emerson lately

Emerson is growing up quickly, but I still feel like he's my squishy little baby, so I don't feel too bad about it yet. It helps that he doesn't even crawl yet, so he kind of still is my squishy baby.

He's as cute as ever, and he loves flailing his arms and legs. It's hard to get a good picture of him, because he's always moving.

At nine and a half months, he has way more hair than I ever expected him to (I'm pretty sure I was bald until I was two), and it's super cute.

He now has four teeth (just barely), and he loves to bite everything, especially our clothes.

Mmm, jeans.

At his nine-month appointment, he measured 28.5 inches (45th percentile) and weighed 19 pounds (35th percentile). He's already slimming down!

He's getting to be quite vocal and loves calling out mama! whenever he's lonely or hungry and dada! when he's excited. Hmm.

We went out for lunch the other day when Andrew didn't have class, and it was cold in the restaurant, so I let Emerson borrow my cardigan. He loved it.

He's still a great sleeper, and he's starting to eat a lot more food, which is fun (and time consuming). He loves playing with socks, shoes, cords, and paper.

And he still makes some great faces.

He's a great baby, and we love him to pieces!

the cleaning epiphany

If you know my mom, you will know she's pretty much the cleanest, most organized lady around. I always admired that about her (while also resenting her neatness because I apparently missed out on the gene that compels a person to keep the house so incredibly clean).

After four years of marriage, a consistently messy house, and feeling lame because I just wasn't as good at cleaning as my mom, I decided to put in practice something she had taught me through example: the only way to make cleaning easy is to do it every day. If you leave off all your cleaning until the weekend (or the end of the month or the year), you'll end up feeling overwhelmed and you'll probably leave it off even longer.

I realize that this is a pretty basic concept, but I've been too lazy to put it into practice in the past. Instead of continuing the cycle of laziness, I decided to create a schedule and get to work.

There are a few chores that need to be done every day, like making the bed, emptying/loading the dishwasher, and straightening up messes. The bigger tasks, like cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming the whole house, are now divided up fairly evenly among the days of the week.

Emerson loves it when the living room is clean. Oh wait, he just loves listening to the vacuum.

I am still not a pro at the whole keeping-a-clean-house thing, but doing a little bit of cleaning every day has helped so much. It's become much less of a chore for me mentally, and it frees up the weekend so we can take advantage of Andrew's sparse free time. Thanks for the cleaning lesson, Mom!