It’s Thursday afternoon, close enough to lunch that everyone’s done eating but not so far from it that we’re done cleaning up. I am sitting next to the bathtub on a tiny chair; Aurick is in the tub–alone, which is a luxury in this house–he is covered in his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He clearly enjoyed his lunch. He is also enjoying the bath.

This week we have been attempting to put some order back in the house after this long bout of morning sickness. I had hoped it would take the week–it may take two. I have wondered about the wisdom of trying to start this whole-house project before my morning sickness is totally over, but as Clive beautifully reminded me a couple of days ago, at least it is progress!

We started with attacking the kids’ rooms. We have taken all of the toys out of the bedrooms and put them in the basement. It felt like a lot–but it was the easy part. Now we have to deal with finding a place for everything in the basement (and getting rid of everything that doesn’t fit–we are all hankering for a toy purge.) We also removed all of the clothing that had accumulated in every nook and cranny of each room during my weeks of sickness and made a huge mountain out of it in the living room. I am pleased to say that the Dirty Laundry Mountain has been leveled. It has transformed into Clean Laundry Hill–much smaller because most of it has (thank goodness!) been folded and put away. We also have tackled our book problem–we have far, far too many books. At the moment we have a huge bag of books needing to be donated, but I really ought to comb through the ones we’re keeping and see if we can’t find more.

I am not sure why I chronicle this except to remember what things are like coming out of the fog of the first trimester. At the beginning of this week I had more energy than I had had in weeks, so I took the week off of school so that we could put the house back together in a big way, not just a little straightening, but actually dealing with real problem areas. (Like the issue of toys in the rooms–seldom played with, but always a mess–why??) and the Great Seasonal Clothes Swapout, which may as well happen while the mountain of laundry is being dealt with. Unfortunately that energy has waned as the week has progressed, but by this Thursday afternoon I can say that the kids’ rooms looks great, the laundry is almost completely washed (for now, of course), and we are chipping away at the chaos that is the basement playroom.

It all happens so much more slowly than I hoped it would, but I am considering* the implications of so strongly disliking the hard parts of life (like things taking too long, or being too tired due to pregnancy to do things quickly or work all day, or having to continue to maintain a cleaned area rather than it magically staying that way itself) and what sin that allows to wreak havoc in my mind and life. When I first started feeling sick, I began immediately to bemoan it, and I felt (I hate to use that word, but I did) a warning against being double-minded. In this case, double-minded in that I claim to be open to having more children, but I really really don’t like being pregnant, and I’m not afraid to say it. That’s stayed at the forefront of my mind (it must be The Great Lesson of this Kransling–they’ve all had something to teach, and as a coincidence the two names we’ve picked out for this baby both belonged to people who stand out in my mind as single-minded in focus).

So in the interest of single-minded inefficiency, I am taking a nap this afternoon while the kids watch a movie as a treat for working on the basement, because my nearly-forty-year-old-body is working on a new baby and I can feel the strain on it.

*When I say considering, I really mean something in between thinking about and reprimanding myself with the topic at hand, as the situation may call for it.