I'm..... bored.

I accomplished more in the last three hours of yesterday than I have in the past three weeks. Why? I finished the Twlight series AND I finished all of my Christmas knitting yesterday. Ack! What do I do with my spare time?

Chloe went to Mark's last night. I used the time to organize and clean out her closet and book shelves, throwing away all the bits and pieces, McDonald's toys, and other junk. I don't want to have a pile of Christmas presents with nowhere to put them. In the process of that, I made her an "I'm Bored" list: all of the things in her room she never really uses because they kind of get forgotten. Puzzles, beads, tracing paper, board games. Now, when she tells me there is nothing to do, I'm going to make her choose something from the list. Either she'll enjoy it, or she'll stop telling me she's bored. At least, that's the plan.

After organizing, I also went through the three tubs full of 18-month sized clothing in the basement, pulled out the winter things we can use now, since Littlest Miss is growing longer by the minute, and put it all in the washer. Today I'll pull the too-small things and put those in their appropriate tubs.

Did I ever explain how we do that? It's the greatest organizational system ever. I started it when Chloe was born, and have kept it up since then. One of our basement walls is lined with large Rubbermaid-type tubs stacked about four high. Each tub is labeled: 3-6 month, 6-9 month, 12 month, etc. Sometimes there are two sizes in one tub, or more than two tubs per size, but you get the gist. There's also one for maternity clothes, diapers, shoes, etc. The label is always visible as soon as you look at the tub, right there on the outside in big black letters. So when Cora grows into a new size, I pull the tubs, take out what I want, and put them back. Then the outgrown stuff goes into the appropriate tub to be used if we ever could manage to produce another girl. It's so effective, and makes things so easy. And if we never do get to have another girl, everything will be neatly organized when I set forth to sell the clothing, likely making a killing because we have enough baby girl clothes to outfit an entire small nation.

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Littlest Miss is at that incredible age where she is more than happy to help Momma with whatever she can. Time to clean up? Sure, she'll help! Folding laundry? Washing dishes? She's always by my side.

And that means it takes 15 times longer to accomplish anything. Babies have this keen ability to generalize EVERYTHING. She knows when we change her out of her jammies or into them that the clothes she was wearing go into the laundry basket. But she has no ability to distinguish between dirty and clean. This means she puts every piece of clothing she can find into the laundry basket, waiting for me encouraging cheers. Yesterday she had the bottom drawer of my dresser open and was carefully moving each clean piece of clothing into the laundry pile. She I saw her, she gave me that "I'm such a BIG girl! I'm Mommy's helper!" look and I couldn't help but smile. Then I moved everything back into the drawer. When she saw this, she changed her method: she began moving each bit of dirty laundry from the basket into my pajama drawer. ;o)

Dishes are especially fun. She loves the silverware. I pile the silverware on the open door of the dishwasher and she is supposed to put them in the silverware holder, which she does, on occasion. Mostly though, she'd rather steal the silverware and stash it somewhere - under a bed, in her toy basket, anywhere besides where it ought to be. Or, she'll throw it all deep into the back of the dishwasher and giggle while i grunt and groan trying to fish it out.

She loves to hear me cheer when she throws trash in the trash can. Of course, she doesn't distinguish between "trash" and "Important Paper", but she keeps trying. I've lost knitting patterns, receipts I intended to save, some of Chloe's drawings, a grocery list.... It's almost time to put the trash can in a cupboard or closet somewhere, I'm afraid.

And then there's the drama. When you tell her no about something, she puts her hand over her face and whimpers. And then she separates two fingers and peeks out between them to make sure you're watching her performance.

This toddler stage is definitely not my favorite stage. It makes me mildly crazy. But oh, there are some adorable parts to it! She has so much personality now.. :o)