divide and conquer

After 8 days with the kids and I pretty much on top of each other (well them crawling all over me day and night) followed by a week with Daddy home every night and through the weekend I have come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as too much togetherness!  We are a family of four people who need our alone time!  Not only that, but our kids need time without each other.  

The last few weeks have been insane with Cayden and Harper's fighting.  Fighting in our house involves hitting, pushing, yelling, spitting, crying and a LOT of tattling.  I knew that this day would come (obviously, I have brothers and even though we love each other now there was a time when we couldn't be within 100 yards of each other without something going down) I was just honestly hoping it would hold off a little bit longer.  In a last ditch effort one recent Saturday to try and reduce the fighting, Mommy decided that we were going to give the kids some much needed one-on-one time.  

Harper and I went on a crafting supply shopping trip that took us to Hobby Lobby (seriously got excited with all the sparkling, twinkling Christmas stuff that was being put up while we were there), two fabric stores and Menards and involved a quick stop for lunch.  It was a very successful trip though and it was obvious that my baby girl loved her Mommy time as much as I loved being alone with her.

Daddy and Cayden did some yard work and then headed to Walmart.  I was expecting them to come back with some sort of superhero action figure or a new movie.  Instead, Bob came home with them.  Bob is Cayden's new roommate and is a pretty, blue beta fish with a Spongebob pineapple house in his fish bowl.  Yes, that's right...J gave in and bought Cayden a fish. 

As a result of our separate trips with the kids, we had a very nice evening with them playing alone in their rooms and then playing together with minimal fighting.  Lesson learned!




My date for the day!

Cayden and his new roommate Bob.

unfinished

The theme that has seemed to dominate life in the month of July is unfinished.  It feels, at least to me, like everything is unfinished.  From the pile of clean, folded laundry sitting in the basket in my room but not put away, the belated birthday craft project for my friend's son, the "To Do" list at work that is full of half finished projects and papers and reports and the two blog posts that were started but are still sitting as drafts I am not following through with anything lately.  A garage sale is planned for September so that will at least force some major cleaning out of junk that hasn't been touched in years, toys that are no longer played with or house items that no longer fit with my decorating themes.  Of course that means that this whole unfinished business needs to pass and the time for completing projects that are started needs to commence.  I'm not going to lie though, there will probably be a lot of coffee drinking in the morning, afternoon trips to Starbucks, Target and Hobby Lobby and wine drinking in the evening to get through all of my "To Do" lists but I am determined to get things crossed off this month.  August will be the month of finishing everything that was left unfinished in July.

Fingers crossed!!!