Why Mom is so tired

Here's my rising star modeling in some new duds (her first pair of Levi's--and they are too big). I think the hearts are a little reminiscent of the 80's, don't you? (Click the picture to see it bigger)

Now, don't let the adorableness of this little one fool you. Not long after these photos were taken and the said child was freshly bathed and dressed in the new fall apparel pictured, we sat down for lunch. Here are a few things you may not know about Leah:

1. She has recently begun announcing on an hourly basis that she is hungry and/or wants a snack. This may be due to the near expulsion of milk from her diet, or perhaps she's just growing.
2. She likes to feed herself. Let me rephrase that, she won't let anyone else feed her but herself.
3. She prefers insists on using a spoon and a fork, but owing to her lack of coordination, food ends up in her lap rather than her mouth most of the time.

For lunch today I served PB&J, a mozarella cheese stick, carrot sticks, water, and after all these items were served and disposed of she was still hungry and requested a slice of buttered toast. This is what Leah did with her food: spit out tiny bits of masticated carrot and refused to actually swallow any of it; made her cheese stick dance, pulled it into tiny shreds and threw it on the floor (she was mad that I peeled it into smaller peices and would have rather I served it as a single stick--who knows if she would have actually eaten it that way or not); dissected her sandwich so that she could lick out only the jelly, then ate the peanut buttered bread separately; licked the butter off the toast smearing it all over her face and by the time the butter was completley melted (and therefore no longer visible), she just threw it on the floor.

Meanwhile, since she wouldn't let me take part in the feeding process, I took advantage of her (contained) high chair time to do things like sweep up the past week's worth of discarded food and frantically scrub the grime off the floor, having surpassed my tolerance level for kitchen floor filth. I was planning to put her down for a nap after lunch and wanted to fully exploit naptime with my own overambitious plans such as putting away all our clothing that now rests in the clean laundry pile (at least its not a dirty laundry pile, right?) But of course, here I am ranting instead of folding and sorting.

But I was particularly flustered this lunch: she wouldn't let me help her be clean while eating and I knew she was wearing brand new clothes I didn't want her to ruin (enter salivated, orange carrot pieces and red, sticky jelly); I was sweeping the floor while she was throwing food back on the floor (enter cheese and toast); I was up and down from sink to floor with a rag scrubbing (with only one gloved hand so I could ration food to the child with the other) and getting lightheaded every time. For some reason, a certain song came to mind:

There is no end to filth,
There is no end to diapers,
There is no end to toddlers,
There is no end to this floor,
There is no end to [input task or state of being]...

Here is an isolated incident of Leah feeding herself with a spoon. She is actually fairly good at it. Only occasionally does she get it in her hair. Fortunately, she's gotten the message that if she takes off the bib, I take away the food and feed her myself.