Strange

The yard sale is over, the DVR is under control (and not growing much on a daily basis), there is nothing 'big' on the horizon, potty training is moving in a positive/less time intense direction, my need to pump seems to be coming to an end, I've done pretty well with the first week & a half of packing Heather's lunch...and yet I'm still feeling pretty overwhelmed.

Odd.

I need to go to bed earlier, need to get/stay caught up on dishes, need to straighten the house from the post-yard sale uproar, need to deal with cat messes, need to take advantage of the nice weather, need to plant the flowers (which are growing wonderfully even though they aren't in the ground), need to deal with very overdue thank you notes, need to cook dinner every night in a way that doesn't bore me to tears but does provide food that my family will eat and I need to have a little me time to relax, knit and maybe (*gasp*) have a conversation with my husband.

Not to mention the emails to reply to, the travel arrangements to be made, the laundry, the need to put together something that I can wear to a wedding, the gifts for said wedding and overdue gifts from two weddings last year, baby gifts for this year and last, and a bunch of house projects that are overdue. Oh, and then there are the four or five knitting/crochet projects that are 95% done, the pants that are 50% hemmed and the dozen or so projects that need to be photographed.

I don't want to sound whiny, because in general things are just fine around here. Everyone is healthy, and the kids are as happy as a 3 year old and a 1 year old will allow themselves to be. :-P I'm just at one of those points where there is so much to do, but the moment that I get a little time I just want to say "screw it", do the bare minimum and play with yarn until bedtime...or until an hour after I should really be going to bed. I need to snap myself out of this bad cycle. And somehow I need to do it without taking a whole day off to straighten up the house, kitchen and laundry. Besides, I'm pretty sure that if I did take a day off I would just want to sit around and be lazy, and I wouldn't actually get caught up.

If anyone figures out how to manipulate the space-time continuum in my favor, please gimme a call.

List

This is one of those "for my own use" posts. There is a lot that I would like to get done before my parents arrive on Thursday so that we can have a fun and somewhat relaxing weekend while they are here. It is a little bit crazy with multiple birthday celebrations and a baby shower to attend, but I'm hoping that we can all have some downtime, too. So here is a list of what I'd like to get done in the next week, mostly this weekend. I'm not a huge fan of to do lists, but I know that sometimes I need them to keep myself from spending Heather's naptime watching TV and knitting. :-)

1 - Take down and put away all Christmas decorations.
Yes, the house is still decorated. Last weekend I spent so much time working and the weekend before was spent on general cleaning chores. I need it all to go away now.
2 - Dusting, sweeping and vacuuming areas that the decorations have vacated.
AKA - No artificial pine needles anywhere.
3 - Mop the kitchen floor.
With all the weather we've had it's beyond messy. Something needs to be done and now.
4 - Put away clean laundry, do more laundry and do hand-wash laundry.
It's getting a little out of control. Both the full hampers and the full baskets of clean clothes. It took me too long to put a semi-coherent outfit together this morning. (especially since I didn't want to wear anything remotely red and to try to include some black)
5 - Clean tea stain in living room carpet.
6 - Purchase a couple more birthday presents and wrap them all.
7 - Finish knitting and labeling baby accessories for baby shower, wash and block baby presents and wrap everything.
8 - Write grocery list (including food for birthday dinners) and go buy groceries.
9 - When I'm too tired for other chores, weave in ends and sew buttons on Amelia so she can be washed and blocked.
I'd love to wear her for my birthday and to the Pittsburgh Knitting and Crochet Festival! I think she's going to get boring solid colored buttons for the time being as I look for ones that I love.
10 - Only when baby knitting is done and I'm too tired for other chores can I work on Samus.

Hmmm...the list isn't as big as I expected. Hopefully this will keep me on task when I have time and help me have a relaxing birthday weekend!

p.s. I bound Amelia off on Tuesday morning! I tried her on Monday night before I knit the neckline. I got the impression that she fits pretty well, although a secure neckline, grafting the underarms and a good washing will tell me for sure.

Quick Update

I stayed up too late last night, but since I was productive I don't feel as bad about it. Both trees are now decorated with ornaments!

So except for fixing the lights already stranded on the banister (half of them are out now), I am done decorating for christmas - yay! There are still lots of household chores to do, but it feels good to get one checked off the list instead of spending 8-11pm on the computer, and being annoyed with myself for not being productive and for staying up too late.

(Image stolen from R's blog)

I cast on a gauge swatch for Amelia this morning on the bus. Just a quick break between daycare teacher presents. I'm 90% sure that I need to go down a few needle sizes and math is going to be required to substitute this yarn. But I think it will totally be worth it, and it will make for some great holiday car travel knitting!

Saturday update

I did stay a little late at work last night, but thankfully I am not working this weekend. In my pre-Heather days I probably would have gone in this weekend to deal with the overabundance of work on my plate. But it will have to wait until Monday. I'm hopeful for a focused and productive week. My fingers are crossed that no one gives me any more work. :-)

My trip to Bradford this past week was good. The public forum went well and the rest of our meetings were generally positive. It's sad that I'm now even further behind with meeting minutes. So I might "try" to work on them in the evenings after Heather goes to bed to get caught up. I might.

Heather and I were going to attend a playdate today, but it was only going to work if it was a one-nap day since it started at 11am. At 10am she started to get tired and trying to keep her awake caused a meltdown at 10:30. So no playdate for us. Considering that there was freezing rain followed by snow falling 90 minutes later I'm not totally upset to stay inside. Although we still need a first birthday present to give at brunch tomorrow, so i might need to brave the weather for a few minutes.

I've done a little straightening up, but I'm actually using Heather's napping time today to start to work on our taxes. I at least want to get to the point that I can figure out what information I'm missing and maybe come up with a rough estimate of how our federal taxes look. And after that, I'll hit the thank you notes that I'm determined to finish this weekend. Most of the things from last week's to do list are still outstanding...but I don't want to wait to do our taxes until the last minute again this year. Plus, my parents are coming in two weeks and I would love to have my dad review them since I've never used the childcare tax credit before. There is still the chance that I could do some cleaning during tomorrow's naps. ;-)

On the knitting front there is a little sad news. I realized yesterday that I made a mistake on the right front while working on the left front. I repeated the cable pattern two times too many. I didn't have any option but to rip back to my mistake. So now I have a completed back and about 5 inches of both the left and right fronts. Oh well. It was better than having to rip out the back which has many more stitches per row!

Hmmm. The snow is blowing harder now. I might be going out for that birthday present tomorrow morning...

Quickly

Ummm...let me see if I can be coherent on 4 1/2 hours of sleep. I'm pretty sure there is something about Heather that I have been meaning to post and keep forgetting.

Oh well. I'll remember someday.

I do want to tell you that Heather LOVES pasta. Spaghetti sauce, pesto sauce and mac'n cheese will be eaten enthusiastically. If anyone out there has any great sauce recipes with healthy ingredients (especially with interesting vegetables) I'm all ears.

This weekend I thought it would be nice to let her try out the toddler crayons she got for her birthday. After spending some time banging the little plastic animals together that act as the crayon "grips", she set them aside and focused her attention on the paper. :-)

So industrious and serious!

Since a few people have asked me, here is a little update on my progress and it isn't great. I ended up working rather late on Friday night and spending much of Heather's nap time doing work, too.

So, I dealt with the items in the upstairs hallway. I dealt with half the clutter in the foyer and made a minor dent in the dining room. I did a couple of loads of Heather's laundry and made a quick pass through her clothes to pull out what's too small.

I didn't go to bed as early as I would have liked and was up too late last night working.

I travel for work this week and have other deadlines, so the insanity will continue through most of this week.

And with that, I have to get back to work...