Bring It On, I Will Defeat You

I’ve never had to use my mind and creativity so much until I became a mother.

As a kid, the biggest creativity hurdles I had to overcome were ways to get my kittens to sit still so I could dress them up in my doll clothes.

As a teenager it was constantly trying to come up with new excuses for getting out of Advanced Biology.

As a career woman it was all about finding ways to perfect my selling skills so I could sell 30 cars a month at the dealership I worked for.

But nothing tops this Mom thing.

This past week my mind has been stretched and stretched and stretched. Admittedly, some of it is partly my fault but mainly it’s all due to the fact that there are kids in my life now.

My daughter is in Girl Scouts and with that comes a sash that you apply iron-on badges to. Simple right? No, not for me. I’m notorious for overlooking small details. In the beginning of the school year, when she received her sash and a few badges I simply laid that sash on the ironing board and began ironing on those little patches. Unbeknownst to me, the sash has a top and bottom to it. Of course, I had to go and make it so her sash is upside down. It doesn’t fit right this way, looks really weird and falls off her shoulder.

I’ve been putting off the task of rectifying this because I really wasn’t sure how I was going to go about it. This week, it finally hit me that if I applied the patches with an iron, maybe I could get the patches off by reapplying heat to them. This worked! So the patches were off but there were gluey patches left all over the sash. I googled this dilemma and it said to apply lighter fluid to the glue. The problem is, I don’t own lighter fluid and I’m sure it’s not cheap. At this point I should have just thrown in the towel and went and bought a new sash but that is just not my style.

I got the patches all off but it left a big gluey mess

Instead, I lost sleep over this particular conundrum. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I became obsessed with how I could once again fix another one of my mistakes! Then in a moment of clarity, it hit me! I could lay the sash facing down on a brown paper bag and iron out the glue! This worked fairly well and now we are back in business!

Now I can just use my fabric glue to reapply them all

Now comes into play my second mind boggling dilemma of the week. While cleaning my stove last week I came upon a huge charred cylindrical object adhered to the stove top. I sprayed the bejesus out of that blob with my super strength cleaner. Amazingly, it didn’t touch it. After flicking at it with my fingernail I discovered it was a melted blue crayon that had obviously been put through the cooking process several times. How in the heavens did a crayon come to be resting on my stove top? I didn’t even bother questioning the kids as I’m quite positive the 2 year old is behind this heinous act. So after a week of trying to chisel it off with a knife and not getting anywhere, the simple solution of turning on the burners finally occurred to me. After a few minutes, the wax had melted enough that a quick swipe of a paper towel cleaned it all up lickety split!

So I sit here today with a clear head. All of our problems have been solved! Go ahead Motherhood… Bring It On! I am ready to defeat you and all the twist and turns you bring my way!

Do You Need Stress Relief?

This past October I found this on my wall:

This piece of graffiti was doodled by my sweet 2 year old Cesar.

This actually occurred when I was sitting 2 feet away reading a book with my 5 year old son Bency. I did hear a tapping noise and do remember slightly glancing in that direction, but just thought he was tapping on the wall….and the lamp…and the windowsill of our large bay window with his fingers.

But alas, that wasn’t the case and each of these things was covered in blue crayon.

Now, you may be surprised to hear that having two older children this was actually my first go around with the crayon on the wall trick.

I had heard about the brilliance of Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser for such cases as this but had never purchased one before. I finally got around to buying one in November to erase the evidence of his mischief.

Oh my heavens, I was beyond delighted with this little product. A foam sponge that you just wet a little bit and off comes the crayon in one swipe. Not only was there a hint of blue left behind on the sponge but also black….meaning it had picked up dirt that was not visible to the naked eye.

I began going around the house cleaning up scuff marks and all kinds of things that I had tried numerous times to wash off with a rag and soapy water. It was all coming off!

By no means am I a clean freak and all of these marks and blemishes had not bothered me before but watching them come off so easily was like watching a magic show!

I’ve heard other people say before that cleaning is a stress relief for them. This has never been the case for me. I view cleaning as an obligatory duty. It has to be done every day with three small children in the house. Every time I clean, I am slightly disgusted with the grime I come across and am totally disheartened when all my hard work is messed up 5 minutes after I get it done.

But the Magic Eraser was different. With every scuff and blemish I erased, I felt a little lighter, a little brighter and a lot less stressed.

Throughout the holiday season, I took out my Magic Eraser quite a bit. There’s no end to dirt and scratches in our house. When I got overwhelmed with how much was on my to-do-list, I took out my little foam sponge of wonder and performed my magic tricks around the house. It gave me the extra oomph I needed to tackle the wrapping, baking and projects that needed to get done.

As for the rest of my house…well there’s always cleaning to do, so much in fact that I could relieve the stress of about 10 people who are into that sort of thing!

Me and my little mischief maker Cesar

No One Needs to be Left Out

I have one very important word for you today…….SWIFFER!

I don’t care if you have one child or ten….your house gets dirty! Someone needs to clean the house….let it be your kids!

In case you are unfamiliar with the Swiffer, it is a dust mop with replaceable microfiber cloths. It picks up EVERYTHING!

For the past two years while my 7 year old daughter was in school and my 2 year old son was doing baby things I had my 5 year old son swiffering the floors for me. This summer with everyone home and the baby not a “baby” anymore everyone is getting in on the action!

It sets me on edge when my kids start arguing but when they start arguing about who’s turn it is to swiffer… it is almost like a sweet melody to my ears! (I have learned to set the timer so everyone gets their fair share of the glorious dust mop!)

I’m not going to lie to you and say this is “hours of fun” for your kid and you can go sit down and read a book while they clean the house. It’s more like 15 minutes of fun for each kid before they’ve had enough.

The best fun is taking the cloth off to throw in the garbage. We all stare at it in amazement at how much filth accumulates on the floor in such a short time (we swiffer a couple of times a week).

After that, I give the kids a high-five, thank them for their help and send them outside to play in the dirt so they can track more filth into the house so we have something to swiffer up later on!

Cesar, the almost 2 year old, swiffering