Big Sister Training :)

This week I started my new job - nannying my next door neighbor's baby during the day since she had to go back to work. It's only a few days in, so we're still adjusting but all I can say is praise God this is literally the world's easiest baby!! She sleeps a bunch, eats like a champ, chills out wherever I put her, and smiles every single time I come over to her. So stinkin cute.

Gemma is working on the transition as well, as you can imagine. She's slowly learning that this is a real, live person, not another baby doll! She's also working on her boundaries... as you can see sometimes a tangible boundary is necessary, especially when Baby M is sleeping!!

Baby M asleep, being protected by the gate from curious little hands!

It's so cute though to watch Gemma be so fascinated by this new little person. And I have to say, it's like the ideal training for her if/when we add another sibling to our family (which, of course, we're always hopeful and open to!). She gets to gradually acclimate to having someone else vying for Mommy's attention, and also learn little ways to be Mommy's helper. She is SO gonna me my right-hand woman, there is no doubt about that! :)


For those of you who have been through this (adding a new baby - whether sibling or charge - to your house), any tips? Specifically on how to teach GENTLE touching?!

Cookie Baking Tips?

Dearest Readers!

I come to you tonight humbly seeking advice! As I've said many a time before on ye olde blog, my cooking skills vastly outpace my baking skills. Lately I've been venturing more and more into uncharted kitchen territory, successfully baking a pumpkin pie and a reallllly yummy bread (recipe post to come! want to try it once more to make sure it's legit).

Progress.

However. My fiercest oven enemy is that sweet concoction of flour, sugar, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff - cookies. I destroy cookies. Betty Crocker cries in her grave whenever she hears me utter the fateful phrase "I'm gonna try to make some cookies today." I'm like the Anti-Crocker. Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad, buuuut then again, it's pretty bad. For some reason or another, I can NEVER get my cookies to come out just right! I even mess up the store-bought dough cookies... you know, the ones that are supposed to be fool proof? Yea, apparently they're not Anti-Crocker proof.

Sometimes my cookies taste okay, but they're always too hard. And sometimes they taste BAD and are too hard! And sometimes, they're not hard which would mean yay! but it's not yay! because instead, they are cake. Little cake circles. And they usually taste awkward because people's taste buds can't make sense of something shaped like a cookie being so spongy and weird.

Guys, all I want is to produce a batch of yummy, soft cookies. It can't be that difficult! I swear, seven year old girls yield better cookies results from their easy-bake ovens. Maybe I should just get one of those... make my life a little bit easier... and by "those" I mean hire a seven year old girl to bake me some quick choco-chip miracles from her $25 Hasbro baking machine.

No! I refuse to admit defeat! I need to make some cookies for a party on Saturday and for once I'd like my plate of cookies to NOT be left sitting on the table, still piled high with inferior, ignored cookies that by now have started to develop some serious self-esteem issues which only add to their likelihood of being avoided by each new person that looks upon their sorry, pitiable cookie faces.

So! Any cookie tips? How do I make yummy, soft, moist, NOT cake-like, melt-in-your-mouth, scrumptious, Crocker-worthy cookies?? I've got a few recipes, but I'm open to recipe ideas as well!
Thank you so much for any advice you can give me! :)

De-Cluttering, One Step at a Time

It happened so gradually, so subtly. It crept up on us like a quiet ninja. It grew silently like moss on a stump. And then one day, quite unexpectedly, I tripped over something just trying to get from one end of the room to the other. And just like that, the scales fell from our eyes. My husband and I looked around us. We were shocked. We were confused. We. Were. Terrified. We had somehow found ourselves surrounded by piles and piles and piles... of crap. Junk. Sheer and utter clutter. How it had accumulated so significantly right under our very noses will remain a mystery to us. All we knew in that moment, was that we had to act. We had to take drastic measures before we, too, became buried and lost in a sea of clutter. 

So starting this past weekend, we have been working our way through the apartment. Our goal: get rid of as much stuff as possible, and properly organize what remains. It was overwhelming at first. I think anytime you start a project as huge as "de-cluttering your home," it can be daunting. Where to begin? How to begin? Will this project ever end? Will it ever start?! To answer these pressing questions, I fell back onto the wisdom, the genius, the HORSE-SENSE of a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Leo Marvin, who taught us the best way to tackle a giant problem... is to take baby steps. 

So that's what we've been doing. One small project at a time. So far, we have taken four bags of clothing to Goodwill, one huge box of books to Half-Price Books, one large box of DVDs and CDs to a secondhand movie store, and about six full garbage bags to the dumpster. 

It feels so, so good to be simplifying our lives and organizing our living space. My goal is to never let it get that bad again! How's your living space looking these days? Could you use a day or two to de-clutter and organize your place? If so, go for it! You will feel so much better. One thing I can say is that messes do not get better on their own - only worse. 

Lastly, I'm curious, is anybody out there any good at maintaining a simple, organized, clutter-free home? How do you do it? Any practical advice to keeping up with it?