A normal day

I love these quiet, "normal," Saturdays. Emily started the day off right by sleeping through the night, from 10:45 pm to 7:30 am. And then she ate & went right back to sleep at 8:30, didn't wake up til 11. Now that's the kind of napping I'm talking about! :)

I had a blissful morning with my 2 oldest children. We watched cartoons, ate cinnamon rolls, played games, read books. And then watched some more TV and snuggled on the couch. I love having "big people" conversations with my 5 year old--it's hilarious! Zach got me to watch "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" for the first time with him. Also hilarious! Just thinking about a spaghetti tornado makes me giggle a little bit.

I took my first step toward a skinnier me last night: I sat down on the couch and thought, "You know, all I'd have to do is get out the Shred DVD and put on my sneakers." And then I thought, "but then I'd be up all night because I'd be stimulated by the exercise." And then, "No, you wouldn't be awake, you'd be exhausted--remember the last "first time" with Jillian?" On the other hand, "yes, I do remember. I'll do it tomorrow." So...I still have yet to break out the Shred. One day soon. My pants are begging me...

Our TV is on the fritz. The volume keeps cutting out and you have to turn the TV off and then back on in order to get it to work. Sometimes once a minute. It's starting to get annoying to say the least. The frugal person deep inside tells me that if it dies, we can live without TV. And even though I absolutely know that is true, I'm not sure if it's fair to do to my children this winter. We'll see what happens!

If you find yourself in need of a jumpstart in life, here's some advice: Just do the next thing. I read this on a blog a few years ago and although it's succinct and rather unmotivating, it really works. Whenever I feel overwhelmed with all the tasks I have to do or the lack of sleep, I just do the next thing, whatever that is. Usually it's dishes. Sometimes it's making my bed. That one little thing prompts me to do everything else because it doesn't make sense to only make the bed...you've got to pick up the dirty clothes from the floor because then the bed looks stupid all made up in a dirty room. See what I mean?

My favorite things to do first thing in the morning (when I'm not working, so right now this is just for the weekends) are:

1. Get myself ready--wash, dress, etc. This also includes any quiet time I get to have, although my quiet time is mostly at night lately.
2. Make the bed.
3. Start a load of laundry.
4. Put away the dishes from the dishwasher and load it up with whatever's dirty.
5. Read a book with the kids.

Someday my everydays will look like this, but for now I'll take it on the weekends! You'd think I could accomplish this list rather quickly but having 3 kids makes it pretty challenging. There are all sorts of things you do that you don't even realize in between those bullet points!

Do you ever have a seriously long whiny session with yourself about "why" you don't have time to do all the things you want to do? I just did. I actually typed it all out here, ready to whine to the internet world about my life a little. And then I read back over it like I usually do to make sure there were no typos or weirdly placed words...and I realized: You could be doing something different right now if you chose. And you could have been doing something different 30 minutes ago when you wasted time watching that Seinfeld re-run you've seen a few times already.

It's a little sobering to realize that I probably do have more time than I think, but I waste a lot of it doing things that are "good" but not "best" for this stage in my life. I'm going to need to do some serious soul-searching soon... (this is completely off topic but I just love the alliteration of that phrase "some serious soul-searching soon"--I am so goofy!)

Now that I'm losing my audience, I think I'll sign off. It's Saturday night here, Sunday afternoon for my friends across the ocean. Everyone enjoy the rest of your weekend!!