Live from the Monkey House

Hmmm... blogger won't let me put a title up there. Odd. But if I could, it would say Slowly getting back to normal

or as normal as it ever is in this household. Ha!

My baby girl turns 4 this week. I would say that she is at my favorite age for her right now. When she was a baby, she never liked to snuggle, she was always cranky and stubborn from the second I went into labor. Most of that hasn't changed but now at least she is very snuggly and she has the most wicked sense of humor. Even her stubborn antics usually make us laugh.

So her impending birthday and the fact that my neighbor and I are having a garage sale in a couple weeks convinced me it was finally time to start cleaning the baby stuff out of the basement. 11 containers of baby clothes to start with today. I thought I was prepared, didn't think it would be a big deal, but promptly burst into tears as I opened the first box and took out a little set of 3 mo. shorts that Charlie probably wore twice. Justin at first was taken aback; he couldn't figure out what the big deal was. And then suddenly the lightbulb flashed and he said "it's hard for you to accept that those clothes will ever be worn by anyone other than Charlie." And yes. Because he will never be a baby again. Do most moms struggle with their kids getting older as much as I do?

But surprisingly, the moment passed quickly and I got through those boxes in record time. Had everything folded and sorted. And then Charlie woke up from his nap, saw the piles, figured it out, and HE burst into tears. Totally didn't see that one coming. He started grabbing clothes left and right and hiding them in his room. We sat down and had a long talk about getting bigger and how cool it is to be six years old. I'm not sure he's convinced. He stretched a 6-9 mo. yellow vest and wore it for hours. In the end, I got most of it back and re-sorted and it's ready for the sale. He is really not going to like it when I start on the toys.

And while I was in the dispassionate discarding mode, I started throwing stuff away. Just boxes of stuff sitting on the sunporch, in the basement. Where does this stuff come from? Why don't we throw it away as we go? Why do I have 2 broken printers sitting out there - did I really think they could be repaired? It felt good to purge and to think about emptying out all the old stuff. Because that is our plan. We are moving ahead with the remodeling idea. Lots of times we suffer from inertia - in the past we might have let that dryer go for months before admitting defeat. Now, not so much. I think we're tired of living like people just out of college. It only took 12 years! We're going to reclaim this house, reclaim the un-useable space and get rid of all the stuff we've been holding onto just for sentimental reasons.

And finally... Live Earth. Did you watch it? We were a captive audience here. Listened to it on XM non-stop and watched lots of Bravo when we really liked an act. I caught the entire UK show and a fair amount of the New York one too. I thought the commercials were fantastic - except for the polar bear one. I don't know why but no matter how many times I see it, the footage of the drowning polar bears causes an instantaneous meltdown. The funny part has been watching Justin fret all day about his choices. He is in total paralysis about what to do with the water bottles. He is addicted to bottled water and he's a tiny bit OCD about germs and food contamination. So he's trying to figure out whether he REALLY needs to re-use his water bottles more than a couple times or whether recycling is good enough. Charlie (of course) wants to call a family meeting to see what more we can do. Go Al Gore! (And declare already, would ya?)