Why would anyone be seeing as I hardly come here anymore, either? I'd like to- think about it often, actually.

This week's excuse for no blogging: two small sick girls and one bigger one (that's me.) E has left home and her evil twin sister seems to have moved in; R's not so bad except for the mini-nursing strike and the desire to stay up til after 11, which seem to be symptoms of her cold. (Please, Lord, let them be symptoms of her cold!)

Right now I am multi-tasking and blogging whilst nebulising myself for asthma/cough. This has the added benefit of nearly completely cutting out all other noise so I can't hear the unhappy bathers in the room behind me. Gordon deserves a medal.

This doesn't last forever, does it?  Gordon says it doesn't but what if his brain has gone as mushy as mine?

Works for Me Wednesday

This sounds like such a simple idea (it is!) but you wouldn't believe how many times I have remembered it and found it helpful.

Every Monday is No Guilt Monday. (I'm a homeschooling mum so my no-guilt Monday may look different to yours but it should still work for you.) Here's what it means for me:

Monday is often a tired-after-the-weekend day. A day the house looks like someone ran through with a stick and knocked things off shelves on purpose. A day of tidying and more laundry and sometimes lack of motivation. So...

It doesn't matter if the TV is on a bit more for the toddler. It doesn't matter if we get takeway (takeout) chips down the road. It doesn't matter if I don't get everything done or do less laundry or wear slippers all day. I don't have to take people out and about. It doesn't matter if dinner is soup.

I hope this helps someone else as much as it has me over the years.

PS I guess you could take it to extremes but it really is meant for encouragement to lighten up a bit and start the week slowly and gently if necessary.

My 2yo's first picture study narration:

Here's the picture, Raphael's The Transfiguration:

And my daughter's comment when she saw it displayed on top of the dishwasher this morning:

"Bouncy, bouncy."

I think Jesus would laugh, don't you?

This is what was happening.

And then she went on to add plastic pants on the outside of her clothing plus a tartan napkin draped over her hair. Very chic. She sort of looked like an incontinent Presbyterian nun who ran a clown ministry.

Certainly my husband doesn't. I could bore him to sleep if I talked about this too much. But I am excited because I have just solved a laundry problem that has been bugging me for weeks- no, months.

I can get the silly stuff into the machine and onto the line or into the dryer fine and dandy. It's putting it away that is the killer for me at the moment.  I think perhaps because it was a two step job (at least) and I lead a half-step life right now, with two little girls who produce masses of laundry but can't contribute to any solution yet.

The difference is that, instead of sorting the traditional way into darks, lights, undies etc,  now I am getting everyone to use a separate basket for dirty laundry and then washing each person's laundry separately. Already sorted. This seems to be some sort of key. So, when it dries, I have a small amount of laundry that is already sorted and I can put it away straight away! 

Of course T1 and M2 can put theirs away. (And eventually they will be washing it as well.) I may experiment and wash theirs together and see if it still works.

I'm actually doing more work than I was because it was the boys' job to sort undies and household washing (such as tea towels and washcloths etc.) But it's taken me much less time to do them myself this way. I am still washing whites separately; I just pull them out as I put in a load.

The other thing is that I have counted everyone's underwear (OK, I know this is starting to get too much- even for me) and worked out that instead of washing everyone's clothes weekly we can squeak by with every eight or nine days, which should make life a bit easier, too. Everyone except the girls, of course, who run through their clothes at a fine old pace.

OK, there must be someone out there like me. I'm a minimalist stuck inside a hoarder's body- or perhaps the other way round.

I walk into the girls room to weed down to five or six outfits plus 2 church outfits... And then comes the conversation in my head:  "But I love this little Tshirt...  And that one is hardly worn. " and  pretty soon I'm stuck. Again!  Aaargh!

And we won't even go into what it's like when I try to get rid of books.

M1's song that he sings when he and Bits do horsey-rides together:

Shout loudly:

"We ride hard!

We ride firm!

(A bit lower and slower) We ride for the Ponderosa!

(Shout even more loudly)

We ride like headless chickens through the night!"

Why yes, he did make it up by himself!

 How did you guess?

I thought "ja" for yes was cute. But we've hit new heights.

Now it's the most definite, well-pronouced little "yes" that  you could imagine. Actually, it's more like "yesss" or, sometimes, "yesh". We keep asking her questions just so we can hear the answer. Most days around here, "no" seems to be her preferred word but today it was definitely, beautifully a "yesss" day.

I've discovered a secret. Well, actually, it's not a secret at all. But it really is true, if you stop and enjoy them- even when you are tired and they aren't sleeping the way you wish they would- they can be your refreshment, your therapy. 

I've heard that having a dog can significantly reduce your blood pressure. Surely a good cuddle with a two year old or a kiss-fest on baby cheeks must do the same. I'm sure it does for me.

And now I'm editing this to add that, only a few months ago you could ask Bits any question and she would answer yes, with a nod. This led to hilarious lunchtime games of coming up with the most unlikely questions.  "Are you a mass murderer?"  being the best (or worst) one. You have to know how pink and gold and little-girly she is to really appreciate it though.

And she is getting girlier everyday. Today she wore a tail all day and a crown for most of it. She is fascinated by princesses. Already! I can't believe it. And she came up to me tonight saying "Ball! Ball!" and I looked around for one but what she meant was a ball- that you dance at. Good grief. She has no real idea what it is, I'm sure but she knows it has something to do with a princess so that's good enough for her.

And today it was pronounced more like "yiss" or even "yss".

"Can you get the Amidala?"

"We need the Amidala!"

Can  you guess what it is? 

No, we don't have Padme hanging round our house. It's........

a pillow!

One of those curved, neck-y kinds of pillows. And when you wear it on your head (don't ask) it makes you look like you have a Queen Amidala head-dress on.

Oh, alright. My son put it on once and I commented on the resemblance and he did a very good imitation of Q.A. and we all fell about laughing and that's what it's been called ever since.

And it's what we use to stop the baby's head from flopping all around in the stroller or the car. Though we don't need to use it so much anymore. Sob!

Why does everyone have one?  One of those funny family sayings- that's what I meant.

Our baby can no longer be called a puggle; she can hold her head up all by herself even though some of her puggle-like qualities remain. That will explain the following nicknames:

Princess Jellybuns (T1 swears there are no bones in those little legs!)

Miss Boomsticks

The Fatling

Do you see a theme  here?

but Bits minds her Ps and Qs very well at the moment. 

"Peez" and "Koo" are two of our favourite words at the moment.  She also says "ja" instead of yes and it cracks us everytime.

I had a profound thought while making latkes for lunch today. It's not everyday I can say that, so let me enjoy it for a second...

OK. 

One of my favourite memories of childhood is standing around in the kitchen waiting for the next lot of potato cakes to be ready as they came from the frypan. It wasn't a sitdown meal at all but more like waiting for them to come off the conveyor belt.

So I make them for my family.  And every time I do, I think "Is this really worth it?" They take so long, I get so hot and they're gone so soon.

As I'm about halfway through the batch T1 says "I love it when we have potato latkes." And I think of that enduring memory I have and hope it will be the same for him.

Some things are worth doing, even if they are hard and boring and tiring and don't last long.

That night I  spoke to my mum on the phone. "Did you enjoy making grated potato cakes?" I asked.  

What was her answer?  "I can't say that I ever exactly enjoyed making them..." 

I'm so glad she did!

Last night, in the dark and on the way to bed, I noticed my old calendar just sitting there. December's picture was of a red teapot. I glanced up at the kitchen and there was a spot just crying out for a touch of red. So at half-past I'm-not-going-to-tell-you I was cutting and contacting and blu-tacking it to the wall.

And when I walked into the kitchen this morning, I just had to smile.  Just right!

struggling with my attitude.

I want everyone to go away for a while and/or not eat or wear any clothes so I can do what I want to do! Chuck! Sort! Clean! Toss! Move!

So I can go from this:

to this:

Deep breathing and reminding myself of what is really important is only just helping.

I'm hoping this gets it off my chest a bit more.

I love looking back at the old year, in a way. I love to see the good things. I hate to see it passing. I always like the old and familiar much better than the new and untried.

Last night we sat down with our older children and shared what we were thankful for over the past year. We came up with over four pages of blessings!  Then we shared a glass of wine with them and prayed. (One glass between the four of us; they are only fourteen and eleven!)

The last entry I wrote down was one from my husband: Thanks for a quiet and an uneventful year.

I'm such a coward. As I look out from the first day of the new year I always feel scared. What will this year bring?  My father could die. Or something awful could happen to one of my children. The first is, humanly speaking, much more likely than the latter. But who knows?

I don't want to think about these things before they happen. I'm not strong enough. Thankfully, I know God is good and will sustain me. But the New Year forces me to stick my head out of my hidey-hole for  a while and survey the huge expanse of the unknown.

Just in case anyone else out there is like me.

I'd love to be a minimalist. (We're not talking books here- you know that, don't you?) 

I'd love a streamlined home with lots of clear space.  (I don't like modern furniture and decor, so I'm an eclectic minimalist, I guess.)

I keep planning and trying to get rid of stuff. Which is hard, because I'm the only one in the family who thinks like that. I have a joke that if we went overseas I'd have a spare pare of undies in my handbag because that would be all the space I'd get.

I have plans for decluttering. I look at a room and think "When I get the time I will gut this room and be RUTHLESS."  And I do try. But it occurs to me that if I gave the amount of time to cleaning and tidying my home that I give to planning decluttering and making the fairly pathetic attempts that I do make, the place would look a whole lot more streamlined anyway.

This might not strike anyone else as profound. But it echoes so many other things in my life.  For instance, my husband has said that if I spent the same amount of time actually praying as I spend on organizing to pray, well then the world would be a different place!

I will keep decluttering. I do need to get rid of stuff.  But I also need to put in the daily work at caring for my home. Which I already knew, didn't I? And it makes me think about what Leonie has been talking about here and  in another post which I just spent fifteen minutes looking for and can't find.

C'est la vie. Well, ma vie, anyway.

We went driving tonight to look at the local light displays. 

Elisabeth was immaculately attired (if you don't count the blue finger paint from this morning) in a pink dress, matching gumboots and one of my bras, worn on the outside of the dress.

I didn't have time to get a photo but I hope I remember it forever!

Changing the baby's nappy while singing "Three little ducks went out one day" ** to the toddler and discussing terrorism and the Cold War with my teenager.

It's a good life.

** It used to be "Five little ducks..." but apparently children's attention spans have got shorter (or possibly adults have got even more bored with that song?)

This is so me!