When the baby's away, the parents will....

November 8, 2010

When the baby’s away, the parents will….

Work their butts off!

With Everly at her grandmother’s house overnight, Brent and I slept in Sunday morning, and awoke to a quiet house. I was traveling so much in the month of October that our house really needed some attention and I’ve been telling him all week that this weekend was going to be dedicated to getting ready for cold weather.

Due to daylight savings, we graciously utilized the extra hour and lounged around a bit before we got started. I pulled out our pretty little china plates and we ate pop tarts (strawberry! with frosting AND sprinkles!) and greek yogurt with pomegranite seeds and sipped cups of hot green tea with honey. I also caught up on my magazine and catalog reading (a favorite weekend morning activity)

Brent took advantage of the uninterrupted time to put together a rough recording of a song he’s been working on to send to his producer. Poor guy, our house is too small for him to have a proper studio so he’s had to set up his recording equipment everywhere - our bedroom, the guest bedroom, and this particular weekend, the kitchen.

Then it was time to get down to business. First things first - wash the cat! I don’t have a photo of this because it required all 4 of our hands to do so and I wasn’t willing to risk getting the camera wet. Our cat Ellie Belle is beast- so much so that she can’t really reach her back to clean herself anymore and we’ve had to take up the cause to help her out a bit.

Once we knocked out that task (without a scratch on any of us, thankfully!) We set to work getting the house in order.

There is only one thing sexier than watching a man vacuum your house…. and that is watching him do the dishes. (I remind Brent of this every time I see him doing either, which is quite often these days) While I lusted over my vacuuming husband, I set to work dusting, putting things away, and wiping down counters.

Then it was time to move on to the more time intensive activities. Brent cleaned and organized our laundry/mud room and brought in all of our outdoor potted and hanging plants for the winter. I decided last minute to rearrange our bedroom which was really just an excuse to put off tackling the huge task of organizing and cleaning out our closets.

I love how moving around a few pieces of furniture can make a space feel brand new and was really happy with how it came out. We have such small closets that I have to swap our summer closet with our winter ones whenever the weather changes. I loathe doing it, as the task involves pulling out loads of clothes from the closet, organizing and packing them away, then pulling out our winter clothes from the attic and hanging them up. We must have gone up and down the attic stairs 3 dozen times over the course of the day!

After I finished with our clothes, I did the same for Everly’s room. She is growing out of and into things so quickly that if I really have stay on top of it- there are entire outfits that she has missed wearing completely because she just grew too fast!

With the rooms done, the closets organized, and the rest of the house in order - I set to work on a pot of soup that we ate bowls of over the course of the afternoon and evening. There is nothing that compliments a chilly,fall day better that a bowl of hearty soup. I just threw in everything I could find in the kitchen - carrots, onion, red skin potatoes, garlic, and carrots - sauteed it up, adding vegetable and chicken broth, cumin, basil, parsley, fresh ground pepper and pasta.

Sometimes I’m still amazed at just how efficient Brent and I have become at doing almost everything since we had Everly. Life has mandated that we become this way - and we have adapted to multitask quickly and efficiently in ways we never did before. Everly requires a lot of our attention - but life is still there - the chores, work, obligations - so when we have a day to focus on getting it all done, we usually can accomplish in half a day what used to take us an entire weekend.

By the time our girl arrived home yesterday evening, we were all exhausted - us, from a full day of doing- her, from a full day of adventures with nana. We snuggled her close, changed her into her jammies, smelled her sweet baby smells and she drifted to sleep on Brent’s chest.

No matter how stressful my work week, or how crummy my Saturday might have been - Sunday never disappoints me. Even if they are full of not-so-fun tasks like cleaning and organizing. I went to bed happy and feeling accomplished. Sunday is my very favorite day of the week. Always will be.

Love,