A whirlwind? A tornado? A 20 month old girl?

I woke this morning to find that a whirlwind had come through my house. You know, the kind of whirlwind in the form of a 20 month old girl. I haven't put in my contacts for a few days, and I can't wear my glasses because they are missing an ear piece (darn whirlwind, again), so I haven't really noticed the destruction that had been made on my home in the last few days. Until this morning, when I finally felt well enough to get out of bed, put in my contacts, and look around.

I found a box of Kleenex emptied, then five or more sheets of tissue paper shredded into tiny little pieces on my bedroom floor. I was aware that Jader was doing this, but I didn't have the energy to stop her. Now, I wished I had. When you feel like you can't breathe, and your lungs are on fire, and your nose is stuffed up, it is really difficult to get on all fours and pick up shredded pieces of Kleenex.

The small area on the floor next to my side of the bed was a major disaster. Besides the Kleenex, I picked up seven books (some were mine, some were Jader's), one of the books is a farm activity book with magnetic pieces. These pieces were strewn all over the room. Besides the books, there were hair clips, some clothes (she helped herself to my bag that I hadn't unpacked from our trip to Roosevelt. I hate unpacking, but that is another post all in itself) my earphones, Jader's shoes, and a laundry basket. All of this stuff was in a four foot by four foot area, adjacent to the door to our bedroom. For the past two and a half days, I would walk trip over this stuff just before collapsing into bed.

I finally cleaned it today. However, it about did me in. I sank into the bed with exhaustion after I sorted everything and put it in its proper place.

Then I saw the basement. The place I would send Jader to watch her movies while I tried to lay down. She had fun in the basement. Austin cleaned up the one mess that I couldn't see (was it the hazy cloud of sickness or the lack of contacts?), and that was a pile of breadcrumbs that Jader emptied onto the floor. She found one the sacks from our trip that had some groceries in it. I made some meatballs for my brother's birthday, and I used my own breadcrumbs from my whole wheat bread recipe. She dumped those, but thankfully she got bored and left the pile intact. She didn't spread it all over the room, so according to Austin, it was easy to clean up. Thankfully she doesn't know how to take the lid off the peanut butter jar that was in the same bag. That would have been a real mess.

The last disaster area in the house is in the corner near the back door. This is where I had three garbage bags full of fabric that I brought home from my mom's house. You guessed it, strewn fabric on the floor. Not a big deal, easy to clean up, but a little overwhelming to me right now. It's going to have to wait till later.

I think it's going to take a couple of days to get my house back in order, and after that, I hope to get creative again and get some things done.