Saturday Morning, Pre-Coffee

Baby CJ is sitting up! This is an improvement on his rolling-around-the-room moves because at least when he's upright, he stays in one place.

Last night I went to bed at nine o'clock. I don't just mean I was upstairs in my pajamas reading a book. I mean I went to bed and fell asleep at nine o'clock, and slept undisturbed (baby CJ went to bed at the exact same time) till 2am. That's a grand total of five hours uninterrupted sleep, the most I can remember getting at a stretch for ... well, apparently sleep deprivation affects memory, and, frankly, I can't remember since when. Let's safely say it's been at least 5 and 1/2 months. Then, of course, I felt so refreshed at 2am, I thought I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. No worries. Sleep returned quickly. Along with some really disturbing dreams. I had to keep waking up to analyze them for peace of mind.

This afternoon is Nina's potluck for buying club. On the advice of my children, I'll be making baked beans (using honey and maple syrup from the buying club). Unfortunately, we have to walk uptown to the get the beans before they can be made. That's on my morning to-do list, which is shorter than the usual Saturday's, as I'm on my own today. Saturdays are generally catch-up days, folding laundry, changing sheets, vacuuming, bathrooms, et cetera; and today I will forego most of those chores in order to spend time with the kids. Which sounds pretty pleasant when I put it that way.

Breakfast crumbs ... you've been given a reprieve. You're living on borrowed time, so enjoy the floor while you can.

Oh, have to add a post-coffee update. Baby CJ went for a nap and whilst I was hanging laundry on the line (I should add that I really enjoy hanging laundry; or maybe you've already noticed that), and enjoying my first cup of coffee, the kids started an art project in the living room that I've only just now cleaned up. Actually, what I've just finished cleaning up was in fact their clean-up ... props for effort, but sigh. The art project involved large paint brushes, newspaper, yogurt containers of water, water colours, homemade paste, and tissue paper. Dunno what the end result was intended to be, but I'm guessing the damp raggedy clumps of decomposed newsprint soaking into the carpet wasn't in the original plan. Kid cleaning instinct then suggested this should be swabbed up using sopping wet cloths.

I'm positive this is karmic payment for my own childhood, and only wish I were of the temperament to revel in creative disaster. I'm not saying my house is neat, because it's not; but in my head, it's supposed to be. I think often of my grandmothers, both of whom kept/keep such spick-and-span homes. My mother has a story about her mother, who worked, rising at 5 in the morning to scrub their kitchen floor on her hands and knees. Sometimes when I'm pawing around swiping cupboard fronts with random dishtowels or sweeping handfuls of cut-up construction paper into the palm of my hand, I think of my grandma rising extra-early to scrub the kitchen floor, and how far, in a mere two generations, the standards of cleanliness have fallen. (Or maybe some of my friends are secretly rising at dawn ...??).

So the art project has been cleaned up. But to offer a minute-by-minute update on the breakfast crumbs' itenerary: they're still insolently lolling about beneath the kids' stools.

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