I’m hopping back onto a sewing kick again taking an extended break. I have no choice but to start up again though, because have you SEEN how awesome this is?

I’m going to bust out one of my own now – I went to the fabric store and got a bunch of felt today. Medium brown for the main color, with some dark red to cut out for brick accents. Then a bunch of felt squares for things like flowers and vegetables and so on. Here’s a link to my (crappy, don’t mock me) pattern drawings.

I am innately a messy person. Left to my own devices, I have a messy living space and have for my entire life. I’m trying to keep the house cleaner lately, as it prevents panicked angry cleaning before parties (and freakouts when people drop by), but I am baffled by how to do it.

Here’s my issue.

I can be messy and pretty pleasant to my family, or I can be clean and waver between Nagging Harpy and Martyred Bitch.

What I don’t need is advice on how to be relatively neat on a consistent basis (I CAN do it. I don’t hate cleaning. What I hate is the Sisyphean aspect – how nothing every stays clean.).

What I DO need is advice on how to be relatively neat and how to be pleasant (and not bitter and rageful) when it mainly involves picking up after everyone else.

I don’t think my husband is going to change and I’m not interested in nagging him. I have plenty of faults that he doesn’t nag me about.

The 3 year old is old enough to help with cleaning tasks but not old enough to pick up after herself on a consistent basis, and her help means everything takes 4 times as long. (I do it with her, because that is one of the whole things about parenting is that it takes longer to teach people to do things than to just do it, but it’s not something that will keep my house clean because doing one thing means the rest of my house will degenerate into despair.)

I know Swistle has been doing some habit-changing stuff with her messiness and it has been super motivating. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone address the emotional aspect of keeping a house clean, when it doesn’t come naturally to you.

We were expecting our 2007 Outback to last us until it died, like we do with all our cars. However, Subaru then came out with a 2010 model that can fit two giant TrueFit carseats side by side leaving a seat in the rear for an extra passenger. Also, a model that can fit a rear-facing carseat without forcing the front passenger to end up with a backache every over-1-hour ride because of the lack of leg room (I can now stretch my legs all the way out in the passenger seat and still not be able to touch the front).

So, we bought a new car.

*Dear FTC – I have not been compensated for this advertisement. But if Subaru wants to, I will take ANYTHING THEY GIVE ME.

For Beth:

(click for a bigger size)

Heh.  Oops.  I get easily distracted blah blah then had to reformat so I lost my password and was lazy more blah blah blah etc.

I’m also thinking seriously about password protecting this blog so I can share more specific stuff and not have to worry about the kids’ classmates googling it in 10 years and embarrassing them.  I am going to start an offshoot photography blog that I’m going to keep public, but I’m just thinking ahead and really, my kids’ lives are their lives.  It shouldn’t be up to me to decide how much is on the internet about them, it should be their story.  And I think it would be a lot easier to just password protect the whole thing than to figure out which stories are about them and which aren’t – especially since given that I spend all day every day with them, most of my stories involve them in some way.

I welcome input, feel free to let me know what you think about this idea.  But I think it would really help with my self-censorship issues.

“Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way!
Oh what fun to rescue me
in a one whore-pen sleigh!”

Yes, I realize it’s barely September. She’s been singing it for about 2 years straight now. That said, this iteration of the lyrics is new – and also awesome.

One of the coolest things about my neighborhood here in Chicago is how it manages to combine just about every possible living situation into one city neighborhood. There are urban, suburban, small town, and even rural areas.

Certainly not too many city kids get to drive 5 minutes and go feed the horses and sheep, check out the chickens and goats, and buy honey, huge zucchini, eggplants, and sweet corn without having to travel a ways outside of the city.

CHSAS is the only farm in the city limits of Chicago.

Dorrie went to the preseason Bears game with her Dada on Saturday.

His 6 month photoshoot:

Jonas is 6 months old today. He is the sweetest, mellowest, happiest smiliest baby.

He is also currently the bitiest, teethingest, drooliest, not-sleepingest baby.