We are both sick today, so the very serious picture is appropriate. (All the smiling ones were of him approaching the camera lens while I told him to go back! go back or I can’t take a picture!)

This year our family has a Christmas Spirit list! I’m thinking about ways in which we can make our family Christmas a bit more about giving to others in need rather than feathering our own nests, but that takes thought and stepping outside of my comfort zone, so this year it hasn’t quite happened.

One of the things I don’t love about Christmas is that we’re one week away from Christmas Day and I still don’t feel like I’ve had a chance to stop, get off the rollercoaster, and enjoy the season. This has been a constant frustration for me for years. Last year I decided I needed to declare myself on holidays from three weeks before Christmas. I forgot about it until now! I am writing this resolution into my calendar for next year so that I can make it a reality. My last day of work this year is Wednesday and I’m hopeful that I can really get into the Christmas spirit of family and celebration after that is out of the way.

When we look at places that we like, my brain immediately starts to do things like this:

I start planning garden beds, and plants. This house is complicated! Its orientation on the block creates many small, mostly shaded areas. I also start planning furniture layouts and DIY projects and imagine worst case scenarios if we lease this house and it’s a lemon:

I didn’t sleep very much last night!

The lamp as it came from the op shop – no shade and a peachy/coral colour.

This is how it looked once I found a new lampshade from Bunnings. They have a good selection of very basic, cheap lamp shades. This shade was $17 and is quite large.

Ready to paint. My materials were Easy Surface Prep, red spray paint, and a lint fee cloth. The ESP was to get the spray paint to stick to the ceramic. I have no idea if I needed it, but the Bunnings staff member recommended it and my paint certainly stuck with no issues.

After five to seven light coats. I lost track, and did quite a bit of carefully adding paint in areas that were patchy, like at the base. I got a can of spray paint that could be sprayed at any angle, and I highly recommend it. I’m sure it made the job *much* easier.

The finished lamp in place.

The finished lamp close up.

This was not a cheap project, but also not very expensive. The lamp base was $12, the ESP was $15, the lampshade was $17, and the spray paint was $10, so $54 all up. However that’s a pretty cheap lamp for this size. Also, the ESP and spray paint can both be used again, although I can see myself using the ESP more than the paint. If I had the ESP on hand the total would have been $39.

It *was* a quick project. I bought the supplies in the morning and took the ‘after’ pictures in the evening. I was pleased by how quickly the work went. There was a bit of waiting between applying the ESP and starting painting, and waiting an hour for the paint to become touch dry, but only about 40 minutes of hands on work.

Someday you will see a post about refinishing that chest of drawers the lamp sits on. I’m really looking forward to the day I get to start that project.

You may have noticed that I tried the lamp on both the left (first picture) and right (second last picture). I have no particular design sense, but I think the left was more balanced. Do you have an opinion?

In that last picture he is shutting the door on me. He is growing up fast.

If you are an Instagram user, come find me. My name username is louiseallana.

I climb UP the slide!

I climb UP the stairs!

I slide DOWN the slide!

In a seize-the-moment moment last night I decided it was past time to provide an update for all those Montessori floor-bedders out there, so I grabbed my iPhone and took some low-fi pics for you.

Roo has swapped rooms with his brothers so that they could have the bigger room, with the door that actually latches (to keep his destructive little self away from their card games and art projects). We haven’t spent much time on this new room – just plonked everything down and left it alone. Like I said, real life has taken over. I feel like I am always putting out fires, and the time required for attending to Roo’s changing developmental needs has not been available. Maybe this week. He desperately wants step stools and his own appropriately sized cleaning tools.

So, here is the no-frills, camera-phone, full-western-sun-at-sunset version of Roo’s new room – I didn’t even tidy for you:

(I have just noticed one of the shirts is falling off its hanger. This amuses me.)

I am in love with this wardrobe Roo got for Christmas. It was handmade for him by my Dad, copied from an Ikea wardrobe that is discontinued. It functions really really well at giving him independence and limiting his wardrobe, and it is beautiful. It holds all of his clothes. When I asked my Dad to make it, I was wondering if I could do it – limit his wardrobe to just what would fit here. When he was in smaller sizes he used to have more than a hundred items of clothing (all hand me downs and gifts) and it was hard to keep on top of. Now he has what you see here plus about seven other items that were in the wash. He has only a few of each type of clothing and never (maybe once?) runs out of clothes because it’s easy for me to see when I need to get cracking on the laundry. Here, I’ve labelled it for you:

To continue with the room tour:

The only thing I have to say about the floor bed is that it still works. He has no problem staying on his bed when he wants to, he leaves it when he wants to, we have no problems that I can trace back to not having a cot… We put him to bed with a short bedtime routine – tidy, toilet (nappy & PJs), teeth, book, blessings, bed (goodnight song and kiss). We skip things depending on how tired he is. He still cries in the middle of the night many nights, which I’m not bothered by, YMMV. When we go to check on him he is mostly still in his bed. He settles down again very quickly with a short visit from us to tuck him back in. Although recently he has started crying more than once each night, he seems to need us less at these times than he used to, just a quick check-in and then he waves goodnight for us to leave again. I’m wondering if the midnight cries will fade away this year. We are considering a night light to see if that helps him put himself back to sleep. He also needs his comfort toy less – he will go to sleep without it now, although he’s never been through a whole night without it since we usually find it by the next time he wakes and cries.

You can see above that the art we used to have at eye level has gone up high, because he just wouldn’t stop trying to destroy it. Maybe later it can come down again.

The way he stacks the lighthouse puzzle slays me every time:

And there ends the tour. If you have a question, let me know in the comments and I will answer it.

School holidays have been great this summer. I think perhaps because I am not working full time, I have the energy to keep up with the kids. It’s a big change from the past, when I remember finally getting holidays from work and wishing I could just spend my days in bed, which will not do for very long with three active kids in the house. Spending five hours on a trip to the beach has seemed eminently doable in a way it did not used to.

This week I have been drawing and painting in front of the kids, leading to the inevitable string of questions, ‘What’s that?’, followed by ‘What’s a mandala?’, followed by ‘Can I do one?’ Behold, the result of our labours – everyone did at least one including Nigel & me:

This is the stuff I live for. The kitchen table was cleared off and wiped down with alacrity so people could get back to their art. We listened to classical music (which I don’t get enough of) and talked about the music and the art, art as meditation, art that is just for you (and observed how difficult it is to do art that is just for you in the presence of others), and the fact that in some cultures a mandala is to be discarded as soon as it is finished.

Miss A got the chance to use watercolour pencils and the result of that is the bright mandala at the top right – her first. She went on to do five others. The boys missed out on watercolours due to lack of appropriate paper and had to content themselves with pen and pencil. J’s is the bottom right, with the lovely coloured center, and C’s is to the left of A’s. J did really well thinking up ideas for his patterns – can you tell the point at which he looked outside for inspiration and decided to use the road? C was done really quickly, and I think he decided it wasn’t his thing… perhaps he can draw us some maps instead.  If the kids show consistent interest in drawing combined with watercolours, I will need to gift them their own pens, as my favourite drawing pen has ended up ruined… something I am willing to trade for the many hours of creativity that were involved, but not on a recurring basis! Also, there will be the purchase of more watercolour paper as soon as we are financial. I look forward to seeing A refine her skills, and seeing what C & J can do.

Miss A’s full watercolour mandala:

She showed great dedication in staying with it to completion. She even came back to it the next day when I wasn’t around and made it twice as big. I did learn that next time I introduce someone to mandalas I will suggest that they draw a few in biro on paper before they tackling a watercolour, given how much time and effort is invested in something like this. It helped that we had spent some time discussing how it didn’t matter if you made a mistake, as you weren’t drawing it to make something perfect.

I had a fantastic time experimenting with my new watercolour pencils on my mandala:

I did a bit of mixing colours, although spent most of my time working out how much pencil I need to get different intensities. I also tried to get a few different effects in the centre (success) and at the bottom edge (fail). I thoroughly enjoyed myself, especially taking risks on colours and discovering how little it mattered if I made the ‘wrong’ choice. I lost count of how many hours I spent on this – quite a few over four days.

Love how it photographs close up:

I kept a diary when I was a teenager and threw it out sometime in my late teens because I was ashamed of myself. Says a lot about me, really.

I’m going to have another go at this diary thing, but I don’t feel inspired to write a wall of words. I do feel inspired to art journal. I enjoy art and I enjoy doing art but I do not like doing it for others, so a personal art journal hits the sweet spot. It also aligns with the evolution of my blogging, which has become more and more about the photos, to the point where I don’t feel like posting if I don’t have photos.

I ordered a nice journal online and am waiting for it to arrive. However, my watercolour pencils arrived today and I had time on my hands to try them out. I discovered exactly how much difference the right paper makes!

Tests one, two and three were all done on random paper from a pad intended for writing, and in case you can’t tell, the colours are washed out, uneven, and the original pencil marks are still visible. In test 3 you can see that the colours barely mixed. It wasn’t until I fetched a random scrap of watercolour paper left over from my teens (the paper with the vine – I drew that when I was about twelve) that I found out what these pencils can really do. Test 4 was a very satisfying moment. I now have some insight into why my art, especially when using watercolours, never looked like I thought it should when I was a child. Materials, materials, materials.

Really looking forward to getting my journal and finding out what I can do next…

This boy loves the outside – to be in the outside, or to look at the outside:

Roo got a haircut from his Daddy today. It was seriously long. Mullet-long. I used to think I would like long hair on my baby, but short is much, much better.

This is his ‘oooh’ look – he is literally saying ‘oooooh’ at this moment. I think it just means he’s seen something interesting

. I’m so pleased to have captured it. It’s adorable, and one day soon he won’t do it any more.

Roo is sharing things with me now:

I bought him a snow globe at the op shop today and it was a hit:

Until he caught sight of the camera of course:

Roo *loves* putting things in and out these days. He does it with his train and the screwdriver (putting the screwdriver down the hole left by a missing screw), and with the train and his toothbrush, he does it with the tube of Bonjelour putting it into and out of its cardboard packet, he will put an icypole stick through an empty toilet roll, a shampoo sample bottle down the drain (after removing the grating, and yes, the shower was blocked twice before we removed all offending sample bottles), rolls of toilet paper into the toilet bowl, sleep toy into the toilet bowl… all variations of the theme of ‘what can I fit in here?’. There are a few missing pieces of toys that I am starting to wonder if I will ever find.

I ordered these miniature knobbed cylinders on a whim, since I didn’t think Roo would be ready to use them for some months yet, but they fit nicely with his current obsession. He appears to be quite far away from getting them into the ‘correct’ slots, but he concentrates intensely on them:

Other observations of Roo at 14 months:

-He is standing very well. Sometimes when I put him down, he wants to be put down standing instead of sitting. His physical boldness is amazing. He is fantastic at climbing. This afternoon I was standing at the bookshelf and spy out of the corner of my eye a baby levitating in mid-air – or at least, so it appeared! He had climbed up on our Ikea Poang, had his hands on the top of the back, and his feet braced half way up the back, using his arms to hold him up high above the top. He was immensely pleased with himself, and I expect it is the highest he has ever been under his own steam. He got himself back down again just fine, too. He is constantly climbing, and the day that he can walk and carry his chair around at the same time will be the day I wished we didn’t live in a rental and could anchor the furniture to the walls.

- He is fascinated with the toilet & with people using it. He pulls at his nappy when it is wet. He can go for long periods nappy-free without an accident (up to an hour). I suspect if I was a more passionate early childhood educator I would have started toilet training him, despite the fact that he isn’t walking yet. I’m not ready for that! I have gotten his potty out of the cupboard, so we’ll see how far we get with introducing the potty.

- Doors. He loves to open and close them, and he gets upset when they are shut and he can’t open them again. Especially if he has locked himself into a room. Although sometimes when he locks himself into a particularly nice room and it’s nearly naptime, he just lies down and goes to sleep. He is also fascinated by the doorhandle to his room, and grabs at it whenever he is carried past it.

- He understands when someone is leaving, and when it is me, he gets upset. This only just started in the last few days.

- He now knows that grates lift out, and has a good go at every grate he comes across. We may have lost some pieces of toys down the outside drains, in addition to the blocked shower incidents.

- He has the bath plug figured out. He’s just not strong enough to lift it out with water still in the bath. I have had a circle puzzle out for a week or so, and I notice he takes pleasure in lifting the circle out and replacing it whenever he wanders past. For the first few days I thought he wasn’t touching it because it was always put together, but now I’ve seen him using it I know it’s just because he likes to put it back together. He still finds the square and the triangle too difficult, and loses interest and starts throwing them.

- He has started putting himself down for small rests that aren’t naps – just quiet time or closing his eyes for a few minutes. This morning it was on our bed, usually it’s on his own.

- He loves animals. He points and makes noises at animals in real life, television and pictures. Every animals is ‘doo doo’ at the moment, although we’re working on differentation.

- His non-verbal communication is coming along. Last week I got impatient when he was crying and told him he had to tell me what was wrong with either words or symbols, and showed him the symbols again. It was like a lightbulb went off, and since then he has been using sign language when he is hungry or thirsty, and he is being very clear. It’s amazing to finally have clear communication. However, I have discovered that he is hungry a lot! He wants to eat all afternoon from about 3pm. I would love it if he would start signing clearly for a nappy change, since I often miss the pull at the nappy.

- His skills at drinking with the glass are fine, but his cutlery skills are poor. He doesn’t use it at all really. He did show some inclination a few weeks ago, but because we haven’t kept up with assisting in cutlery use consistently, he’s gone back to using his hands or wanting us to feed him. We are in the process of rearranging the main room with the by-product of fitting in his low chair & table into a more accessible spot, so we might be able to be more consistent with him once we have this set up for him to eat lunch at. I hope to find some small shelves and set them up next to the table so he can start setting his own table for lunch and snacks. If anyone knows where I can find some simple, small shelves that don’t take up much space please let me know in the comments!

Here is Roo’s room at 13 months. The view from the door:

The play mat is from Ikea, and Nigel chose it when we returned a lighthouse puzzle birthday gift that had been a duplicate (thanks Alyce & family!). The cupboard is his ‘garage’ and houses things with wheels. He has basically no interest in playing with them at the moment, but he has mastered the art of pushing a car around :) On top of the garage is his toothbrush and hairbrush. Usually they are in a little dish but it was missing when I took these photos.

The pail in the above shot (and yes, I am wishing I had shuffled the garage over and set the pail upright *before* taking this shot) is for his dirty clothes. The painting on the wall, that used to be blu-tacked on, is now stuck on with velcro command strips. He did and does love pulling it down, but it comes down a lot less with the velcro. In fact, sometimes it stays up for days. The train is missing a screw that was accidentally trodden on and broken, but Roo thinks this is a perfect place to store the screwdriver that came with the train, and in fact he likes putting the screwdriver in and out of its slot quite a lot.

The afore-mentioned grooming station:

This boy loves to brush his teeth:

He does not, however, love to walk. He can stand a little, but when presented with the Radio Flyer wagon sits firmly on his bum. In the next picture the wagon is filled with random toys. Those will soon go into the cupboard and a handful of carefully chosen toys will go into it instead. Just haven’t got to that yet. You can also spy his reading corner:

Demonstrating how the screwdriver goes in and out of its spot:

Looking straight at the other side of the room:

The reading corner:

Roo can now fetch books for himself and put them away. His interest in books is growing, to my pleasure. He also has a handful of stuffed toys out in this corner, they get rotated every now and then (he has so many stuffed toys!). He shows little interest in the stuffed toys unless we also play with them. He does like the girl doll a lot, he gives her baby kisses when I bring her out (which means he presses his face into her face). The lamb toy is also a favourite to chew on. Nigel enjoys using the toys that are also puppets, so a few more have come out of the cupboard since this picture was taken.

Below are his shelves, oddly devoid of toys:

I was waiting to see what skills Roo wanted to practice before filling his shelves again. Since this picture, a money-box toy and a puzzle toy have gone out as well.

The bowl contains a small collection of throwing toys – the puzzle ball was a birthday gift from friends bought from a local craftsperson. It is beautifully made, easy to grasp and rolls just the right amount. The other ball in there is a hackysack from The Oxfam Shop, which I love for the ethical origins and the lovely colours and texture and lightness yet heft of it.

The three balls & box I bought on impulse from a chemist – they were sitting on a table next to the queue. I’m so glad I bought them as he has had plenty of use from them. They were originally given to Roo many months ago without the plastic rings in the holes, so that he could drop the balls right through. He enjoyed that, and has loved using the balls without the box as well. I put the plastic rings back in (thankfully it was easy – I was wondering if I had ‘broken’ this aspect of the toy by prying them out earlier). He now has the hang of pressing the ball through the holes, but seems to enjoy lifting them out and placing them back even more than pressing them through. He will also tip the box up and drop the balls through the door.

The bowl of lego is a bit beyond his skill at the moment – he enjoys looking at pieces and pulling apart things that are stuck together but isn’t anywhere near putting pieces together himself. The collection is on view partly because it is something his siblings can play with when in his room.

The heater isn’t needed anymore, plus he has figured out how to turn it on, so it will come out of the room very soon.

The floor bed is still working wonderfully. He now lets us tuck him in at night and at nap times, and sometimes doesn’t leave the bed until after the nap/morning. The cards on the wall are no longer his birth cards but his birthday and baptism cards. One of them is a musical card that sings when you open it, and it comes down every now and then for him to play with it – he loves it.

The chair is much too big for him, but is out because when I was moving it between cupboards he climbed up on it and was very proud of himself. So I thought we will see whether he wants to do that again.

This is a shot from slightly further out so that you can see that the mobile is still there:

The last angle, in which you can see his basket of play silks that are still very popular with all the kids:

A shot of the reading corner in use. What a pity he stopped looking at the book once he heard the camera. Can you spot the toothbrush? This is its last known sighting; it has since gone missing:

A record of his joy when the camera first came out:

At some point soon I plan to do a review of how his room has changed. Maybe after he is a year and a half old.

• When I build a house, it will have no separate room for laundry. I use ours at the moments and think about how unnecessary it is – a whole other space to maintain. My dream house will probably not even have a European cupboard setup. I like the look of washing machines in the kitchen next to the dishwasher – especially right next to a large flat surface for folding on. This one is cute:

• When I build a house, it will have a covered porch with plenty of washing line running underneath.
• It will also have overhead drying racksinside the house, if possible right near the washing machine:
• If we have a dryer (which will depend on how many kids are living at home and how many indoor drying racks we fit in), it will be in the kitchen near the washing machine, vented to the outside.

They had a *wonderful* time. Afterwards, their father took them through the chemical makeup of the compounds, ions, molecules, reactions, bases, acids, all those things that aren’t my speciality. Later, we discovered that the mixture had eaten through the finish on the table! Good thing it was a cheap eBay table that is too small for our family now. All future science experiments will be conducted outside, and I am now sold on the cleaning power of vinegar and bi-carb soda.

I saw, I pinned, we did!

I missed the submission deadline for the Young House Love Pinterest challenge, despite getting all motivated and actually making two of the things on my Pinterest boards. Turns out, when one challenge closes, another one opens! The Pinterest Make Me Challenge – thanks Alyce & mummytofive. (By the way, the project Alyce blogged about was fabric memory game tiles for Roo. Lucky baby – and he appreciates them too, carries them all around the house.)

Today I decided to do a third project from my Pinterest boards: Finger painting with edible paint. I got the idea and recipe from one of my favourite blogs, How We Montessori. Almost everything I do is copied from somewhere, and this blog in particular inspires many of things I am doing with Roo at the moment.

As for the details, I mixed up the recipe in the inspiration post, which is one cup of flour to one cup of water. I only used less than half, so if you don’t want enormous amounts of paint just make half. Although next time I might put it all out to see how that changes the play. I ended up using a stick blender to get it smooth.

I then divided it into three and mixed in three different coloured food dyes. I used a lot more dye than I thought I would, since I wanted vibrant colours. Roo was naked, in his Ikea Antilop high chair. I used the tray that comes with the chair, it is perfect for these sorts of things. I had a towel underneath the chair to catch the inevitable drips.

Once the session was over I put him straight into the bath. I was relieved to see that everything was easy to clean up, and the only things that were stained were my fingers and a little bit of his arm – everything else washed off or out easily. Oh and the strap on his high chair now has purple spots, which I’m ok with. My fingers are almost back to normal and its only a few hours later.

This was definitely not finger painting, more of a sensory experience. Roo is not really interested in crayons or drawing, and I think he liked this mostly for the experience of colourful goop on his hands. For the next little while, I will probably put out only two colours, so that the end result is not brown. The only reason for this is my own distaste for muddy brown.

Here follows a photo essay entitled ‘My First Paint’. I won’t blame you if you don’t make it through… I took a lot of photos. On the other hand, Aunty Monika, eat your heart out.

I had another ‘good’ day at the op shop today. Here are some ‘before’ photos of what I came home with (before being cleaned up and integrated into our home).

Two bowls ($1.99 each) and four plates ($1.99 the lot) for Roo to eat from, plus a glass container to hold bi-carb soda in the ensuite ($3.99):

Since taking this picture I have removed the plastic seal from the square jar since it’s not necessary for my purposes, and it looks so much more attractive. The salesperson was sad when I told her the glass bowls were for my toddler to use, as she thought they were much too nice to risk breaking! I would have preferred plainer ones, but there was nothing plain that was the right size and shape.

These buckets were not quite true to label…

… but they were still pretty exciting!

Also exciting, were the prices!

We have sorted through to separate the imitations from the real duplo, and in this picture the bucket on the left holds the imitations and the bucket on the right holds the real stuff:

Maybe you’re not the parent of a small child, maybe you’ve not bought Duplo recently, maybe you can’t tell from the photos, but that’s $70 worth of Duplo filling that little bucket. That stuff holds its value on eBay, so I’m pretty pleased to have found it in an op shop for $18!

And lastly, another basket. I couldn’t pass it up. It’s impossible to tell in this photo how large it is. It’s much, much bigger than Roo. For $10:

The basket has already been pressed into service to hold shoes at the front door. I’m thinking it might get a re-paint sometime in the future, once we settle more definitely on a colour palette for certain rooms. I love the green of the painted basket in this picture (click through to pinterest for the source):

I spent $38 today, more than I would usually spend. Everything except the baby plates & glasses was a luxury purchase, since we could have made do without them just fine.

The plates were the one purchase over which I have no quibble – 50c each, and the right size and design for Roo to eat from, and we didn’t already have any suitable china plates for him. The bowls were expensive for what they are, but they were cheap enough for me to buy them. The square jar was a complete luxury item since I already had a jar for the bathroom, but it was quite large and this one is a better size… plus I was won over by its nice shape. The Duplo doubles Roo’s collection – nice, but not necessary, or at least not for the next few years until he really gets into building with it. The basket was another luxury, but not a complete luxury since I have been looking for a larger basket to hold shoes for months now, as the current one is too small for Nigel’s collection of footwear, and the basket certainly does the job.

Prevarication aside, being able to spend $38 at the op shop and add beautiful and useful items to our house saves me from going crazy while we live on a low income, pay exorbitant rent, and try and save for a house deposit. It also saves me from adding to the wasteful consumption that makes the economy go round. I still have to play close attention to my desire to have an object for the sake of the endorphins that come with buying. Because each individual item is so cheap, there’s that feeling that it doesn’t really matter if I buy it just in case. I’ve spent long enough getting rid of ‘just in case’ items that I would rather not purchase them again and deal with the guilt later.

For the last few months he has been feeding himself with his hands a la ‘baby led weaning’. It’s time for him to learn to use cutlery! When our friends K & J gave Roo some money for his baptism & birthday I was thrilled to learn that they were thinking of baby cutlery… perfect. This afternoon his new, infant-sized cutlery arrived in the mailbox.

The cutlery set came beautifully packaged. Pictures of the unwrapping:

Roo’s new cutlery is from Montessori At Home, and I ordered it over the internet because I didn’t have confidence I could find appropriate sized cutlery in the standard stores. I was pretty sure the cutlery we already had from Roo’s older brother was too large, chunky and awkward. Despite having been warned, I was surprised to see how small the set I ordered really is. It’s beautifully designed and made. Light and yet with a certain heft. Meghan made the gorgeous cutlery wallet after consulting me on my preferences (which were ‘colourful’ and ‘gender-neutral’). I helped Roo eat with the fork and spoon this evening, and they worked very well for him. I look forward to seeing him start to use them himself!

Baskets are one of my weaknesses. I have always liked them but had little use for them. Now that I have a child to prepare activities for I have an excuse to have many, many baskets. In other things I am very minimalist, but since this is my first time providing activities for a baby, I find I need lots of baskets and trays in varying sizes and shapes while I figure out what I need at each time I set up activities or organise toys.

I went to an op shop today that was keeping it old school with the prices – what a find! In addition to about fifteen items for activities for Roo (posts to come), I came home with an addition to my collection that is unlike any other basket I own. The cleaned basket sitting outside to dry:

Things I Know Today:

I know that it would be a good idea for me to go to sleep right now.

I know that having an iPhone is a major contributor to why I am not asleep right now.

I know that my iPhone enables me to spend large chunks of my day reading blogs… I used to read books, now I read blogs, and the escapism is *even better*. If I didn’t have an iPhone I would probably cut my blog reading down by 60%.

I know that I am considering not having an iPhone.

I also know that if I didn’t have an iPhone I would no longer be able to easily fulfill the part of my job where I respond to my clients within 24 hours at the latest. I would need the discipline to check up on my work each night rather than wait for a little red number to tell me that there is an email to read or a task to complete.

I know that without an iPhone I would be more present to my children, read more books, read more newspapers (a dubious benefit sometimes), and get more sleep.

I fear that without an iPhone I will miss out on some of my ‘sanity’ time when I tune out to the kids or the world and lose myself in the pretty, pretty blogs, and the feed-my-mind blogs.

I know that this blog post has brought me significantly closer to getting rid of my iPhone. I also now know that I need a desk.