La Familia Brophy

I just finished my weekly cleaning of the house. This is something that is new to me. I found Flylady a couple of months ago and she has really helped me figure out how to set up routines to get the house cleaned. Now I clean things every week that I used to let go for months. I’m too embarassed to admit what they are though.

The real key is routine. I have an evening routine which I do every night. It consists of making sure the dishes are done (Ben usually does this part), cleaning up Nathan’s toys, sweeping the kitchen and dining room, shining the sink, and cleaning the bathroom. This routine is so important.

My other routine is every Sunday morning Ben takes Nathan up the hill to his mom’s house and I spend an hour cleaning. Flylady calls this the weekly blessing (she has names for things that are hard to say sometimes). During this time I change the sheets, sweep all rooms, vacuum the rugs, mop the kitchen and dining room, clean the bathtub, and shine the sink. It really only takes an hour.

Shining the sink is very important to the Flylady thing. If your sink is shining you can handle just about anything! It does make a difference:

Anyway you should check out Flylady. You can join her email group and get daily reminders to get up and do something or you can just look at the website and get all the info you need. It is all free and it really works. The best part is that it makes life more enjoyable. I used to get really stressed out when the house was a disgusting mess (and Ben didn’t even notice how bad it was). Now that doesn’t happen and Ben notices when something needs a little shining (and he does it!) At the very least, check out her directions for shining your sink and do it. It will make you smile.

Why??

Nathan came home a year ago today on Thanksgiving. We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday at my Mom’s house. Nathan’s mom made him a special Thanksgiving bib for the occasion. Here’s Nathan with his Grandad just before dinner.

Nathan spent the night with his grandparents, his first sleep over without us. Lisa and I got to sleep in for the first time in a year. OOOOH it was sweet! We both missed him incredibly though. Nathan was happy as can be when we showed up. We all had the traditional post-Thanksgiving apple pie and ice cream breakfast.

Tonight, Lisa cooked up most of our share of the leftovers in a pot pie with a mashed potato crust.

Nathan is seemed so happy yesterday and today. He started saying his name for the first time - like this: “Nay Nay! Nay NAY!”

Mr. Jones was right to be wary on that day a year ago. Nathan tackled him at least a dozen times today. I don’t know how Mr. Jones can take it.

On any given day if you walk into the living room you will see a great ring of books on the floor. Nathan spends a great deal of time sitting in front of his bookcase pulling out books. He looks at many of them but mostly he is looking for specific books –Squirrel is Hungry, Mrs. Wishy Washy, Old MacDonald, Good Night Gorilla, Wegman’s Shape Book, and Bingo, among others. These books you'’ll find scattered around the house because he brings them to us for reading.

He has learned that holding them up and grunting doesn’t always get our attention so he has had to figure out how to bring them to us while crawling. He puts it on the floor and slides it under his hand. He has found that the floor is perfect for this but the rug gets in his way. This is not a problem. He just goes around the entire rug to get to us and then we happily read whatever he has chosen.

PS I just got the mail and predict a stripey entry soon. I’ll leave that for Ben.

Tomorrow is National Adoption Day. We went to a party tonight at the Children’s Museum. There were lots and lots of adoptive families there. Each kid got to pick four books to bring home from a wide selection donated by various publishers. And Nathan got to have pizza for the first time in his life. He loved it. Here he is polishing off his first slice:

OK, he didn’t really eat the whole slice, but close. Nathan’s been hanging out at the Children’s Museum a lot lately, so it was fun for me to see the stuff he likes, especially the car and the Bobcat he likes to drive.

I’m still thinking on legal same sex marriage in Massachusetts. I think the coming year will be difficult - there is going to be a really big backlash. On the other hand once same sex marriages start happening, people will realize they are not the end of civilization and turn back to their TVs for drama. I just hope the marriages start happening before the legislature finds a way to weasel out of the ruling, and before a constitutional amendment is passed.

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on the state of Gay marriage in the Netherlands. It has been legal for two and a half there, their society has not collapsed but they do have figure out a bunch of related issues.

This just in: Here’s an article in Salon detailing the right’s mobilization against gay marriage. It’ll definitely be a tough year.

I am happy to hear that the Massachusetts SJC has struck down the gay marriage ban. There is a still a long battle before there is a same sex marriage in the US, but this is a big step forward. My Dad’s gay, of course, and I was raised within the Gay community, all of which has something to do with my support for making same sex marriage legal. But just being a rational human being, I can’t understand the arguments against it. It will destroy heterosexual marriage? Yeah right! How bizarre!

Govenor Romney used the old “Marriage has been between a man and a woman for 3000 years for history, we can’t change it now” argument. That is also non-sensical. First of all, it’s fair to say that the definition of marriage has varied quite a bit over the last 3000 years - many forms of marriage that were kosher in Biblical times (like grown men marrying young girls) are no longer acceptable. It’s called progress. Also doing something for a long time doesn’t make it right - the end of slavery was a good thing, despite the fact that it had been common practice for 3000 years. More progress. I think we made a little progress today, too.

We celebrated our first year since meeting Nathan by, um, going to see one of Nathan’s favorite bands! We had dinner at Buddha’s Delight (a Vegan Vietnamese restaurant) went to see Belle & Sebastian at the Orpheum. It was a great concert, though it might be that Belle & Sebastian are kind of a studio band, so it’s not like you get a lot of added experience by seeing them live. I feel like i understand their music much better after seeing them though. The opening act was Rasputina, a band with two amplified cellos and a drummer. Lisa went to college with one of the cellists. I had never heard a cello played like that - it was totally rock and roll. They were kind of like Kronos meets Siouxie and the Banshees meets Heart. I say Heart because they did a rendition of Barracuda that was spot on, and I realized the singer sounded just like one of the “old white ladies” she credited the song to. Any way it was a great night. And I think Nathan enjoyed having an evening with his Grandad (Thanks, Grandad!).

As you can see Nathan has recovered. Here he is with a mouth full of cheddar and grin on his face.

Nathan is teething today. He isn’t feeling very well. He has lots of drool and snot. He is pretty grumpy. He doesn’t eat much. He doesn’t sleep much. He cries.