Whirlwind

Life is flying by in a blur.

I had no idea that having children would make the hands on a clock spin like my ceiling fan on high!

There is always too much laundry, never enough hours in the day and as soon as I finish making one meal it's time to start prepping for another.

Most of the time I don't really mind. Honestly, I'm pretty much a procrastinator when it comes to cleaning the house so if time runs out and I haven't had a chance to dust the funiture or scrub the toilets I'm not overly concerned.

The laundry however is my nemesis.

Seriously...Does the crap breed in the dark on the floor in the basement?

Even with the best intentions, I can never seem to get it washed dried and folded fast enough and most times it makes it as far as the "laundry chair" in the family room. David's clothes are on the left arm, Daniel's clothes are on the right arm, their dad and I share the top of the back of the chair and pajamas and underwear are on the end table.

This has been the way I've done it since the kids were born.

Why screw with a good thing, right?

If you are here visiting and the chair is cleaned off it just means that I was expecting you.

My previous babysitter stopped over with her mom one afternoon and, noticing that the "laundry chair" was indeed living up to it's name, stated that she'd never see the chair without clothes on it.

Her mother gasped...I laughed.

It was true!

There are things in life that are more important than whether or not the laundry is put away.

Homeschooling my kids this year would be one of them.

If I could afford it, the kids would be in preschool. Unfortunately, I can't, so they aren't.

After doing some research, which thanks to Google is crazy easy, I decided that homeschooling for preschool won't be terribly hard so I'm trying.

David's Solar System

David is totally into it. He loves learning. He is my type "A"  kid who loves to figure stuff out and will choose to watch educational shows on his Kindle Junior. He knows names of dinosaurs that I can neither pronounce nor even knew about when I was a kid and recently grasped the concept that the sun is the center of the Solar System.

X is for x-ray

Daniel on the other hand loves to sound out the letters to make words but hates to do his writing exercises so much that he discovered that writing Dan is faster than Daniel so all of his stuff has Dan on it now. 

"Dan" isn't the best at following directions and tends to be a "color wherever the heck he wants to rather than inside the lines" kind of kid. However, he loves numbers and is going to be an amazing mathematician.

Well, as soon as he figures out that "eleventeen" is not actually a number. 

Our days are crazy, stressful, happy, frustrating and in general just a bit of a whirlwind. My house is not spotless, but my kids are happy and smart.

There will be plenty of time when the kids are older, and don't want anything to do with me, to clean the house.

These years will be over before I know it and life will take on a different level of crazy. Being present with my kids is so much more important than whether or not the toilets are clean.

Besides, I can dust tomorrow!

Mistakes Are Not Failures

I now have a job demonstrating Dyson vacuum cleaners on the weekends working both Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm. Hubby and I made the decision to do this so that I could earn extra income and he could watch the kids and we wouldn't have to pay out anything for childcare. 

I know that right now you are envisioning the door to door vacuum cleaner salesman who pesters the "decision maker" of the home into buying a vacuum...Well you'd be wrong.

I'm paid hourly to stand in either Bed Bath & Beyond or Costco and demonstrate how a Dyson works, I do not make commission.

I've been a Dyson user for years and love their products. They are not gimmicks and really do suck...in a good way :)

Some things you might want to consider when buying one of our products: It really is covered under warranty for five years. If something breaks and you wait 7 years before calling customer service, it will not be covered and it won't be our fault. It's not meant to vacuum up water. There is no need to get insane about cleaning the inside of the canister and/or washing it out with water. Technically, it is the inside of a vacuum cleaner and no one really gives a rats ass if it's dirty. If you have that much time on your hands, you might want to consider volunteering with a non-profit, I'm sure they'd love your enthusiasm. 

I do not know where the mattresses, refrigerators or foot massagers are located. One would think that that the black shirt with the word "Dyson" printed on it would alert people to the fact that I am not an employee of the store but you'd be wrong. The shirt is my uniform, the people at Costco wear red vests and in Bed Bath & Beyond the employees wear name tags that say Bed Bath & Beyond.

If you don't bother to notice that my shirt says Dyson and ask me where to find a toilet brush, please don't be offended when I can't tell you.

Oh and please save the "suck" jokes...I've heard them all...

I am actually enjoying this experience. I have a marketing job that I do from the house. A cake business that I run from the house and a business that I am starting with my sisters-in-law so it's not like I'm not busy. The bulk of what I do, I do from home and love it. However, I love being out working with the public too. Most of the time it's lots of fun but once in a while I meet someone who is obviously hell-bent on being miserable and trying to take everyone down with them.

I'll never understand this type of person.

I'm a generally happy person. I love to laugh and I love to make others laugh. I even tried my hand at stand-up and did pretty well. I really have experienced the rush of "the roar of the crowd" and loved it! Why anyone wouldn't want that feeling I can't imagine but some people just aren't happy unless they have something to complain about!

Last week we had our bi-weekly moms' group get together. Normally we have a speaker and then break out into groups to talk about specific topics and other times we have craft workshops where we learn things like knitting or review a book. It's two hours of free babysitting with a hot breakfast with other moms...an experience worth it's weight in gold...but I digress...Last week we didn't have a speaker or groups so we just got to sit and talk. We were sharing funny child stories and one of the moms was telling us about her son - "a numbers guy" at the age of six - who loves to watch the numbers change on their digital scale. He has asked her to get on so he could watch the numbers on the scale and when it finally stopped he exclaimed, "Whoa mom! Look at all the points you got!" In his mind higher was better!

Winning! 

We talked about changing our perceptions of our weight and seeing it for what it was...a number. Granted, you don't want to make a point on getting a "higher score" every time you step on the scale - if you even own one - rather being should be ok with the number that you get. We are not all built the same, we'll never be Victoria Secret models but we are who we are, our spouses love us for who we are, that's why he chose us. We need to be ok with the "score" and find ways to be living examples to our children of happy accepting people who are comfortable in our own skin.

I have fought with my weight my entire life. Between mean girls in high school and magazines that showed emaciated girls as "normal" I've always had a warped perception of my own body. It wasn't until I had kids that I realized my "shell" doesn't matter as much as my heart.

I have done many, many things in my life. I have been married before...a couple of times, I've been a step-mother, manager, clerk, mechanic etc., but the greatest, most difficult, yet most rewarding thing, is being a mommy.

At the time, each job seemed like the most important thing I could possibly ever do and I did it with as much enthusiasm as I could. If you know me, you know I am an all or nothing kind of girl. I do nothing half-way...it just wastes time.

As important as those things were at the time they pale by comparison to my life these days. I'm not talking about kissing boo-boos or changing diapers. Yes, those things come with the territory but the unconditional, deep-rooted love that I have for the two tiny little men who call me momma.
The smiles and the giggles that I get when I play peek-a-boo or the hugs and kisses I get when I get home from my part-time job on the weekends or the warm snuggly feeling that I get when I rock them to sleep at night all contribute to the most amazing love I have ever felt for another human being.

I don't try to be perfect. I don't want to be perfect. I've learned way too much in my life from my trials and tribulations. I don't want my kids to be afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes are not failures unless you fail to learn something from them.

James Dyson doesn't look at things as failures, he looks at them as learning opportunities. I want my kids to grow up with the same attitude and drive to find solutions. If I'm constantly trying to be perfect I am never showing them how to improve only how they'll never measure up.

I enjoy watching the kids discover something new and watching what they do with it. Just the other night they dug two new swim diapers out of the closet and had us put them on their heads. Yup! Hats! We've put those hats on them every day since. They love to run around in them and they are, of course, adorable!

I want their minds and their hearts to be open. I want them to be accepting of themselves as well as others and I want them to be happy.

We all dream that our kids will become doctors or lawyers or the next Pulitzer Prize winner but the fact is that I want my kids to be happy and know that they are loved more than they can possibly imagine, until they day their own kids are born...then they'll get it.

Maybe they'll find a cure for cancer or maybe they'll be in a Costco, politely saying, "No sir, I don't know where they keep the pickles, I work for Dyson."  As long as they are happy, my life will never suck.