Clean Sweep

Tonight... we cleaned.

(And no, we did not stage this. She picked up the broom on her own tonight.)

See that nasty drywall dust on the floor above? That has been coating our kitchen for the past 10 days. It is the reason we had plastic taped up over every doorway, why we couldn't cook in our kitchen, and why life has been generally miserable around these parts.

But tonight! Tonight, we (fingers crossed) finished the little bit of sanding that we had left, and afterward, we immediately got to cleaning. Vacuuming, then scrubbing every crevice of the microwave, the stove, the refrigerator, the countertops, the floor. All of it.

I already feel a million times better. Like this:

Because the chaos that consumed our lives--that weighed on me like someone was sitting on my chest--it was mostly because of the filth. I don't like the disorder of having no kitchen cabinets and letting the rest of the house go to shit, but hey--at least we were able to take down the plastic and clean up the dust.

For now, it is those little things that are making me happy. We are moving onto the next stage of this project: Paint. On the walls (if we can finally choose a color, which is proving to be tough). On the cabinets.

Yay.

Oh, and lest you think that living with a sweet, adorable little toddler is all fun and games, I feel the need to give you a small dose of reality. Nora made her way over to the stairs with the broom, dropped the broom, tried to climb the stairs, got removed from the stairs, and...

Someone doesn't like it when she doesn't get her way. A big ol' tantrum ensued.

And then this happened:

What...the...? The kid picked up my shoe and bit it before I could even react. It's not like I paused to take a picture of it while she stuck a nasty shoe in her mouth. I was already snapping away, dutifully documenting her toddler tantrum, when all of a sudden she was biting my shoe. And I got it on camera.

Is it normal for them to bite random things when they're frustrated? Because this isn't the first time, unfortunately. At this age, I feel like her tantrums are mostly caused by her inability to effectively communicate, so I wish she would just learn to talk already. But that's a whole 'nother subject.

I'm just going to go back to basking in the glory of our clean kitchen. Disassembled? Yes. But clean.

Happy Wednesday. And hey, Happy Leap Year!