Intense Day

It was a full day today! Six hours of learning (minus lunch!), two hours of gardening (planted pinto and soy beans), dinner, two hours of spontaneous room-switching, followed by two hours of purim baking and kitchen cleaning. The room-switching wasn't entirely spontaneous, since we had talked about switching the kids' rooms around. I just hadn't planned on doing it tonight, but what better way to procrastinate purim preparations?

Amirah is now in the small bedroom, blissfully A-L-O-N-E. We moved the boys into the big bedroom where Raizel is right now too. As soon as we can, we're moving her to the learning room which won't be our learning room any more. Everyone gravitates to the more spacious-feeling dining room table anyway. I'll move a couple of bookshelves out into our bedroom and that should work fine for her room. Hopefully, we'll be able to have a window put in that room that looks over the garden. Right now there's just the sliding glass door. Fortunately, that room stays nice and cool over the summer, so even without a window it should be fine. We'll put the art table in the laundry/workshop room and that should take care of it!

The boys are very excited about their new bigger room. Since they're in bunk beds they will have a really big play space in there. Raizel is also very happily looking forward to being in her new bedroom. So everyone wins! I'm hoping Amirah will be able to retain her calm demeanor more often, even when bugged by little siblings, now that she has her own refuge.

And my favorite news of the day - with all this stooping, planting, shoveling, hauling, furniture-moving, cooking, and cleaning, my back has not one ache! I had just taken it for granted that stooping over and planting things was just one of those things that made my back hurt. Just a little, but there was definitely an ache. I have a new mattress topper that I got at Sam's Club for my bed, a three-inch layer of memory foam. I usually wake up with a backache if I'm in bed for more than seven hours. Not this morning! I'm hoping that this change will stay and I can have a long shabbos nighttime sleep without waking up feeling yucky.