What's Been Going On: Thursday, 20 January - Sunday, 23 January, 2022

 Welcome to a brand-new week! I can’t say I necessarily hate Mondays. The promise of a new week is actually a little exciting. So many possibilities, so many things to enjoy and do, even if we’re doing and enjoying them mainly from the comfort of our own homes. It does help to be a bit of a homebody when there’s a pandemic!

I’m feeling pretty good about my productivity levels this week. There’ve been a lot of naps in there as well- not sure if that’s a hormonal thing, a winter doldrums thing, or just a regular worn-out-from-waking-up-early-every-morning thing. Either way, I enjoyed them. A nap and a good blanket is always a lovely thing. : )

Here’s what I’ve been up to the last few days!

 

Thursday, 20 January, 2022

 

After breakfast and coffee, I edited and posted Thursday’s post. I got dressed and ready, took out the compost (six degrees Fahrenheit outside! BRRR!), and threw some black beans in the Instant Pot. I loaded and ran the dishwasher, and then it was time for a no-standing-outside-walk-directly-in school drop off!

At home, I edited and posted my review for Rookie Move by Sarina Bowen, then settled down for just over an hour’s worth of volunteer work on the computer. When I finished that, I swept and spray-mopped the living room floor, then did 30 minutes of my personal Read Harder project, reading from American Literary Almanac, edited by Karen L. Rood. I tidied the living room and spent a few minutes on the computer before heading over to the school to grab my daughter for lunch.

And then it was time for a relaxing afternoon! I had my lunch, then fell asleep in my chair for a very cozy nap. After I woke up, I played on the computer, then made dinner, One Pot Southwest Pasta- this is a quick and easy favorite around here. After we ate, I did my Duolingo, then headed upstairs for 30 minutes of biking! I showered, put my daughter to bed, then finished reading Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back by Mark O’Connell. My husband and I watched one episode of Deadly Women before bed.

 

Friday, 21 January, 2022

Breakfast and coffee first, then I began my Friday post. I got dressed, loaded the dishwasher, and scooped the litterbox, before heading out for a very cold school drop off. Thawing out at home, I finished and posted my Friday post, then hit the floor for a 12-minute Pilates abs video. I had a lot of things to do while sitting today, and I wanted to sneak a little exercise in there! This one is a particular favorite, but if you haven’t done any core workouts in a while, it’ll wreck you!

I knit 15 rows of the first square for the blanket for my friend’s children, then did 30 minutes of my personal Read Harder challenge. And then, fool that I am, I repeated that 12-minute ab workout. PHEW.

 

I took my daughter her lunch, ate lunch at home, then began reading Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby, and dozed for a bit. I picked my daughter up from school, continued reading, and fell asleep again! I’m blaming the ab workout.

After a dinner of leftovers, I did my Duolingo, loaded and ran the dishwasher, and biked for 30 minutes. I showered, worked on my grandmother’s cross-stitch (I’m making excellent progress!), and virtually attended the streaming services at my synagogue. This week was an interfaith Shabbat service of solidarity and peace, with not just our rabbis, but local pastors and imams from various Christian and Muslim congregations, in response to the hostage crisis last week in Colleyville, Texas. While I wish these kinds of services weren’t necessary, it was lovely to see the support from the community. (I attended one of these in person after the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; it was standing-room only. It’s nice to live in a place that understands the necessity of coming together in times of tragedy and pain.)

My husband and daughter were having an indoor campout on this night, so I read my book and then went to bed. : )

Saturday, 22 January, 2022

Lazy, quiet Shabbat. Much less stressful than last week’s! AND we woke up to more snow!

After breakfast and coffee, I wrote two book reviews, then ordered several books via interlibrary loan. And then I snuggled with my daughter and husband for a bit, which was lovely. : )

I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher and went over my Hebrew flashcards. After lunch, the headache I’d woke up with was still nagging me, so I thought maybe I’d lie down for a bit to try to sleep it off. Two hours of heavy sleep later, I woke up wondering what day it was. THAT was a nap!!! And my headache was gone, for which I was very grateful. I settled down with Prayerbook Hebrew the Easy Way and worked through Chapter 4, Pronouns, adding a few more vocabulary cards to my stack.

After dinner, I did my Duolingo, biked hard for 30 minutes (since I hadn’t gotten much else in the way of exercise this day!), showered, put my daughter to bed, and read. My husband and I watched an episode of Deadly Women before bed.

 

Sunday, 23 January, 2022

Work day!

After breakfast and coffee, I loaded and ran the dishwasher, got dressed, stripped the bed, and started my first load of laundry. I folded several loads and put a little of it away. I helped my daughter with her math homework (FOUR PAGES OF MATH PROBLEMS! She’s SEVEN!!!), switched the laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, and tidied a bit of my kitchen shelves that serve as my open-air pantry (since my regular pantry is the size of a broom closet, sigh).

As I was waiting for my daughter to finish up her lunch, I visited some blogs, and then we got to work on her room. I don’t normally share before pictures here, because they’re just so, so terrible- remember when I said my daughter can trash a room like no one’s business in minutes?- but here’s what we did (mostly what I did, but she did help).

 Before:

And after:

EXHAUSTING. My right hip was utterly screaming at me afterwards, but that didn’t mean my work was done! I switched the laundry, put all the folded laundry away (because now I could get to my daughter’s closet!), took out the compost and recycling, and made a pot of lentil soup and a batch of corn muffins. Then I was finally able to sit down and tackle two chapters in Le Petit Prince. I hadn’t gotten to any of this book yet this week and was feeling guilty about it! I spent a little time knitting one of the blanket squares for my friend’s children. I’m up to row 27. I had hoped to get a little further, but the cat interrupted me and said it was time to free up my lap. ; )

 

After dinner, I did my Duolingo (and skipped biking; my body was DONE!) and showered. I remade the bed with the washed bedding, then went over my Hebrew flashcards. I showered my daughter, and then it was off to read with me! I read until my husband came upstairs, and then we watched an episode of Deadly Women before going to bed.

 

And so ends the week! I see the potential for a nap in my future today, as I was up early after having a nasty dream in the wee hours of the morning. We’ll see, though; my husband will be working later today, so I’ll have to pick my kiddo up from school (so I’ll have to set an alarm!). It snowed a whole bunch more overnight, so driving to school will be an adventure, since our road isn’t plowed yet. Eep! Have a great week, friends!

Completed project: Overhauling my daughter's room.

My daughter has a lot of toys.

Like...

A LOT LOT LOT of toys.

That? Is a HUGE amount of toys. That's not even all of them. Under the bed, in the closet, in the toybox...

Toys are fun. Toys can be hours of imaginative play. It's always fun to get a new toy, right?

Well...too much of a good thing isn't necessarily a better thing, and that's a concept I've been pondering for a while now. I've posted a few articles in my Friday Thoughts posts about how less is more when it comes to toys, and that message came through loud and clear for me this week.

Recently, Elizabeth Willard Thames, she of the amazing and inspirational Frugalwoods blog, made a post about the challenges of holidays with small children. So much of what she posted rang true for me, and when she mentioned a book called Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids, my ears (eyes?) perked up. This sounded like something I needed, and as luck would have it, my local library had a copy.

I'm not done with the book yet, but SO much of what this author is saying makes sense. Basically, given too many options, too many choices for anything, kids become easily overwhelmed, and it shows in their behavior. One of the examples he gave talked about a little girl with so many toys that she wasn't even playing with them, just kind of...arranging them. Gathering them in odd mixes. And with that, I sat back and went, "Oh." Because that's pretty close to how my daughter plays with her toys. I'm constantly finding bags and containers full of toy food, play rocks, Mr. PotatoHead parts, Barbie clothes, a block or two, a shoelace, just odd mixtures of things that don't at all go together (but of course need to be separated and put back into their proper containers). And that's when I realized...maybe my daughter wasn't having all that much fun. Maybe something needed to change.

And so last night, I started making plans. I broached the idea with my daughter (she's 4.5) and, to my surprise, she readily agreed to it. Now, this is a kid who once sobbed during a game of imagination when a doll (that she had JUST MADE UP) had broken. The doll didn't even exist, but she burst into tears over the mere idea of this doll not existing anymore. But she was amenable to the idea of clearing her room out so she could focus on a select few toys, and so I told her that was the plan for the next day.

I'm even happier that I cleaned the basement out this summer, because that's where everything went. The first to go was the toybox, which isn't so much a toybox these days as a giant catch-all for stuff she rarely plays with anyway. And then the little Frozen mirror table, the Little People toys that she doesn't play with anyway, the tent and stuffed animals that filled it and rendered it useless (I SWEAR stuffed animals multiply. I'm going to go through them and pass some of them on, because no one on this planet needs four garbage bags full of stuffed animals), her dollhouse (she plays with the dolls and clothes, but not the house), and a whole bunch of other stuff. Downstairs it all went to a corner of the basement. She helped me carry some of it down, and she knows that she can visit it or trade some stuff out for something else whenever she wants, but for now, that big pile stays down there.

And we'll go through it from time to time, I'm sure, to see what we can get rid of, or what she's developed an interest in, but for now, we're going to give this new, streamlined room a try and see if her behavior improves any. She's always been an intense kid, prone to quick tantrums and meltdowns if something doesn't go exactly the way she thinks it does (or doesn't match up the picture in her mind. Last week, she sobbed because I wouldn't put doll pants on the cat...), and although I'm sure a large part of that is just her personality, overwhelming her with 234823497832749832 options for toys probably wasn't helping, as evidenced by the grouping-odd-stuff-together method of playing. Thus, the whole room overhaul.

And there we go. Calm. Clean. Relaxing.

When we were finished, her exact words were an excited-sounding "I LIKE my room like this!" She was especially excited about the two sets of drawers being separated. "Now I can reach everything!" she told me. Before I was even done hauling stuff downstairs, she was digging through the drawer with her coloring books and coloring on the table- something she's NEVER done before. The table was always covered with Little People toys she never played with, and although she knew exactly where the coloring books were, she never took them out. Today, she did. Later on, the table became a place to make phone calls (her kitchen has a cordless phone), and she used the stool under the table to set up a lemonade stand. I lay on her bed and read out loud to her as she played, and she enjoyed that. She kept sighing happily and chatting about how much she liked the space, and when we cleaned up before going downstairs for lunch, it took two minutes. It really does feel like an entirely new room. 

So thanks, Mrs. Frugalwoods, and thanks to Mr. Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, because although long-term results remain to be seen, today she's happy with the calmness of her new room, and so am I.