Projects

I am now into my seventh week as a SAHM.  Still enjoying it immensely. This time around I am taking 6 months off from work!  I've added a ticker above as my "back to work countdown."  Not because I'm eager to return to work (just the opposite, at this point), but to help me remember to cherish this time --- as it is limited, in more ways than one.

Katie has been a bit restless this morning --- lately she's been super easy in the mornings - having a nice awake period just after Ben goes to school, where we can play and interact.  And then spends the rest of the morning dozing with a few breaks to nurse and get her diapers changed.  But for now, she seems pretty happy and settled into her bouncy seat for a little nap --- so I (hopefully) have a bit of time to myself.

When I'm feeling nice, I use these morning naps to do the dishes and laundry, clean-up and plan some meals and make grocery lists.  When I'm feeling selfish (as in right now), I catch up on email, post to this blog, or do "frivolous" things such as join facebook. :)  Having these little bursts of time is amazing - even when she is restless and needs help - as it is such a contrast to the end of my pregnancy, where I was working full-time, and just feeling generally huge and exhausted all the time.  Having a clean kitchen is a victory now - and Mark also seems to be enjoying my ability and energy to help out around the house a bit more.

I'm also enjoying learning how to be domestic.  Since we've been married, Mark has been the primary (and sometimes exclusive) chef in our house.  And especially in the recent past, I have done little more than make the token meal from time to time (however, Ben and I have become experts at making muffins together).  Part of this was convenience - Mark's schedule allows him to prepare dinner in the late afternoon - and the other part was that Mark actually became quite good and skilled at it - and it became a sort of hobby for him.  We have Alton Brown's full DVD collection, he subscribes to Cook's Illustrated magazine, and has taken a few cooking classes at Central Market (Houston's rather swanky grocery store).

However, cooking with small children is not quite as glamorous, and cooking every day can get tiring, so Mark has welcomed my suggestion that perhaps I try to chip in to meal preparations during my leave from work.  This is all very novel to me, so I'm enjoying finding simple recipes (please share any of your favorite easy recipes or cookbooks!), and am rather pleased when some of them actually turn out tasting good!  In this process, though, we've learned that Mark is the pickier eater of the two of us - which he is certainly allowed when he's the one cooking. :)  He's been very gracious about eating my meals as well, only adding comments when I suggest making the same meal again.

All that being said, I read in a parenting magazine once that taking care of small children is about "as pleasurable as housework."  And I think there is real truth to that.  There are those adorable, perfect moments where you think this is why I wanted to have a family.  But changing the fourth diaper in an hour, doing an average of 10 loads of laundry a week, and needing to run the dishwasher every single day is really not all that fun.  Right now, I actually don't mind it, because I am so pleased that I can keep up with the housework during those few baby/toddler-free moments --- whereas I just could not when I was pregnant and working full time.  But it's always still with the knowledge that I'll need to repeat it all the next day (or let it pile up, if I chose to do something else, such as blog) :)

So what keeps me sane?  Projects.  I love Projects.  Just about any project will do.  It just needs to be something (a) useful (I'm not so into crafts, etc. unless I can fill a need such as give it someone as a gift, or spend time entertaining Benjamin with it) and (b) can't be undone the next day (hence the less-than-total satisfaction with dishes, laundry, etc).

Since I learned the helpfulness of having projects to do during my shorter (3 month) maternity leave with Benjamin, I looked forward to beginning a few during this leave with Katie.  Granted, days and sometimes a couple of weeks can go by without a whole lot of progress --- but even a few minutes chipping away at getting something done really boosts my spirits, and gives me something to think about and look forward to as I pace the floor with a cranky, sleepy (and sometimes screaming) child.

And we have many, many potential projects in our house.  Probably should have started with the baby room, as our daughter still does not have a room or a crib (she's in a bassinet in our room).  But we didn't.  We started with our living room.  Which makes sense, as we spend a lot of time in this room together during the day --- particularly because it also serves as our desk/computer room.

And this room has forever been a work-in-progress.  And we are almost done with it!  Close enough that I'm posting pictures!

So what are you looking at?  It might help to see the way-before picture --- this is actually a picture from just after we closed on our house - back in 2005.

I couldn't find pictures of it, but our living room was furnished with mis-matched items from the various stages of our lives.  And a lot of it.  Since we were able to claim a good portion of that from the flooding, we have been slowly picking out new furniture to replace it.  And we were able to finally finish this room over the past few weeks --- including Mark installing and programming an HTPC (home theater PC computer!)  Now we just have two components to operate our TV, Blueray DVD player and stereo!  And it's connected to the Internet, so we could stream TV shows and movies right to our TV.  And we only have ONE remote control for all of this (unheard of, I know).

So in these past few weeks, Mark hung our TV on the wall, did a BUNCH of wiring (so that the wires connecting everything wouldn't show), we bought a new bookshelf from Ikea to house the two components and still leave plenty of room for Ben's toys (no more wire crates!), and we bought a carpet for our floor.  Whew!  So fun to have it all just about done!

And here's our little girl, sleeping peacefully and allowing me to write this blog!



















So what is our next project?  Since we only have a three-bedroom house, we have lost our guest room to make it Katie's room (actually, right now, it's our junk room --- sorry, Katie).  So we're modifying Mark's studio to allow it to be a guest room when we have visitors.  But first, we have to do a lot of organizing in there to make more room.  That's our project for this week and next.  After that, Mark's big project is to build a Murphy bed.

Okay - this little girl's awake.  Probably should go be a mom now instead of just writing about being one.  Bye!