Shop Talk

Yes, it has been over a year since posting in this corner of the blogdom. Actually, it has been exactly 478 days or 1 year, 3 months, and 20 days. That’s quite a length of time to be blog-quiet. Addressing that in my next post. But for now, I am taking a cue from Scooper at Miss A La Mode and accepting her invitation to Dish. Here’s a glimpse of what’s making this house a home.

Baby on the Way!
So, this is my biggest dish of all...in fact, it takes up most of my plate. The first three and a half months were filled with constant nausea and a heightened need for sleep. Nausea has dissipated, except for the occasional stomach turn from looking at/cooking/eating/thinking about/hearing about chicken. But, apparently, the need for sleep won’t go away for years...and years.

Here at the beginning of my fifth month {week 20 and 6 days, but who’s counting?}, I spend summer mornings laying quietly in bed, hand on belly, giggling every time Baby Boy kicks. It’s a secret, sweet communication and I drink every moment of it, knowing that soon I'll have to share him with the world.

I know it’s cliche, but it’s real, so I will say it anyway - to think that there is another human inside me who is part me, part my husband is just crazy and wonderfully mind-blowing at the same time.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a small reveal party with our families. We held the knowledge of the baby’s gender captive for five days before we let them in on the secret. This is the Instagram depicting the moment - and the way we revealed to our social media connections.

{a little belly pic and our reveal moment}

 

Baby Boy currently has no name, so in the mean time, we are calling him Rico. Diverse.

Sweet Summer Time
Though fall and winter are my favorite seasons, as a teacher, summer is my retreat. Throughout the year, I find myself saying things like, “This summer I’m going to...” or “That project will have to wait until summer.” In the spirit of productivity, I’ve been working on systems of laundry and dishes and meals in order to prepare for BabyTime in the fall. But it’s not been all 1950s in my summer life - it’s also been easy reading, working in the vegetable garden, and re-watching Grey’s Anatomy from Season 1 on Netflix.

This week I am in Table Rock, SC leading worship for a youth camp with our church worship band. It’s not a terrible place to spend a week of summer...and the view’s not too shabby, either. winkwink.

{table rock, sc}

Laundry
As I previously alluded, laundry is now systematized. During the school year, my amazing husband basically did all the laundry on Fridays {his day off}. But this is neither fun nor fair to him {as he also vacuums and mops and does the dishes}. My new laundry schedule has us only doing one particular type of laundry each day for four days. Because there are currently only two of us, it amounts to a max of two loads per day. These two loads can very manageably be sorted, washed, dried {via dryer or open-air}, folded and put away in a day. I am optimistic that it will work when adding baby Rico to the mix.

So here’s the schedule:
Monday - T-Shirts/Gym Shorts/Undies
Tuesday - Nicer clothes and Jeans
Wednesday - Whites {all things involving Clorox}
Thursday - All Non-White Linens {this may have to be moved to Fridays come fall}

You want to know a secret? I actually like doing laundry this way. After folding and putting away the one or two loads of clothes, I have this deep sense of accomplishment - the idea that I contributed to making our house a manageable home.

Until next time, thanks for listening in on the shop talk. And if you’re struuuuuggling in your own corner of the blogdom, get reacquainted by ‘dishing’ about the little things that are making your life a little sweeter.