pleased to see that we really are making a different way of food with her.

But them there are the downs. Today at her farm school class, we had a snack that I was totally shocked with. I have come to expect that I won't be pleased with the snacks we have there, but since it is not the end of the world and we only have one more class to go, I haven't said anything. The snacks aren't horrid - there is always juice (which we rarely have at home), and crackers or pudding or chex mix, or whatever. Today, snack was an ice cream sandwich. That's right. At 11:30 in the morning for a bunch of 2 and 3 year olds. Ice cream, sugar, cookie, and processed trash galore. What makes a preschool teacher decide that this is OK? When we saw them, one of the teachers made a comment about how Peanut would like snack, and all I could do was say that I wasn't sure she would know what it was as she had never had one before. Honestly, I am not a huge fan of the overall program, (that is a whole other story) but my expectation could never get so low as to assume we'd have ice cream in the morning at school. I think the worst part was that not one of us said anything about the snack. No one called them on it. We all sat there and let our kids eat it (and some parents ate most of it themselves). I'd like to think that we were all in the same boat - too shocked to do more than tightly smile. I'm not sure that is true.

I think that it might be common to give your 2 year old an ice cream sandwich before lunch. Peanut and I had a whole conversation about the snack once she figured out it was ice cream. We talked about what was on the outsides (the cookie) and how that makes it a sandwich. So at least she learned something new, oy. I don't know - I feel like we are so weird sometimes that I can't tell what is really crazy and what is just me.

Last week, I told my grandmother (who has always eaten well - no processed foods) that we were focusing on boosting our immunity to prepare for the flu season in lots of ways, including decreasing/eliminating sugar. Even she was surprised and admonished me, telling me how I would cause my kids to gorge on sweets the first minute they got if I controlled them too much at home. Why is it expected that kids will eat crap and crap alone? I grew up eating pretty well, and yeah, I liked to sneak cookies and all when I was in school, and I certainly saw the freshman 15 consequences of eating junk when I started college, but the pendulum swings and look at me now.

I want my kids to learn how food makes you feel and how when you eat things that are real foods with good nutritional value, you have energy and focus and when you eat things that are processed and have too much sugar and chemicals you feel fuzzy and tired. They can choose, but I want them to think about what their choices mean. Why on earth would I sabotage that by giving them ice cream in the morning at school of all places? I could go on and on about school lunches and vending machines in public schools and fast food commercials and toys in the meals... but I know I will need that energy for elementary school, and this is not ever really preschool yet and I am already wound up about how people who should be setting good examples just don't.

So sweet