Getting back in the groove for 2018

Hi. So it’s been a while. I had to look up when my last entry was — July! And then I took a six-month break. Without preschool, I had both kids on my hands and my brain was filled with focusing on other people’s needs and didn’t have much room for fanciful things that I would want to write about. I’m sure I could have done a certain amount of complaining, but who wants to read 1,000 words of that? I try to keep my complaining to 1 or 2 sentences at a time and leave them on Facebook.

I remember last spring telling my friends that things were going so well, I felt like bad thing must be lurking ahead, just around the corner. Then somehow the kids and I lost whatever good groove we had gotten in, and the days became torturous and the monotony of day-to-day parenting had me really wanting to work again, or just have SOME PURPOSE outside of wiping noses and butts and cooking delicious meals and then throwing away half of them because the kids won’t eat them (but we WILL NOT be a family that caters to mac and cheese and chicken nugget tastes every single day). And then Josh got sick, with colds and sore throats and fevers and chills and tiny breaks in between for like 3 months. And the kids and I were sick with the stomach bug and then chest colds for all of December.

So yeah, with all of that going on, I didn’t write a single fun thing for myself.

But it’s January, and while I’m not making a resolution for writing this year, it seemed like a good time to at least put something out there. The one resolution I made for this year was to keep a gratitude journal, and 8 days in, I’ve done it every day so far. I could have just used any of a dozen old journals I have lying around upstairs but I wanted something with room for daily entries and a pretty cover, so I bought this one on Amazon. I’m hoping it’s making me less whiny inside my head, and I PRAY that I’m not being as whiny to my friends as I am on the inside.

I also adopted a phrase for this year, a mantra of sorts. I am prone to being dragged down by my kids’ bad moods, which seem to occur 6 days a week. On average. Apparently kids don’t know how to handle their emotions, and it’s like an adult’s version of being “hangry” times 12. There are a lot of kids’ tears over things like “I want that train and he took it from me” and a look in Knox’s eyes that says “why are you offering me yogurt when you know all I want to eat is blueberries for the rest of my life?” And I’m just not every sympathetic to these problems. I hate playing referee all day. I hate having to say the same things all day like “you need to share with your brother,” “please put your shoes on,” and “you need to do your responsibilities, I can’t do them for you.” They can’t control their emotions and they lash out and after about the 4^th episode of this in the day (sometimes as early as 9 a.m.), I’m losing it myself.

So that’s what I’m working on, trying to keep my positivity and patience throughout the day, regardless of how the kids are reacting. The mantra is “Teflon Mom.” As in, whatever shitty attitude you kids are throwing my way, I’m not going to let it get to me. It slides right off, just like that non-stick coating on my waffle maker that I wish I used more. Say it out loud, “Teflon Mom.” It has a very good sound to it. I recite it several times inside my head while I’m taking deep breaths before responding to the kids in their moments of breakdown. I’ll let you know if this works.

I heard on the Happier podcast with Gretchen Rubin (one of my favorite authors) the suggestion to set 18 goals for 2018, and I’m planning to do it! By the 18^th of January! So that’s my first goal. I’ll try to write another blog about them when I do.

And another big thing: we have started another phase of renovations on our house! My last blog from July was about how we were getting a new furnace (oil burning, not gas), and that installation finally happened in November. Since then, we’ve been finalizing plans for the layout of our basement PLAYROOM (holla!), my gourmet laundry room (unless we run out of money before we get to that), putting the bathroom back together down there, and creating a sort of mudroom entranceway at the back of the house in the old laundry room.

It is a really big undertaking because we’re insulating the basement, putting up new walls, leveling the floor and putting down nice floors, adding a radon mitigation system, etc.; and I plan to take before and after pictures and write about it along the way (Josh is estimating this could take the next 6 months, considering the extent of work, permitting process, and the rate at which we make decisions). But as of today, work is happening! Not actually in the basement though. A somewhat unrelated problem that we have, which has been extremely highlighted with this horrendous cold spell that has gone on for like 2 weeks now, is that we have an enclosed back porch room that is like 5 by 7 feet, with no heat in it, and the pipes in the master bathroom above are subject to freezing because of it. Well our contractor figured he could fix that in a day, by like, adding interior walls and a complete ceiling and a vent so that a heat source could allow the heat to rise up into that area and not freeze. And then later this week an electrician is coming in and adding a heat source so the room will stay warm.

The state of the tiny room as repairs started today.

I’m actually really excited about this tiny project, because it’s going to be FINISHED. This room has been in suspension for SEVEN YEARS, and it made me so mad that I put wrapping paper over the window in the door to this room so I couldn’t see in there and get angry every day. But now it’s going to have drywall walls, instead of only external walls with insulation and polyurethane sheeting over them—and the windows—and then crammed with excess kid stuff like strollers and play tents and stuff you take away from them when they’re being punished. We have this metal shelf that we’re supposed to put back in there with stuff we have nowhere else to go right now (especially with the basement cleared out and off limits), but I’m tempted to put my desk in there instead and make it an adjunct room just for me. Right now my computer sits on the countertop which is great for cooking, but not for looking things up on Amazon or reading a friend’s blog, or you know, WRITING. If the kids can see me on the computer, they are coming at me with a million questions (Knox asks questions with his eyebrows and grunts). I think I’m even going to paint it and buy a special tiny rug for in there. Ahh, rugs.

So that’s what I’m up to now, if not a very good explanation for my silence over the past six months. If you have a good suggestion for one of my 18 goals for this year, shoot me a message!