This morning I awoke at 6:30 to the sounds of AJ singing a song from his bed.  While I don’t normally prefer to start my day until about a half hour later, I got up and took him downstairs.  I turned the movie “Cars” on for him and as he stared mesmerized by Lightening McQueen, I started to unload the dishwasher.  Once that was finished, I began a load of wash and was starting to feel in a rather productive mood.

Seven o’clock rolled around and I went upstairs to begin the daunting task of waking up Kiki.  If you remember from a previous post, she has asked me to NOT say her name when I wake her up.  Instead, I must nudge her gently until she stirs.  What can I say…she is a princess and I am a sucker!  To my surprise, she was pretty easy to wake up this morning.  We picked out her clothes without incident and I was feeling great about the whole morning thus far.

And then it all came to a screeching halt!  AJ came upstairs to tell me he wanted to be changed.  As I began to change him, I realized that he was soaked.  In my never-ending quest to potty train him, I switched him to Pull-Ups at night instead of diapers, hoping that he would feel the wetness a little more.  Apparently, he feels it as it runs down his legs.  Nothing like a bath at 7:15 in the morning!

I went downstairs to where he was sitting earlier on the couch to assess for damage from the leakage.  Sure enough, there was a huge wet circle right where his little bottom had been.  As I’m scrubbing that down, my husband calls from the top of the stairs, “Shan, AJ pooped in the tub.”  Seriously!?  Now, I love my husband dearly, but when I handed him the cup to scoop out the poop from the tub, he turned about a bazillion shades of green.  As I did not want to add vomit to my list of clean ups this morning, I kept the cup and said, “Fine, I will get the poop.  But can you please go down and make Kiki’s lunch?”

Cleaning the tub was not my idea of fun.  To be truthful, I uttered a few curse words to myself over and over and over again.  My husband came up from making Kiki’s lunch and started the tub in our bathroom so that we could start Round 2 of AJ’s bath.  It was about 7:40 at this point and I’m thinking to myself how great it is that Kiki is fairly self sufficient or it would have made this morning that much more horrible.  It’s like Kiki could read my mind because at that moment, she came up to me and said, “Mommy, by accident I forgot where AJ peed on the couch and I sat there and now my butt is all wet.”

This was my breaking point, my friends.  I said in somewhat of a loud tone, “THIS MORNING STINKS!!”  And then Kiki and I went back upstairs to change her pants.  Luckily, we got her off to the bus stop on time with her lunch in hand so I won’t have to be making any trips to the school this morning.  AJ finally smells all nice and clean.  And to look on the positive side of things, I now have an extra load of laundry done, a nicely scrubbed section of the couch, and a sparkling clean bath tub.   But I am ready to call it a day and it is only 8:00 in the morning!

Lately we have been trying our best to Go Green.  We have quite a road ahead of us in this process to go green but I think it is a change that takes some time.

I have purchased many of the recyclable grocery bags. In fact, every time I go to the store for a big shopping trip I purchase another one to add to the collection.  The plastic bag count in my pantry is dwindling and they will hopefully be extinct in there soon.

I even bought an environmental friendly lunch bag for Kiki.  Not only is it safe for the earth but for her as well. I found it at a website called Reusable Bags.  They provide “Eco-friendly reusable bags, plus facts and news on plastic bag issue.”  I bought Kiki the Mimi the Sardine lunch bag and am so impressed with it.  In fact, if you click here you can read the review I gave it on their website.  It’s under the name Shannon K.

One of the other things I have started to do in my attempt to go green is replacing my cleaning products with Eco-friendly ones.  Many of them, like the Green Works products, I really like.  So the last time I ran out of dishwasher detergent I looked for an environmental friendly alternative.  I purchased the Palmolive Eco after reading the back of the bottle.

This unique formula, which is formulated without phosphates, is better for lakes and streams while still providing powerful cleaning performance.

It sounded great and I was sold.  So can someone please tell me why I have not had clean dishes since I have started using this?  There is a chalky residue that is left on all the dishes after they have run through the cycle.  I then fill up my sink with hot, soapy water and put the majority of the dishes that are coming out the dishwasher in for a soak and a scrubbing.  Below are 2 pictures of one of my pots fresh out of the dishwasher.

Has anyone else come across this?  I want to continue my “Going Green” conversion in this household.  Does anyone have a recommendation on an eco-friendly dishwasher detergent that has worked for you?  The residue that this particular brand is leaving really sticks on the dishes.  The sink full of “supposed-to-be-clean-but-aren’t-clean” dishes is causing me to waste more water, not to mention time, and is somewhat canceling out my going green task.

I admit I feel good after leaving the grocery store with all my groceries in the reusable bags and purchasing more and more things that are Eco-friendly.  I just hope that I am not going to continue to run into this issue of spending money on these products only to find that they are not holding up their end of the bargain as far as cleaning power goes.

In my last post, I informed you of my foul mood that I have been in lately.  Every once in a while a mood like that makes me actually partake in house work.  Now, don’t go calling the psych ward to reserve my bed just yet.  Because I can tell that my productivity is fading fast.  But since these cleaning frenzies happen few and far between I want to share my day with you.

It started by doing all the laundry from our vacation.  It is now all washed, folded, and put away.  I then tackled our bedroom, which was disgusting!  Whenever I clean I usually run out of steam by the time I reach our bedroom and I can always talk myself out it by saying, “Self, no one sees your bedroom anyway.”  Usually that’s all I have to say and I’m putting down the cleaning supplies and making a quick exit from my room.  But I couldn’t take it anymore!  So I straightened up and dusted.  I even dusted the ceiling fan which was covered in dust.  The dust was hanging off the edge.  I’m not sure how we haven’t developed asthma from such an environment!

And finally, before I totally lost my urge to clean, I washed down all the spindles going up our staircase.  A certain little 2 year old uses those as his railing since he’s so short and apparently I do a horrible job at cleaning his grimy little hands.  So now tonight when I want to sit on the couch and read a book, I won’t have that little nagging voice telling me I should be doing so many other things.

Now don’t hate me after reading this because I can assure that I will not feel this way again for a long, long time.  So let me ask you, when you are in a cleaning mood, are there things you clean that you normally wouldn’t, like spindles on the staircase?