the house-cleaning maniac and the silent puker

As you can see by today's title, the last few days have been very interesting.

On Tuesday afternoon, while I was at my English class, my husband cleaned the house. He tidied up the living room, vacuumed, washed the dishes, made dinner, washed a load of laundry and hung it out to dry, gave the girls a bath and did another load of laundry. Yes, he is the house-cleaning maniac, not me. Since Spring Break, my focus has been entirely on Emi and elementary school, Misaki and preschool, Natsuki and her schedule, Sakura and potty-training (more to come on this) and me and my English class. Everyone in the right place, at the right time with the right stuff has been my goal and, with the exception of a few small hiccups, everything has been going very well. To accomplish this goal, I have been doing the minimum amount of work in the house. I'll do laundry only if someone needs something the next day or I'll vacuum if someone is coming over, etc. My husband has been pretty patient during this time but I think on Tuesday he finally snapped and the urge to clean overwhelmed him! The result is a fabulously tidy house which I have been trying to maintain to show how much I appreciate all the hard work but honestly, I don't care. I'm trying to make it through until June when our life will even out (hopefully) and go back to normal.

June. It's getting closer and then I will have no more excuses left. In preparation, I have been making all sorts of goals to help me keep focused.

Personal Goals:
Find some sort of exercise I can do 3 times a week for 30 minutes with Sakura & Natsuki.
Drink 8 glasses of water a day.

Family Goals:
Potty-train Sakura.
Help Natsuki with her crawling.

House Goals:
Fix the tatami in our living room.
Make a safe play area for Natsuki on the floor.
Buy a bed for Chikara and I.

There. I wrote the goals out for the whole world (the Internet world) to see so now I have to do them. There are other things I want to accomplish this year but I decided to break it down into smaller bites so I can remember them. My memory is not what it once was.

On Wednesday, I made spaghetti for dinner, which the girls love, but when I called them for dinner, Misaki said her stomach hurt. When Misaki says this, it could mean anything, so I ran down the list of probably causes. Do you need to go potty? Are you hungry? Do you need to spit-out (throw-up)? She said no to all of them so I told her to try a few bites and see how she felt. An hour later, she was still sitting in front of her bowl and it was still full. That's really unusual for Misaki so I told her she didn't have to eat her food. We were sitting on the floor in front of the couch, I was playing with Natsuki and my back was turned to Misaki. I mean, she was literally right behind me. I heard her say "Mom" in kind of a weak voice and I turned around and there was puke all over the floor. I hadn't heard a thing. Usually there's some sort of retching sound but Misaki, always one to be dainty, puked silently.

As I was cleaning it up, Emi said, "Just looking at Misaki throw up makes me want to throw up, too". I gave her my best Don't-Even-Think-About-It look. Misaki threw up about 10 times during the next four hours. She didn't have a fever and she was pretty upbeat so she must've eaten something that didn't agree with her. Finally around 11pm, she fell asleep on the couch. I moved her to our room so I could be near her if she needed to throw up in the middle of the night. This morning she really wanted to go to school because they were having an open house so I let her go. When I saw her around 10am, she was jumping around so I guess she's doing OK.

Next week, Misaki has a field trip so I have to start thinking about what kind of bento I'm going to make for her. She's not a picky eater so anything will be fine but I want to try to make one that she can be proud of. See here and here if you want to see what I'm talking about.