58 in January (An Otherwise Normal Day)

So, I have a bad habit. When I'm getting something out of the fridge that I know I'm going to put right back, I leave the fridge door halfway-open. And understandably, Madelyn has always tried to take advantage of the opportunity to grab whatever is stored in the fridge door. And she has always failed - until today. This morning, I grabbed the carton of milk out of the fridge and filled Madelyn's bottle, and in that time Madelyn managed to snatch a bag of pre-cut salad greens. And before I could take it out of her tiny hands, she turned the bag upside-down and toddled /squealed her way across the room, sprinking greens Hansel-and-Gretel-style all the way. So, I guess I should probably start closing the fridge door.

 [Madelyn and part of her morning mess - I think she 

was disappointed when she tasted a piece and realized that 

she'd snatched something that didn't really taste good on its own.]

Anyway, we had a great afternoon. Since it was a balmy 58 degrees outside, we spent some time in the backyard on the swingset. I know Taylor was especially glad that he didn't have to bundle up. (Madelyn didn't get off so easy - I put her in a jacket and a hat, just to be safe.)

Random thing I'm thankful for today: My children haven't totally inherited my pickiness. They tore into a bag of red seedless grapes this afternoon, and it made me happy. (I don't even like the smell of them!)

[Ew! The inside of it is green! Madelyn and Taylor are still big fans, though.]

[Madelyn: "Um, can we get the show on the road?]

[This is Madelyn's loving-this-grape face.]

Poor Taylor wasn't so thrilled when we came back inside - when we told him that he had to practice for his spelling test tomorrow. He worked at the kitchen table, with sporatic unnecessary-to-accomplish-the-task-at-hand chatter. As usual, though, everything he said was especially sweet. (He knows his Mama will never scold him for saying something sweet!) Case in point: "Mom, I miss you...you're so far away..." (Miraculously, this statement  spanned the vast distance between the kitchen table and the kitchen counter where I was working.)

He was happy to see that the ingredients for tonight's dinner included crescent rolls and cream cheese - relatively "safe" ingredients to a kid. Once he realized that it was a new recipe, though, he said, "Mmmm...now can you put upside-down pizza on top of that?" (Upside-down pizza is the only casserole-type dish that I make that he requests by name, and apparently he's convinced that any dish would taste better with upside-down pizza on top of it.)

Thankfully, in the end, dinner was a hit without making any changes to the dish. Definition of "hit" at our house: I already had all of the ingredients and didn't have to go to the grocery, Taylor had seconds, Madelyn squealed "more" in-between bites, and Richard complimented the dish. (Tonight, it was, "Wow, this is, like, flavor explosion!") So I'm definitely keeping this recipe. It took a little longer to prepare than my hungry family would have liked, but that was their only complaint. And if you're like my sister and think that main dishes without greens or strange vegetables in them are boring, you could always add some spinach or tomatoes - eek! - or something. (We settled for green beans on the side. Why taint a dish that is perfectly delicious on its own?) :-)

Why I Love My Messes (Rambling, Really)

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm particular - especially when it comes to my closet. Particular hangers for particular items (spaced equal distances apart, of course), every shirt folded in the same direction, shoes still in the boxes that I bought them in - that's me.  I was the girl who stored my rollerblades and my basketball and my outdoorsy things in my bedroom so that they wouldn't get the usual nasty on them from being stored in the garage. I was also the girl who vacuumed out my car every afternoon when I was in high school. And I was the girl who cleaned my siblings' rooms in my spare time - because I enjoyed it.

I was proud of the order - I was proud of the clean.

It goes without saying that, once I had children, I realized that my life was going to get a lot messier. (And it did.) This afternoon, though, it was really bad. Having been sick for the past three days, the messes had accumulated - I had a pile of dishes that needed to be washed, bathrooms needed to be cleaned, linens that needed laundering, floors that needed to be vacuumed and mopped, and, on top of it, I had a series of small Madelyn messes that needed to be picked up.

Three illustrations (just because Madelyn's messes are cute to me):

[She raided my bathroom cabinet - her favorite cabinet.

I'll be picking up bottles of nail polish from random spots 

in the house for the next several days.]

[She left me a pile of toilet paper in the half-bath.

This is really a daily thing at this point.]

[And because there's no toy cooler than trash, 

she left several little piles of trash like this one

 all over the living room.]

But today I did something that always makes me feel good -  I ignored the mess. I ignored it, not in the I'm-gonna-become-a-hoarder sense but in the I'm-gonna-enjoy-the-afternoon sense. Because today was the first day in three days that I wasn't miserably sick, Taylor and I made cookies, and I sewed Madelyn a pair of pants - and that was it. And what about tonight? Richard and I will inevitably watch a couple of hours of television together and offer pointless commentary to each other like we always do when we watch television - and that will be it.

All the things I didn't do today? I'll wake up to them tomorrow.

But I'll be proud of the chaos. I'll be proud of the mess. 

I'm Megan, and I'm a reformed clean-a-holic. :-)

Freezer/Cupboard Cleanout = Good, Cheap Fun!

My very first post - and what a way to start!

This morning I thoroughly vacuumed and mopped the kitchen and breakfast area. (I won't say how long it had been since I had mopped.) 15 minutes of cleanliness followed - and then Madelyn decided that she needed some more Cheerios - lots more Cheerios - and immediately.

So her big brother came into the kitchen and decided that it was time to remedy the situation the best way that he knew how. I mean, hey, the floor was really, really clean, right? The two of them shared this moment in the floor together (which was, in all honesty, really, really cute). But then I got really grossed out at the sight of them eating Cheerios out of the floor and asked Richard to sweep up what was left.

[I love that they're both wearing their caught-in-action faces in this photo.]

So once we got the Cheerios cleaned up, Taylor decided that he wanted to "cook." What this meant was that Taylor wanted me to clean out our freezer and cupboard and pull out any food that was past its date (or past the point of being an appealing option for a meal) and let him cook it into an icky concoction on the stove.

Today, I obliged, and we came up with quite the cast of characters for Taylor's culinary masterpiece: the flat remainder of a two-liter of Coke, a large wedge of cake that was far past its prime, an aged orange, some pureed squash that his sister had refused to eat (on multiple occasions), and a good-sized container of shredded carrots (that I'm sure were destined to become baby food but never made it that far). In addition to these, I added an assortment of spices and a partially-used packet of Italian salad dressing  mix.

He was thrilled with the options, of course, so he got right to work - and it was really fun to watch. He would pause to offer commentary that was very television-esque - i.e., "This is really going to bring out the flavor!" (I'm sure this was due to the fact that he and I have recently taken to watching Food Network's  "Chopped" together.) It didn't take long for him to run out of usable ingredients, though - so he soon pulled some red plum jam out of the fridge and tried to convince me that it was out-of-date, too. (It wasn't - but since there was only a little left in the jar, I let him add it to the mix.)

Then he decided that he wanted to cook something "real," so he whipped up some toast and smeared some butter on it - and showed it to me and asked, "Doesn't this look so good?!" He decided that it was so delicious, he needed more - so he dashed away to the toaster again. And then he presented me with two mugs, a gallon of milk, and a bottle of strawberry Nesquik and said that he needed me to make some strawberry milk to go with the toast. (And yes, I then realized that this was becoming a real-life If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.)

I think the toast ended up being a bigger hit than the pot of hodge-podge because he was actually able to eat it. I realized this when he announced, "It's good, and I feel like such a man - cooking my own dinner!" (No, it wasn't his dinner.) He offered other wise words, such as, "Did you know that grains are good for you? Grains are at the bottom of the food pyramid. The bottom is good, and the top is bad." He was also quite the food critic, I discovered, when he sighed and said, "Ah, I burned the edges a little on this piece." :-)