Creative Kimpire: Passion for Repurpose

Quinn and I are settling into our new life fairly well so far. Aside from the screaming phase he is apparently going through, that is. I wonder if he’s working on cutting some new teeth but his crankiness has been coming in a pretty predictable pattern of every other day, with an occasional extra salty one thrown in. It is mentally exhausting when all he does is scream all day. Is there a word that means more overwhelmed, tired, and fatigued than exhausted? If so, I feel it. On his bad days he wants everything he can’t have, screams even when he wants something he can have and you give it to him, cries for you to put his shoes on and then immediately cries for you to take them off, repeat over and over again until you lock yourself in the bathroom to get away from him. Just kidding. I haven’t done that…yet. He won’t even take his bink, even though he wants it, if I suggest it, but give it 30 seconds and it will be in his mouth because suddenly it’s *his* idea 🙄. Same thing with milk. I’ll try to get him to lay down for a nap when he’s so tired he can barely hold his eyes open and he’ll fight me and forcefully resist drinking. Once I get him to calm down and ask him if he wants milk he’ll take his bink out and drink it 🤦🏻‍♀️. One year olds are so irrational.

When he’s having a good day, everything is great! He’s back to himself and fun to be around. I got him a safety stool so that he can stand at the counter with me and help do things. This may be the best investment I’ve ever made because now I don’t have to hold him and try to do things one handed, something my back is thankful for. He loves to climb so it took him about 5 seconds to figure out how to get up into it. Another great thing about it is I can leave his snack on the counter, out of the reach of the girls, and not have to worry about them getting it. That is, until he gives them to them 🙄. I guess I should be happy he loves to share 😆.

He is still obsessed with his belly and everyone else’s. We had my niece, Kate, over last weekend to spend some time with her. She and I made fall cookies and Quinn helped a little. In the downtime of the cookies baking Kate played with Quinn and he kept pushing her over, lifting her shirt, and poking her belly button. She thought it was hilarious. She spent the whole day with us and I really enjoyed having her here. It’s been a long time since she and I spent one on one time together, ‘cause, ya know, I had a baby and all 🤪. When I invited her to come make cookies with me, I was worried she might not realize that Quinn would be here but she didn’t seem to mind at all. She ate dinner with us, homemade pizza by Uncle Philip 🤤, her third favorite food I learned, and then went on our evening walk. She got to walk Sophie; well, I should say run because that’s mostly what they did. I liked being a fun aunt again. Sometimes it’s hard to do “extra” things because I’m just so busy trying to stay on top everything else. We’re getting into a daily routine though and that makes life seem more manageable. As long as someone tells me Quinn’s moodiness will pass eventually 🤣.

I mean, it is a pretty cute belly 🤷🏻‍♀️

Funny story about the top cookie on the left side: when I took Kate home she wanted to show her siblings our creations and share with them. Link looked them over and declared that he wanted the “chicken” one... That’s a ghost 🤣.

He’s getting really good as following directions and can sometimes help do things, or at least be in the same vicinity and occupy himself. I attempted to clean up our tools and garden stuff in our outside building last week. He explored while I organized and I got about half way done. I might have finished if it weren’t for his sudden need to have his shoes removed. I wanted him to wear them but I also wanted to finish what I was doing so I gave in. He was on the patio and wasn’t barefoot for more than 5 minutes before he got an enormous splinter in his foot. I don’t even know what it would have come from. He indicated that his foot was hurt and I tried to pull it out, unsuccessfully. This happened about 3 hours before Philip got off work and I tried several times to get it out but he resisted and pulled his foot away from me every time. Once Philip was done, I asked him to help occupy Quinn so I could take it out. I gave Quinn my phone, which he’s never allowed to have, and Philip talked to him to keep him calm. He was such a champ, never cried more than a whimper of disapproval, more so because he was being restrained than any other reason, I think.

Looking so big wearing the shoes he should have left on the day before and he wouldn’t have gotten a splinter 🤦🏻‍♀️

Helping me sweep the floor

Helping me clean up the garden beds

Helping me pull weeds and spread mulch

Helping me walk the dogs...oh wait 🤔

He has recently started to shake his head no, something that is funny and laughable at the moment but won’t be in a few months. Or possibly even weeks 😩. He’s only done it a few times and two of them were to refuse to come to either Philip or me and insist on staying with Lori and Greg 🙄😆. We had gone to watch Kate and Link’s soccer games and he had sat on Lori’s lap. When we went to leave and held our arms out for him to come to us, he shook his head and wouldn’t let go of her 🤦🏻‍♀️. She eventually had to put him in his carseat last week because he wouldn’t let either of us take him peacefully 🙄.

I’ve started a weekly cleaning regimen, doing certain rooms or tasks each day, rather than trying to do everything on the weekend, like I did when I was working outside of our home. I realize now that no one can do it all. I always felt like I was behind on something, between cleaning, working on skills with Quinn, getting work stuff done, cooking, etc. It’s not possible to maintain a level of pre-baby cleanliness and work full time with a child at home. Something’s gotta give. I would always stress if someone wanted to come over because I would try to find time to do all the cleaning that I feel needs to be done for visitors when I was already feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Now I don’t feel like our house is disgusting because there’s a little less dog hair on the floor. A little. Not a lot less because those two should be bald from the amount of hair they slough off every day 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️. I also have time to play with Quinn every day, which helps him learn. Being home has made me realize how much I always wanted to do this. I spent many years believing and saying I could never be a stay at home mom because I thought I would always want to work. Now I just keep thinking about how he’s only going to be little once and I don’t want to miss anything. Oh, and I also get to play at the park 😆.

I’m so grateful to have Philip to make this my reality ❤️.

The only thing I’m still struggling with is meal planning. You would think, given my education in nutrition, this would come easy for me but it doesn’t. Maybe I make it too complicated. Maybe I just have interrupted sleep Every. Single. Night and it’s finally starting to reduce my brain cells. Either way, it’s a challenge but I’m working on it. We only eat out once a week so I plan for 6 days. I’ve been trying some new recipes to include in our rotation so that we don’t have something Mexican themed 4 days a week (although, I’m actually totally good with that 😆 🌮 🌮 🌮 🌮 ). I hate wasting food and we had some meat go bad early last week in a meal plan fail. We talked about cooking it up for the girls and Philip noted that they don’t care if it’s a few days passed its prime. I said we probably wouldn’t even have to cook it but then decided against giving Sophie a taste for raw meat because she’ll already lick the skin off your toes if you’d let her. Sometimes it’s annoying, however, my feet look great. Like, who needs a Ped Egg when you have a dog with a foot fetish?

What nap time looks like. You can’t see my feet because Sophie licked them off 🤪. You can see bags under my eyes. I’m pretty sure they’re permanent.

Not only have I been cooking, I’ve been working on Quinn’s kitchen so he can cook 😉. In this week’s edition of Passion for Repurpose, I’m going to show you a Creative Kimpire original creation. Scroll down to see my plastic shoe box repurposed into a play microwave 😉.

I painted the shoe box, cut the lid to create a flap for the door, wrapped the door in electrical tape, made button decals on my Cricut, and then put the whole thing into a cardboard box so that it would sit correctly. I bought a handle and used a black poly folder for a hinge, which is held on with lots of glue, duct and electric tape 🤣. I’m 100% certain there’s probably a better way to do this but I’m a big proponent for using what I already have. The handle was the only thing I bought and it was cheap. So there ya go, a pretend microwave for under $10, even if you were to buy all of the supplies and had nothing on hand.

I’m still working on the sink I mentioned in my last post. I really wanted to show it to you guys tonight but it just didn’t happen. Everything is harder to do with a baby, for some reason 🤪🤪. Shopping included. Because of that (and a nationwide pandemic, of course) I can count on 2 hands the amount of times I have been out of town since the quarantine happened in March, and two of those were to the zoo. While I fully support wearing a mask, having one on my face makes me anxious, like I can’t see clearly. Quinn is difficult to contain these days and chasing him around a store is fun for about zero seconds. It’s not bad when you have someone with you to help. Philip and I took him to the Highlands yesterday. We got Chick-fil-A in the drive thru so we had a little picnic in the back of the Jeep. After chasing him around Target and Bed, Bath, and Beyond, we decided we’d had enough and got a treat at Cold Stone before heading home. Birthday Cake remix is my fav! 🤤 Quinn got his first taste and I think you can see that he approves:

Today, Philip made homemade cheesecake and if anyone wonders why I’m still walking around with 10+ pounds of “baby weight”, mind your business 😉. Someone apparently does though because I keep getting texts from random numbers telling me that I can go from XL to XS if I just click their link. The weird thing is that they’re always calling me Shirley. I keep blocking the numbers and they keep sending texts from different ones 🤬. I know why it’s happening though, and you may not believe me but it’s true. Several years ago Philip and I were riding our bikes and we passed this guy who raised his arm up in the arm as he went by and painted his finger at us (me), bringing it down three times as he said, “Shirley, Shirley, Shirley,” and rode on. We looked at each other and said, “what the hell?” This is not a made up story and over the years we have talked about how we didn’t know what that meant. Now I know! He cursed me so that now I receive annoying texts addressed to Shirley! If anyone has a better explanation, I’d love to hear it but I highly doubt you’ll top that one 🤪.