It's the Last Day of the Year

Today is my mom's birthday.  As a favor to us, and because it's the greatest gift we could give her, Max slept over last night and is spending the day with her.  Our motivation behind this is not only to give her something awesome for her birthday, but to clean.  That's right, we're not going to have a romantic NYE date or even spend the day doing something exciting and fun.  We're going to clean the hell out of our house.  (Although typing this up is not the best start; I have to be able to enjoy a little time to myself!)
I've discovered that newborn and infancy stages are far easier than the toddler stages of parenting.  Granted, we were blessed with a very easy-going, happy baby in Max, but still... Now when I am home with Max all day, we play all day long.  It makes me endlessly happy, of course.  I love watching him learn and discover things and sing and "read" and do all the things that he couldn't do even yesterday.  But that little bugger has a lot of energy, and it requires so much to keep up with him.  It's very difficult to multi-task.  When he was an infant, I could make dinner while he lay in his bouncy chair, so happily.  Now the only way to confine him is in his booster seat and then he doesn't understand why the heck he's not eating!  When he was an infant, I could schedule my stuff with his naps.  Even though they were shorter, so was the time between them.  So first nap, clean up kitchen.  Second nap, put away laundry.  Third nap, shower.  If I was efficient enough, I could even sneak in a nap myself.  Now, we have 1 midday nap that is about 2 hours.  Not enough time, Max, not enough time.  Plus, when do I clean his room?  When I put away his laundry, I end up also cleaning up everything he used to occupy himself while I made sure his clothes were hanging neatly in his open closet.
All this has made it necessary for a monthly-ish Saturday with the grandparents so I can mover freely about without feeling like I am neglecting my son, nor am I expecting him to crawl around on a floor covered in dog hair, nor am I frightening him with the dreaded vacuum cleaner, whose noise causes such terror in Max's eyes that I want to throw the darn thing out the door.
So I am off to spend my child free New Year's Eve day with my husband cleaning.  Hopefully starting 2012 in a clean house will make me feel better about the fact that I know it won't stay that way.