I will report that I got up at 7 today. Better than 8. Not as good as 6.
I will also report that one majorly discouraging factor in my quest to get up earlier and be more prepared (physically and mentally) for the day before me, is the fact that when I get up earlier - so do my precious cherubs. Can I out-early them?
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
It's official
There is no longer any debate or choice in the matter. I HAVE to start being fully prepared for my day before the kids get up. I just HAVE to. No more wimping out and not getting up. What follows in those situations is keyboard keys getting ripped out and food getting thrown on the floor - and more importantly and more directly connected - my frustration rising to an unbelievable level when those kinds of things happen. I think this is a two-fold issue...both of which require getting up more consistently.
1.) My kids are at an age where I really can't leave them alone. And I really need to have a prepared home for the day. (i.e. clean dishes so I can quickly make meals and find cups)
2.) I have to be more mentally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared for the draining task of training my children. If I don't commit to this task each morning, and daily ask for God's help, I am going to continually fail - like I did today.
So yes, tomorrow I will get up before the sun comes up. I will not decide to shoot the birds outside or ignore my alarm clock. I HAVE to get better at this battle.
1.) My kids are at an age where I really can't leave them alone. And I really need to have a prepared home for the day. (i.e. clean dishes so I can quickly make meals and find cups)
2.) I have to be more mentally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared for the draining task of training my children. If I don't commit to this task each morning, and daily ask for God's help, I am going to continually fail - like I did today.
So yes, tomorrow I will get up before the sun comes up. I will not decide to shoot the birds outside or ignore my alarm clock. I HAVE to get better at this battle.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Picking back up with 1000 blessings
5. Not needing a phone last night when I was home alone and phoneless
6. Having a phone when I needed help today
7. Kind, generous, and caring neighbors who rushed to help when they heard a little girl's leg was stuck in her crib.
8. Being invited to lunch by a compassionate, gracious, and Godly woman who has so much to teach me about being a wife and mother
9. M and M getting to feed the chickens and get their eggs (and breaking a few in the process)
10. The feeling inside when a toddler brings you a book and wordlessly climbs into your lap for a snuggle and a story
6. Having a phone when I needed help today
7. Kind, generous, and caring neighbors who rushed to help when they heard a little girl's leg was stuck in her crib.
8. Being invited to lunch by a compassionate, gracious, and Godly woman who has so much to teach me about being a wife and mother
9. M and M getting to feed the chickens and get their eggs (and breaking a few in the process)
10. The feeling inside when a toddler brings you a book and wordlessly climbs into your lap for a snuggle and a story
A study in contrasts
This week was the polar opposite from last week. Last week found us struggling to get over the flu, and then coming down with croup. That meant no being with other people, no playdates, no reprieves, no long stretches of sleep...and really just no fun. I found myself thinking - wow, being an actual "stay-at-home" mom is really really hard. It is one thing to be a "full-time-with-your-kids-mom", but staying at home - Oh my. Not for me. I thrive on being with other moms, sharing in their journey, laughing at their kids, them laughing at mine. I get really down when I'm alone with just my kids, and their tempers.
Even in the midst of last week, there were a couple of high spots. Mackenna climbed a ladder thing at the park, all by herself. I can't believe the independence and crazy climbing abilities that she is finding recently. Both kids jumped like crazy, with such HUGE smiles on their faces, on the bridge thingy on the playground. We also cleaned up the backyard a bit, to make it more readily available for cookouts and playing. While we were having our first grill-out meal of the season, Mackenna casually walked by and pointed at the "t" on the little tikes basketball goal and said "t" - Curt and I looked at each other incredulously. Micah then walked up and pointed at the "e" and said "e". Not sure exactly what was going on there - but we laughed pretty hard about their abilities. Micah also had a big individual accomplishment that night - he ate his first big boy bite of real corn on the cob. Makes his Indiana mama very proud. (That, and his ability to differentiate between a tractor and a combine, will hopefully endear him to his papa this summer.)
I must say, that in a week as long and as daunting as last week, those high spots only somewhat brightened my mood!
This week started with a trip to Busch Gardens. In the five years we have lived here, we have never purchased Fun Cards (stripped down season passes which provide you unlimited access until Dec 31st, for basically the cost of a one-day admission). Sesame Street just came to Busch Gardens, so we decided it was a good time to join. We are going to try and take the kids at least once a month, and we plan on going a few times just the two of us. The kids were really good. The enjoyed giving high fives, kisses, and nose honks to Elmo. They bounced and climbed like crazy in the rope tree house. They enjoyed riding the train. They kind of enjoyed a few rides, and of course only wanted to really ride the ones that they are not yet tall enough for :) Here are a few pictures.
Curt stayed home with the sniffly kids on Tuesday, and I was able to go to work. I was then able to go out with some girlfriends on Tuesday evening for a wonderful night of sitting out in the gorgeous weather and eating some yummy dessert. Good for the soul. The last three days of the week were broken up by music class, playdates, and a wonderful lunch with a wonderful family, and enjoying my kids WHILE being with other people. In a week like that, there were so many more times that I found myself holding one of the kids and kissing their sweet heads, and almost being overwhelmed to the point of tears at my gratitude for getting to be their mama. There were still meltdowns, still many corrections, but having a family weekend and conversations with other adults gave me the fuel I needed to totally change my perspective.
Even in the midst of last week, there were a couple of high spots. Mackenna climbed a ladder thing at the park, all by herself. I can't believe the independence and crazy climbing abilities that she is finding recently. Both kids jumped like crazy, with such HUGE smiles on their faces, on the bridge thingy on the playground. We also cleaned up the backyard a bit, to make it more readily available for cookouts and playing. While we were having our first grill-out meal of the season, Mackenna casually walked by and pointed at the "t" on the little tikes basketball goal and said "t" - Curt and I looked at each other incredulously. Micah then walked up and pointed at the "e" and said "e". Not sure exactly what was going on there - but we laughed pretty hard about their abilities. Micah also had a big individual accomplishment that night - he ate his first big boy bite of real corn on the cob. Makes his Indiana mama very proud. (That, and his ability to differentiate between a tractor and a combine, will hopefully endear him to his papa this summer.)
I must say, that in a week as long and as daunting as last week, those high spots only somewhat brightened my mood!
This week started with a trip to Busch Gardens. In the five years we have lived here, we have never purchased Fun Cards (stripped down season passes which provide you unlimited access until Dec 31st, for basically the cost of a one-day admission). Sesame Street just came to Busch Gardens, so we decided it was a good time to join. We are going to try and take the kids at least once a month, and we plan on going a few times just the two of us. The kids were really good. The enjoyed giving high fives, kisses, and nose honks to Elmo. They bounced and climbed like crazy in the rope tree house. They enjoyed riding the train. They kind of enjoyed a few rides, and of course only wanted to really ride the ones that they are not yet tall enough for :) Here are a few pictures.
Curt stayed home with the sniffly kids on Tuesday, and I was able to go to work. I was then able to go out with some girlfriends on Tuesday evening for a wonderful night of sitting out in the gorgeous weather and eating some yummy dessert. Good for the soul. The last three days of the week were broken up by music class, playdates, and a wonderful lunch with a wonderful family, and enjoying my kids WHILE being with other people. In a week like that, there were so many more times that I found myself holding one of the kids and kissing their sweet heads, and almost being overwhelmed to the point of tears at my gratitude for getting to be their mama. There were still meltdowns, still many corrections, but having a family weekend and conversations with other adults gave me the fuel I needed to totally change my perspective.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Fresh Resolve
I've been making some changes to my routines recently - choosing to renew my commitment to good habits.
- Going to bed early
- Getting up at 6 - showering/getting ready, spending time with the Lord, having some coffee, preparing the house for the day
- Staying on top of the housework (decided to try the FlyLady emails for awhile...we'll see)
- Doing more active, purposeful play with my kids
In some ways, I know that my resolve will wane in the coming days...but I also have fresh hope that I may be able to see real progress this time. Why? Because I'm not doing this alone. For this fresh start, I have the support of my husband. He has been a enthusiastic co-laborer in many of these things. I'm so thankful. He also wants to get up early. He is more committed than usual to keeping a chaos free house (seeing it as a benefit to the family, not just a concession for me). What a gift.
- Going to bed early
- Getting up at 6 - showering/getting ready, spending time with the Lord, having some coffee, preparing the house for the day
- Staying on top of the housework (decided to try the FlyLady emails for awhile...we'll see)
- Doing more active, purposeful play with my kids
In some ways, I know that my resolve will wane in the coming days...but I also have fresh hope that I may be able to see real progress this time. Why? Because I'm not doing this alone. For this fresh start, I have the support of my husband. He has been a enthusiastic co-laborer in many of these things. I'm so thankful. He also wants to get up early. He is more committed than usual to keeping a chaos free house (seeing it as a benefit to the family, not just a concession for me). What a gift.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
A few of my new tricks
I am in NO WAY any way close to be any sort of domestic wonder woman (less blasphemous than saying domestic goddess I suppose :) - especially in the area of cleaning and keeping the house straight. However, I have been inspired recently to grow in this area - partly by some of my friends who are much more disciplined than I am (you know who you are). I thought I would share a few of my household tricks, and hopefully some of you may share some of your own.
Two things that I will no longer live without -
1.) Laundry baskets. A stack of cheapy white laundry baskets has really transformed the battle of the daily kid clutter that quickly piles up in the living space of my house. I was starting to dread the minutes after naptime started and after bedtime came because of how much I hated picking up all the stuff that had gotten pulled out of place already that day. However, I've found that if I do this cleaning with two or three laundry baskets with me, it goes much faster. If I'm in the living room, then I use one laundry basket for everything that should go in the kids room and one laundry basket for everything that should go in the back family room. As I'm straightening the living room, I don't make extra trips out of the room, I just put things in the baskets. Then I move to the next room, dump out its basket, and put that stuff away, adding to the baskets as necessary. I've found that this goes MUCH faster for me
2.) My swiffer sweeper vac. I seriously love it for "daily" use on the floors and the battle (war) against crumbs, sand, pet hair, dust, yuckiness. It really helps me keep things looking nice, and if I maintain a level of cleanly sanity in the household, it is much easier to keep it from getting out of hand. For me, once one thing goes, everything is quick to follow. (It is easier to keep a clean house clean than to keep a somewhat messy house from becoming a wreck.) Also, swiffer only advertises using the sweeper vac with dry cloths. I have used it with their wet cloths, and I've found it works quite well - as long as you make sure that you are always leading with the vac part, and then retracing your path, and going to a new section leading with the vac part (so that you aren't getting an piece of floor wet before you suck up the crumbs). This maybe doesn't work as well true sweeping and true mopping - but much better than being so overwhelmed by the two steps that you do neither
A couple of small ideas that help me
3.) I've always been frustrated by how wet my dishes are when they come out of the dishwasher, even after the heated dry setting. Marcia gave me this suggestion, and I've found that it really works. (May be old news to you, but it was new to me.) If you open your dishwasher right after the actual washing stops and quickly run a towel over the top of the dishes, sopping up the big puddles of water, and then close the dishwasher and let it go through its drying time - it will get your dishes MUCH dryer than before. When I do this, I rarely have to towel dry anything before putting it away...my least favorite part of the process.
4.) It's all about saving steps for me. My washer/dryer is on the far side of the garage, so a million trips out there a day can be really frustrating. However, I don't really want to put dirty dishtowels in with my regular dirty clothes. I went ahead and hung a reusable shopping bag on the back of my garage door handle and use it for putting kitchen towels in throughout the week. When the bag starts to get too full (or smells to bad), I know it is time to wash it.
These have been good goals/housekeeping principles for me to strive for
5.) If I start the day with no dishes in the dishwasher or in the sink, I have a much higher chance of keeping the kitchen clean throughout the day. This allows me to load dishes into the dishwasher directly after using them. And have an actual sink to use for meal prep. This is extremely important to me in my small kitchen. What this means for me is that I have begun loading the dishwasher throughout the day and then immediately after dinner (before the food gets crusty on the plates). I should say that I have a husband who is often willing to help with this. The new part is this - even if the dishwasher is not completely full after dinner, I go ahead and run it anyway. This allows me to do the drying trick usually and to get the dishes put away before I go to bed that night, so that I can start the day fresh the next day.
6.) I'm trying to work on picking up the toys BEFORE naptime and bedtime WITH my children instead of for my children. This is hard. They are young. However, even if they don't help somedays, they do "get it" and help on otherdays. Also, on the days where they aren't helping, they are at least seeing me setting a good pattern of picking up throughout the day, a habit they will hopefully one day develop. This also gets this chore accomplished before naptime starts, so that I don't have to waste precious naptime minutes picking up their toys!
What are your home management tips?
Two things that I will no longer live without -
1.) Laundry baskets. A stack of cheapy white laundry baskets has really transformed the battle of the daily kid clutter that quickly piles up in the living space of my house. I was starting to dread the minutes after naptime started and after bedtime came because of how much I hated picking up all the stuff that had gotten pulled out of place already that day. However, I've found that if I do this cleaning with two or three laundry baskets with me, it goes much faster. If I'm in the living room, then I use one laundry basket for everything that should go in the kids room and one laundry basket for everything that should go in the back family room. As I'm straightening the living room, I don't make extra trips out of the room, I just put things in the baskets. Then I move to the next room, dump out its basket, and put that stuff away, adding to the baskets as necessary. I've found that this goes MUCH faster for me
2.) My swiffer sweeper vac. I seriously love it for "daily" use on the floors and the battle (war) against crumbs, sand, pet hair, dust, yuckiness. It really helps me keep things looking nice, and if I maintain a level of cleanly sanity in the household, it is much easier to keep it from getting out of hand. For me, once one thing goes, everything is quick to follow. (It is easier to keep a clean house clean than to keep a somewhat messy house from becoming a wreck.) Also, swiffer only advertises using the sweeper vac with dry cloths. I have used it with their wet cloths, and I've found it works quite well - as long as you make sure that you are always leading with the vac part, and then retracing your path, and going to a new section leading with the vac part (so that you aren't getting an piece of floor wet before you suck up the crumbs). This maybe doesn't work as well true sweeping and true mopping - but much better than being so overwhelmed by the two steps that you do neither
A couple of small ideas that help me
3.) I've always been frustrated by how wet my dishes are when they come out of the dishwasher, even after the heated dry setting. Marcia gave me this suggestion, and I've found that it really works. (May be old news to you, but it was new to me.) If you open your dishwasher right after the actual washing stops and quickly run a towel over the top of the dishes, sopping up the big puddles of water, and then close the dishwasher and let it go through its drying time - it will get your dishes MUCH dryer than before. When I do this, I rarely have to towel dry anything before putting it away...my least favorite part of the process.
4.) It's all about saving steps for me. My washer/dryer is on the far side of the garage, so a million trips out there a day can be really frustrating. However, I don't really want to put dirty dishtowels in with my regular dirty clothes. I went ahead and hung a reusable shopping bag on the back of my garage door handle and use it for putting kitchen towels in throughout the week. When the bag starts to get too full (or smells to bad), I know it is time to wash it.
These have been good goals/housekeeping principles for me to strive for
5.) If I start the day with no dishes in the dishwasher or in the sink, I have a much higher chance of keeping the kitchen clean throughout the day. This allows me to load dishes into the dishwasher directly after using them. And have an actual sink to use for meal prep. This is extremely important to me in my small kitchen. What this means for me is that I have begun loading the dishwasher throughout the day and then immediately after dinner (before the food gets crusty on the plates). I should say that I have a husband who is often willing to help with this. The new part is this - even if the dishwasher is not completely full after dinner, I go ahead and run it anyway. This allows me to do the drying trick usually and to get the dishes put away before I go to bed that night, so that I can start the day fresh the next day.
6.) I'm trying to work on picking up the toys BEFORE naptime and bedtime WITH my children instead of for my children. This is hard. They are young. However, even if they don't help somedays, they do "get it" and help on otherdays. Also, on the days where they aren't helping, they are at least seeing me setting a good pattern of picking up throughout the day, a habit they will hopefully one day develop. This also gets this chore accomplished before naptime starts, so that I don't have to waste precious naptime minutes picking up their toys!
What are your home management tips?
Parenting Overdrive
So maybe it is just because we are on the march to 2 years old, or maybe it is because I was getting too comfortable in this current toddler phase, but in the last week, my dose of parenting has had to step it up a notch or few (thousand). Here are some of the things that I've been faced with the last few weeks...
Micah learned to climb out of his crib. Yup. Wow. It all started on a day where the morning (for Mackenna) held a squished hand in the door (accidentally, but forcefully, done by me), an eaten orange crayon (that really does come out the other end looking orange), and a cracked head on a concrete slab. The doctor was having me wake her up every few hours, so I decided to put her down to bed in our room so that waking her up wouldn't also mean waking Micah up. (Keep in mind that Curt was not home that evening - of course.) This absolutely, positively, infuriated the little guy. And I don't just think that he was concerned that she was still up and playing and he was missing it; it did actually seem like he just really wanted to be with her. His screaming in the next room prompted her screaming also - so I closed both doors, came out to the couch, and listened to their screaming for awhile. I started doing something else, and her screaming calmed down. I decided it was time to go check on Micah (my plan was to go show him that she was sleeping in our room). I opened the door to the room and was greeted by my sweet boy, thumb in mouth, frog in hand, just walking confidently, calmly toward me. My eyes did a double take. I second guessed whether or not I had remembered to actually put him in bed. I was totally shocked...and a little gitty about the whole situation. Part of me wanted to laugh, part of me wanted to congratulate him, part of me wanted to cry because my life was over, and part of me wanted to yell at him for messing up the perfect April Fool's day joke/picture about Micah climbing into Mackenna's crib that I had been plotting for weeks (this was the 31st). Anyway, he proceeded to do this two more times in the next 15 minutes - each time without hurting himself and each time as happily as could be. I gave up and decided to sit with the kids and read books until Curt got home. Marcia then called to check on plans for the week, and I told her about my evening. She came down and we re-did the bedtime routine, putting both kids to bed in the same room, and they both happily stayed in their crib. The reaction on Curt's face when I told him later was priceless. I really should have taped it -- it involved him hitting his head and opening his mouth WIDE in surprise! So that is the story - the parenting part of it involves a decision to possibly turn his crib around so that the high side faces out and the lower side faces the wall. I will also respond much better and actually correct him for this in the future (I already have had to twice), when I'm not completely overwhelmed by shock. We will go for a mixture of avoidance and correction on this one.
Also, Mackenna has decided that it is fun to ask to go potty and to sit on the potty about 5 to 10 times a day. I feel bad turning down this request, but neither am I really ready to go down this road - at all.
Micah went on a binge last week where he was throwing all of his food on the floor - unless it was fruit or cookies.
Micah is also getting really demanding. His vocabulary is growing (more on that in a few days - 21 month post) and he is really quite clear with his words. He consistently points to where he wants to go and says "that way" or points to what he wants and says "that one." Yup, that is special. He also has transitioned into violence when he doesn't get his way. This may mean hitting (or even biting) his sister if she is nearby, or it may mean throwing a toy or slapping mom or dad. Last night, Curt told him he couldn't move the slide onto the driveway from the "grass" and Micah proceeded to stiff arm push the little tikes basketball goal over that Curt was shooting baskets into, and then giving Curt a look that says "what now!?" Wow.
Mackenna is getting less violent - she hadn't bitten for months...until today. (This does keep in consistency with the pattern so far that they pendulum swing on behavior patterns - one is good, one is difficult, and then they flip flop on lots of things, lots of the time. Not sure if it is twin related, or just toddler related.)
So yes. Not for the weak at heart. And sometimes I feel VERY weak at heart.
Micah learned to climb out of his crib. Yup. Wow. It all started on a day where the morning (for Mackenna) held a squished hand in the door (accidentally, but forcefully, done by me), an eaten orange crayon (that really does come out the other end looking orange), and a cracked head on a concrete slab. The doctor was having me wake her up every few hours, so I decided to put her down to bed in our room so that waking her up wouldn't also mean waking Micah up. (Keep in mind that Curt was not home that evening - of course.) This absolutely, positively, infuriated the little guy. And I don't just think that he was concerned that she was still up and playing and he was missing it; it did actually seem like he just really wanted to be with her. His screaming in the next room prompted her screaming also - so I closed both doors, came out to the couch, and listened to their screaming for awhile. I started doing something else, and her screaming calmed down. I decided it was time to go check on Micah (my plan was to go show him that she was sleeping in our room). I opened the door to the room and was greeted by my sweet boy, thumb in mouth, frog in hand, just walking confidently, calmly toward me. My eyes did a double take. I second guessed whether or not I had remembered to actually put him in bed. I was totally shocked...and a little gitty about the whole situation. Part of me wanted to laugh, part of me wanted to congratulate him, part of me wanted to cry because my life was over, and part of me wanted to yell at him for messing up the perfect April Fool's day joke/picture about Micah climbing into Mackenna's crib that I had been plotting for weeks (this was the 31st). Anyway, he proceeded to do this two more times in the next 15 minutes - each time without hurting himself and each time as happily as could be. I gave up and decided to sit with the kids and read books until Curt got home. Marcia then called to check on plans for the week, and I told her about my evening. She came down and we re-did the bedtime routine, putting both kids to bed in the same room, and they both happily stayed in their crib. The reaction on Curt's face when I told him later was priceless. I really should have taped it -- it involved him hitting his head and opening his mouth WIDE in surprise! So that is the story - the parenting part of it involves a decision to possibly turn his crib around so that the high side faces out and the lower side faces the wall. I will also respond much better and actually correct him for this in the future (I already have had to twice), when I'm not completely overwhelmed by shock. We will go for a mixture of avoidance and correction on this one.
Also, Mackenna has decided that it is fun to ask to go potty and to sit on the potty about 5 to 10 times a day. I feel bad turning down this request, but neither am I really ready to go down this road - at all.
Micah went on a binge last week where he was throwing all of his food on the floor - unless it was fruit or cookies.
Micah is also getting really demanding. His vocabulary is growing (more on that in a few days - 21 month post) and he is really quite clear with his words. He consistently points to where he wants to go and says "that way" or points to what he wants and says "that one." Yup, that is special. He also has transitioned into violence when he doesn't get his way. This may mean hitting (or even biting) his sister if she is nearby, or it may mean throwing a toy or slapping mom or dad. Last night, Curt told him he couldn't move the slide onto the driveway from the "grass" and Micah proceeded to stiff arm push the little tikes basketball goal over that Curt was shooting baskets into, and then giving Curt a look that says "what now!?" Wow.
Mackenna is getting less violent - she hadn't bitten for months...until today. (This does keep in consistency with the pattern so far that they pendulum swing on behavior patterns - one is good, one is difficult, and then they flip flop on lots of things, lots of the time. Not sure if it is twin related, or just toddler related.)
So yes. Not for the weak at heart. And sometimes I feel VERY weak at heart.
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