organizing is finished

Ok first off, I just want to say that I think that the new dark chocolate, cherry cordial filled Hersheys kisses are totally fantabulous.

Now that that's out of my system, I am very pleased to announce that I am DONE DONE DONE with my organizing!!!! Well, not really "done" as in there's not a single thing at all left to do, but it's plenty done for my needs right now. The remaining tasks aren't vital and I'll do them here and there when I have time. We even moved a little furniture around. I wasn't crazy about the new layout of the living room at first but I made a few very minor adjustments and it's growing on me now. Everything just seems so much more open now without a big pile of "stuff" next to or on or behind things. It's almost like we're in a new apartment.

On Friday, I'm taking a trip up to Indiana to visit some friends who moved away a while back. I am so looking forward to visiting with them, but I'm NOT looking forward to the drive. If I drive it straight, mapquest says it should be just under 8 hours. I'm allocating 10 though to allow for 2-3 stops for gas/food/feeding the baby/etc. It should be a good visit though. Hopefully Lydia takes the trip well.

Transcription is going fine. I took several days off to do that organizing thing but am working again tomorrow. Every little bit helps when I'm needing that money to fund my other work at home thing. I've gotten a positive response when I've asked people about it, so I am making concrete plans to start my business offering tie-dyed cloth diapers. So far, all I have is a half-finished website, an idea for a logo, and a long to-do list. But, if I work on it a little each day then things should move right along. I'm aiming for a mid-July grand opening date. Mid-July is also when the new peak season for transcription starts up again, so I may be VERY busy all of a sudden, depending on how much demand there is for my "art." And although I'm starting out with diapers, I do have plans to offer other items later on, both dyed items and other crafts. I can't stop being excited about the prospects. :)

Lydia is doing great. She is rolling from front to back now, but not very consistently. And it usually ends up being more like a "I think I want to lay down on my side... oh, if I stretch a little then all of a sudden I'm on my back" kind of thing, instead of consciously rolling straight from her tummy to her back. But she likes being on her tummy and plays there with her toys for quite a while. She is starting to put her arms in front more and more (instead of the airplane pose), and push with them. She also pushes her little bootie up into the air too. I can tell she is totally working all her muscles and one day she will be mobile and I'll be sitting there trying to figure out how it happened. She still has no teeth, and I feel like I post every other week about her new "teething symptoms" but then several weeks later she's still just gummy. She has gotten noticeably more drooly lately though, and has gotten a little fussier overall. But whenever I check in her mouth, there's still no pokeys yet.

This past weekend, we had a nice visit with some friends of ours from Texas and their 2 boys. I'm glad I got all the organizing done in time, it sure made it a lot easier to be a hostess. They got married about a month before Tim and I did and we all went to singing school in 2003.

Tim's job is in the thick of the busy season. I can't call him at work right now and even if I stop in, he's usually 3 or 4 customers deep. We may be here in Springfield a little longer than expected, though. His DM had been keeping an eye out for openings in Texas overall instead of just the Fort Worth area, but all of the other Texas locations would be too far away from one family or the other. But anyway his DM called him today w/ one of the non-Fort Worth locations. Hubby said that it would have been a lateral move, too, and into another store instead of into the commercial account rep position that he would totally love. So we may be here for another little while. I don't mind, really. Especially since I found out this week that one of the couples at church is expecting their first baby. :D :D I think she's due in early February, her dr didn't give her a due date yet. I was SO excited for them when I found out, but then sad that we wouldn't be here for it. But now I'm excited again because we may get to stay and see her tiny baby. :)

discouraged at the time organizing is taking

Well, I did get the nursery finished, but not until Sunday afternoon. This of course pushed back the rest of the organizing, and even today I'm still working on some of Sunday's tasks because of the million errands that I had to run on Monday. But the nursery looks GREAT!!! Especially the closet. That closet was FULL. I took everything out, sorted it out, combined some things, stacked other things better, and put it all back in. It's really amazing how much more room there is now. Her giant travel-system stroller (that we haven't once used yet, lol) even fits in there now and even with THAT in there, there's still a ton more room than I started with. And I didn't even really get rid of a whole lot, either.

When I was finished w/ the nursery and saw how beautiful it ended up, I was so motivated. I couldn't wait to do all the rest of my projects. Especially since I had divided the rooms up into sub-projects that are more managable than looking at the room as a whole. But today I'm behind once again. I was really hoping to be done by the weekend, mostly just to have it DONE, but now I'm not sure if I'll make that goal. Lydia was needing me more than usual today, there's always still the "regular" chores to do, I have to eat (I seriously even had to write "eat" on one of my to-do lists the other day... I didn't get hungry b/c I was on a roll with cleaning, and had to remind myself to eat. lol), etc.

Right now I am working on the bathrooms. I am using the same method that I did w/ the nursery closet, taking everything out and sorting through it then putting it all back in. This method really yielded the best results possible in my opinion. So at this moment, every single item from both bathrooms is in a large pile on the floor. I'll go through what seems like a lot, then look back at the pile and see how much there still is to go. :( And the bathrooms weren't the only things on the agenda for today, either. But, it's not quite 5:00 pm so I may yet get these things done. It did help that I didn't have to go anywhere today. And tomorrow's "schedule" is a bit lighter with some things on them that can actually be pushed to next week, so I can possibly catch up.

But speaking of catching up... this is all the catching up I am going to do before then. I hope to come on here Monday and share my success. :) Oh and also on Monday I'll talk about one more work at home opportunity that I'll be working on.

reasons why camping is better with a wrap

So DD and I went to a homeschool camp this week. I did take my Maya sling that I re-did the shoulder on, but mostly used a wrap. It made things SO easy. Here's my short list of reasons why I will never go camping without a wrap again:

1. The 30-ft increase in elevation from the dining hall to the cabin was much easier w/ baby on my back (strap carry) than in my arms.

2. Baby had a nice cozy spot to sleep (short FCC facing in) when we went to tour the trout hatchery during her naptime.

3. The "intensive" babywearing (when we're home it's usually just for a trip to the grocery store) REALLY made her love it SO much. (See below for more details on that).

4. Everyone there thought it was the neatest thing so I got to spread the babywearing luv. (Although most of the people there are either unmarried and babywearing is far in the future for them, or their children are too old to be worn anymore). But hey, spreading the luv is spreading the luv.

5. Babygirl got passed around a LOT, so babywearing kept her close to me when I needed some time with her. (I did get a lot of people asking me "Can I hold her when you take her down?" lol)

Five's a nice number for a list so I'll stop there. We really did have a good time at camp. And as for her enjoying babywearing... the last day or so there, I would lay her down on the bunched up wrap to do a strap carry, and as SOON as I had the "lasso" around her and she felt that and knew she'd soon be on my back, she would start grinning and giggling. She totally loves being swung gently up onto my back. And she also likes coming down the same way. Everyone else thinks it's so cool and loves to watch me take her down and swing her OFF my back as well. Every time I went to take her off, I'd hear "watch that" or "watch her" in the background. lol

Now as far as the organization I mentioned last time... I am going to be here in town through the rest of the month and as soon as Lydia wakes up today, I'll start in on her nursery. Hopefully I can get that entirely done today, including moving the furniture. I also have some ideas for moving our bedroom furniture too. I think it'll be nifty.

highly motivated to get organized

Ok, I'm going to do it... I'm REALLY going to do it this time. I'm going to go inch by inch through the apartment and touch every single item and purge things we don't need and have a better organization to the things we do need. I started yesterday with a big box of paper, and it was discouraging because it took ALL day to go through that box (well in between taking care of Lydia, eating and doing a load of laundry anyway). But next, I think I will go through the nursery. The closet has some Very Scary Boxes in there but overall it seems to be the most managable room to organize so far. And hubby was sad the other day b/c we have a little desk in there that is piled with stuff on it, and right behind its chair is Lydia's laundry basket so he can't really sit in that chair and keep me company. So I am thinking about trading places with that desk and her dresser and surprising hubby with that rearrangement.

But the reason I'm so highly motivated this time is because of what I want to do AFTER I get everything cleaned up. I'm going to do another work at home thing, using the money that I've earned from transcription so far for start-up costs. But between the 3 more times that I'll be out of town between now and the end of June, it'll take a good month or more before I'm open for business and I'm keeping it a secret until then. If you want to try to guess what it is, that's fine... but I'm not telling you whether you're right or wrong. I will, however, write all about it here when it's all set up.

Okay, here's the newest "Lydeo".

Hope you like my newly-coined term, a cross between Lydia and video. :P

various updates

Well, on Wednesday I got back from a Very Long Road Trip. I have other updates to write besides that, but will put those in other entries so it doesn't become too long.

We left home on Thursday afternoon and spent the night with hubby's parents. (Hubby stayed home to work.) Then Friday we got up at a reasonable time and made the drive from OKC down to College Station. The drive overall wasn't too bad; I had downloaded a bunch of songs and sermons and was listening to them while I was in between radio stations. And Lydia was OK for most of the trip, though she did get mad towards the end of the drive during each of the 4 segments.

I had a wonderful visit and definitely want to go back and visit again soon. The drive is way too long to make it a regular trip right now, but hubby's work will likely let us transfer to Ft Worth later this year. Then if his sister gets moved from Japan to San Antonio, we would be central to everything... Springfield, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, College Station, San Antonio. It would really be the ideal spot. But before then I'll need to get going again on the organization/purging plan. I do NOT want to pack up all our things while our apartment is in this current condition.

The work at home thing is going great. I really love it. So far I'm not making quite as much money as I thought I would with it, but it's still more than enough to suit our needs. But it's also a company I can grow with, as they don't have "just" transcribing. Later on when I get a little better I can move up to reviewing and if I ever get a foot pedal I can "scope", whatever that is.

I am LOVING the wrap that I tie-dyed. I also am re-doing the shoulder on my sling b/c the way it was originally sewn disagrees with me. Once that's done, I'll have 4 carriers, with 3.5 of them being homemade. :P I think I will wait until June sometime to do any more other sewing, and instead make the decluttering a priority.

Lydia has finally learned to roll over! She did it yesterday twice and today twice so far. :) I tried to catch her on video so I could put it on here, but I haven't even witnessed a full roll over live myself yet (I'll put her down on her back and be away for a bit and she'll be on her tummy when I come back), but hopefully soon I can get the video up. Mom said that usually babies roll from tummy to back first instead of back to tummy, so the tummy to back roll may not be far behind.