The After-Christmas Clean Freak

I am a freak. My family has been saying it for years, and most of the time I just brushed it off. Freak? Me? No. I just like things how I like them. This year, I realized that they are right.

I am not the bearded lady, or the elephant man. I have no serious mental disorders (that we know of :P) and no urges to do things that most people don't have as well. Except for my cleaning binges. Those enable me to proudly let my freak flag fly.

Christmas this year was great. Monkey was enamored with the tree, and the presents, although I'm sure he thought we were crazy when we encouraged him to rip the paper off them. Although breakfast was late, it was good...homemade espresso cinnamon rolls. Then nap...yay for naptime!

Ben and Monkey had a great afternoon of playtime and snuggles. Me? I was in the kitchen. All. Freaking. Afternoon. Ben wanted Boeuf Bourguignon, and I refuse to make that without homemade bread as well. The Bourguignon takes, on average, 4-5 hours to make. The bread takes about 3.5 hours. Both need the oven. Timing is crucial.

So I didn't fully clean that night. All the wrapping paper, ribbons, boxes and bows were either saved or thrown away, needles from the tree swept up (don't need Monkey choking on those!) and dishes were in the sink, if not clean.

Needless to say, the day after Christmas, I went full on freak. The kitchen was cleaned (because it desperately needed it), and then I thought "I'll just do the floors." That turned into me on my hands and knees for an hour, scrubbing all baseboards, moving furniture, sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping. In the process (which needs to be done on a fairly regular basis due to having 2 shedding dogs) one of our speakers fell off it's shelf and hit me square on in the back of the head. What did I do? Said "ow," held frozen veggies to the quickly-forming lump on my head, and then got back to work. Seriously. Who does that?

Did I stop there, even though I felt nauseated for the rest of the day? Nope. Played with Monkey, worked on laundry, and worked some more on the needlepoint for Monkey's quilt (that I meant to have finished before he was born. Oops).

Oh well...it's all worth it. I'll leave you with a few pics from Christmas (that don't show our faces, sorry. I'm paranoid.)


I have to go attack the baseboards in the Master Suite.

Watching Daddy put the
 tree on the car

Before opening presents

Is all this for me?

Monkey's "Haul"

Time to play!

Merry Christmas!

Although we weren't able to go home to be with the extended family this year, we're having a wonderful time! Our cozy Christmas is involving WAY too many toys, Espresso Cinnamon Rolls, Boeuf Bourguignon, Homemade Garlic Parmesan Bread, playtime, family time, and of course:

Happy Holidays!

The Teething Continues.

Monkey is now cutting his THIRD tooth in two weeks (or so). This one's an upper front, and the poor child got my big chompers. Here I was thinking he had a cold, but it's just congestion from teething (I'm pretty sure).

I'm still not in love with the amount of snot I'm having to deal with. I was kind of hoping it wouldn't hit until he could understand when I asked him to blow into a tissue. He does, however, think his battery operated aspirator (or, as it's more lovingly known in our house, electric snot sucker) is a toy. He walks around holding it, pressing the button to make it run.

And yes, I said WALK...he's WALKING everywhere! It started a week before he turned 10 months. Our lives as we know them are over.