Small Successes

This seems like a good way to jump back in to blogging after several weeks of being mostly absent.  I'm still figuring out how to keep everybody happy and the household running (forget smoothly) with a newborn baby and a 1-year-old, but I no longer feel the need to sleep every instant that the babies are both asleep.  So ... my successes:

1.  I'm not sure I can claim credit for this, but my little baby has adopted my bigger baby's naptime.  I am able, on most days, to give the toddler her snack, then nurse the newborn and put him to sleep, and then put the toddler to sleep (and then sometimes a few minutes later put the newborn back to sleep), and everybody sleeps for two or three hours.  I've been working to encourage this convenient arrangement, but I suspect it has more to do with Divine Providence than my efforts.  Deo gratias.

2.  I tried a new recipe last night, and it turned out really tasty.  I had been in a pattern of making the same meals every week for several weeks and I think we were all getting tired of the same old thing, so it was nice to have something different to eat.

3.  Everybody has clean clothes to wear, and there are clean dishes in the cabinets to eat from.  With a new baby in the house, this is an accomplishment.

4.  Oh.  And I wrote a blog post!

Go visit Chocolate for your Brain for more small successes.

Small Successes (Vol. 8)

1.  I have a pan of lasagna in the refrigerator all put together and ready to go in the oven when it's time.

2.  My kitchen is spotless.  I put an extra effort into cleaning it today, and took care of all the little messes that have been hiding in the freezer and in the microwave and behind the canisters on the counter.  And my lasagna mess is totally cleaned up.

3.  I rolled with it (that is: didn't get upset and frustrated) when my baby skipped her morning nap this morning.  It was tempting to be frustrated by this, since I'm just getting our schedule figured out, and started to settle back into it after the time change and a round of teething.  Maybe she'll go to bed more easily tonight.

Small Successes (Vol. 7)

1.  I made it through a night in which the baby woke up more times than I can remember without getting impatient and frustrated.

2.  I was polite to the man who scared my baby and made her cry in the grocery store yesterday, and then, instead of leaving her alone, kept trying to make amends, which just made her cry more.  She cried because he was too loud and too close, and then in trying to cheer her up, he continued to be too loud and too close.  But I was nice, and refrained from giving him a piece of my mind.

3.  Just for fun, a big success for a small person:   This week the baby is eating o's like a champ, complete with a very competent pincer grasp.

Small Successes (Vol. 6)

1.  I finally finished the dress for my baby that was supposed to be for Christmas.  It still fits beautifully, and hopefully she will get to wear it a couple of times before the weather gets too warm for it.

2.  I made it a whole week without my husband saying, "Is there anything clean in the dryer?" as he's picking out his clothes in the morning.

3.  I'm having trouble coming up with a third success this week, so I'll list a Deo gratias instead:  My parents, who were living and working in Libya, are now safely out of the country.

Small Successes (Vol. 5)

1.  I have been crawling out of my first trimester yuckiness, and catching up with housework.  The kitchen has now been continuously clean for two whole days, and I have once again tamed the laundry monster.

2.  I vacuumed the whole house while my mother-in-law was here the other day playing with the baby, even though I had to stop and take the vacuum apart and clean all the hair off the brush in the middle of it.

3.  I made bread.

Small Successes (Vol. 4)

1.  I read a book this week!  I haven't done much reading in a while because I've been, well, sleeping every chance I got.

2.  I made sloppy joes last night, which is not something I've made before, and they were a huge hit.

3.  I've been making food for my baby.  She hasn't had anything out of a jar in about three weeks.  This has, at least in my opinion, resulted in more varied and appealing offerings for my little girl (she seems to pretty happily eat almost anything).

Small Successes (Vol. 3)

1.  I am within about a half-hour's work of finishing all the Christmas ornaments I am making for Christmas gifts this year.  I should be able to finish them today.

2.  Baby and I made it through Mass yesterday without deciding that the back of a more than usually crowded church was a the perfect place for blowing raspberries.  When she gets started on the raspberries, there's very little I can do to stop it.  For someone who skipped her morning nap and then stayed awake all the way through Mass, she was astonishingly good and didn't fuss at all.

3.  Umm...  Well, my kitchen is a mess and the laundry is overflowing... but I made cookies!

Now to go take care of that kitchen and laundry.

Small Successes (vol. 2)

1.  I managed to finish my Jesse tree and ornaments in time for the First Sunday of Advent.  It was a little close (I was still working on ornaments on Saturday), but I made it.

2.  I have made real progress today on the ornaments I am making for Christmas gifts this year.  If I keep it up, I might actually manage to get everything finished before Christmas.  Next year I'm starting earlier.

3.  I taught my sister-in-law to crochet yesterday.  We had a lovely morning.

Small Successes

1.  Baby and I survived and even enjoyed my brother-in-law's wedding and reception last weekend.  If only wedding reception bands weren't so SO loud it would have been perfect.  Such events are a little more complicated with a nursing not-quite-five-month-old (including the standing up in the bathroom feeding) but we managed, and it was really pretty good.  It helps, of course, that my husband is very helpful about holding her part of the time so I don't get totally exhausted.

2.  I have a pound of dry beans almost done in the crock pot.  They just need to be portioned out and frozen and then they'll be ready and waiting to go in anything I want to put beans in.

3.  I washed our sheets yesterday for the first time in far too long, which means that I was on top of the rest of the laundry enough to be confident I could finish and have them back on the bed before bedtime.  That, in turn, was because I got five loads of laundry done the day before.

Happy Thursday!