Dump or Donate?

Don't mistake trash for treasure!

Maintaining an organized and uncluttered home means that you must regularly assess your possessions, and frequently cull your belongings. Whether you’re clearing out the closet, paring down the tower of toys, or trying to make room on your bookshelf for the newest best seller, there will be items leaving your home.

The moment of decision looms: do you throw the stuff away or donate it to charity?

You can check out the rest of this post over at Life as Mom, where I am the guest contributor today!

Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts

photo source

Sometimes, parenting a preschooler feels like going toe to toe with an atom bomb -- something sets them off and there's a truly massive explosion.  But other times, it's more like death by a thousand paper cuts.*  There's not one particular thing you're tussling over, but every interaction is a mini power struggle and small acts of defiance and obstinacy are woven into everything.

Miss Mouse was getting on my very last nerve tonight.  I don't know what happened to get her knickers (or mine) into a twist but she was six kinds of stress-inducing this evening.  Naturally I was flying solo as Josh was at a church function, and I'm sure that had something to do with it.

Every other word out of her mouth was no.  And when she wasn't actually saying "no" she was acting it out with selective deafness and small acts of petty meanness to her brother.  Like stealing his beloved stuffed giraffe and holding it over her head.  Or kicking his door from the outside while I tried to read him a bedtime story and tuck him in.

By the time I had Buggie stowed in bed (shrieking, I might add, which is weird because he usually goes to sleep beautifully), I was in a foul mood and she knew it.  But here's where a ray of sunshine appeared.  She asked to play a game.  I refused, citing a headache.  And she immediately offered -- "Maybe I can clean something to make you feel better."  It was so sweet, and so sincere, and so obvious that she totally "gets" The Dreaded Headache.

I told her I just needed a little alone time and asked her to please read a book in the living room while I cleaned the kitchen.  Which she did, narrating aloud from the couch while I loaded the dishwasher.  And by the time I was done, the storm clouds had parted and we spent a nice ten minutes together before I tucked her in.

*And some times it's sunshine and butterflies and three-year-olds wrapping their arms around their daddy's neck and whispering "I missed you" when he comes back from a meeting.  But that's not what I'm writing about tonight!!

Please Don't Pet Me While I'm Eating

I have discovered that I have a new pet peeve.  I don't like to be touched while I'm eating.

Okay, I know that many of you are thinking -- "Huh, that's a weird thing to be irritated by."  But then again, you have may never have had the experience of trying to eat your dinner while a three-year-old pets your arm.

Miss Mouse and I sit next to each other for meals on one of the long sides of our table.  Buggie sits at the head in a booster (to my right), and Josh is around the corner to his right, across from me.  Miss Mouse has a very difficult time sitting still at the table under the best of circumstances.  She fidgets, she stands up, she gets up to pick a new spoon from the kitchen, she puts her feet on my chair, and...she touches me.

She'll rub her nose against my elbow.  Poke me in the leg with a finger.  And just run her hands along my arms.

It drives me absolutely insane.  I have a visceral reaction to it that makes my skin crawl and my flesh twitch.  Go figure.

But it's become a bit of a problem at dinner because She Won't Stop Doing It.  I routinely have to banish her to the end of the table now, out of range, and I'm seriously contemplating changing up the seating chart!

The Ongoing Adventures of Monkey Boy

As I may have mentioned, my son has an...umm...adventurous streak.  Thus perhaps it should have come as no surprise to me that when I walked into the dining room after hearing an unexpected-and-not-immediately-identifiable sound, I witnessed this:

And yet, I was surprised.  (And secretly impressed.)

Note to self: push all dining room chairs in fully once you have vacated them.

Ginger Pear Muffins

Here's what I love about baking -- besides the fact that it makes your house smell divine.  Most of the ingredients you need to do simple baking are ones you keep on hand all the time, allowing you to produce baked goods on a moment's notice without heading to the store.

Which is particularly useful when you are snowed in when the desire to bake seizes you.

On Saturday, we got a layer of ice followed by a layer of snow deposited on our fair hamlet and the snow plow teams were apparently sleeping in so they didn't stop by until after noon.  We weren't going anywhere.  After romping in the back yard for a while, the next logical activity (obviously) was to bake muffins.  Lots of muffins.

Miss Mouse and I worked together to produce Blueberry Peach Cardamom and Ginger Pear Muffins.  The blueberry ones were only okay but the pear muffins were lovely.  I use the Mix and Match Muffins recipe from Good Cheap Eats and just add things to it.  It's a great go-to recipe and I like that it calls for (some) whole wheat flour and replaces some of the fat with plain yogurt.  I feel like these nods to nutrition allow one to binge, guilt-free.

Anyways, you can find the original recipe here.  My additions were to add 1/4 tsp of ground ginger to the dry ingredients, 1 tsp of grated fresh ginger to the wet ingredients, and a cup of chopped up pear (no need to peel).  Yummo!