ABC's and F

How good it feels to have a clean and organized house. First room to suffer a purge was Mateo's room. I hadn't done anything in his room since...I don't know when. He still had 12M clothes in his drawers and baby gear in his closet. I made a nice pile of stuff to give my sister-in-law who will add another Santiago to the family next summer. I sorted clothes by size and what I would keep for the next boy (which I am determined to have) and stuff to give away. As I was putting stuff in the attic I found a whole other bin full of clothes a friend had sent to me when Mateo was one. I had forgotten about it and now he has twice as many clothes as he'll ever need for a two year old. I rearranged his room to make the most of the very small space and I finally hung up the wall decorations I bought before he was born. As I laid him to bed last night he said, "thank you for cleaning my room mami." He finally has a room.

I continued the furious cleansing in my room, except there was so much s$*%t everywhere that I only managed to pick up my clothes & change the bed sheets as I watched Big Love, the HBO series on polygamists. I love cable shows like Six Feet Under, the Tudors, and Dexter, especially b/c they are on demand. I digress.

Chayla was very intrigued at my ability to organize. She is quite the organizer herself so she pays attention to that type of stuff. I offered to organize her room as long as she promised not re-organize everything the minute I left the room, which used to be the case in Austin. So I spent the better part of the day transforming her room and discovering that she isn't as organized as I thought. It was all superficial! She had a wide variety of bags full of junk stuffed in various containers. The bookshelf did not have books on it and her floor was littered with remnants of her arts & crafts projects. Lord. I told her that the key to keeping organized is patience. Instead of stuffing to get things out of sight, she had to think about what she was doing and putting items in their place. We'll see how long this lasts.

Mateo played around the house as Chayla and I worked. He was pretty good today. We found out that he could sing the alphabet song by himself. I'll post the video as soon as he lets me take it! I also discovered that he picked up the unsavory language I use in the car. I hate driving in DC- people are SLOW! I guess Mateo figured out that the F-word is used after a moment of frustration. When he couldn't find his magnetic letter A that flew into the living room after Chayla kicked it, he expressed his frustration with a big, "F*#%, I can't find it mom!" Boy, did I underestimate his speaking abilities.