Living as a mom

Archive for the ‘Balancing It All’ Category

We have been so very busy with house projects and travel lately. Summers really are insane in New England. Everyone squeezes as much into these few months as possible since the weather is so wonderful this time of year. We are no different than all of the other families around here. August looks just as busy as June and July have been. I am glad that we are having so much fun and getting tons of projects finished. Will we ever slow down, though??

Photo courtesy of Thomªs

Cleaning the house never ends. I am constantly doing laundry, vacuuming, picking up toys, doing dishes, and the list goes on. The battle to keep the house in a reasonable condition happens every day, and with young children – 2 1/2 & 5 – the work load can seem insurmountable. I am trying hard to train my wee tykes to help me out with keeping the house clean. I hope to teach them responsibility and respect for our things. I also think that housekeeping is a life skill that they need.

Sheila at To Love, Honor, and Vacuum has lots of great tips to help you get the family – even the little ones – involved in cleaning up the house. I like one of her ideas a lot. She suggests organizing the toys to help kids clean up, and this is something I know works. In our family room I have the toys organized according to category in baskets. In the past I had them labeled so other folks could figure out the system, too.

Mommy Vignettes has a Hub Page,  How to Clean your House with Young Children. She also lists some practical, age appropriate ideas for enlisting your small children in chores. I particularly like the idea of having your kids help with sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor. I have my kids help me with this. They get to use the dust pan and small broom while I use the regular sized broom. Then I fill a large bowl with hot, soapy water. I add a bit of white vinegar to the water, too. (Sometimes I give the kids baking soda and a bowl of water instead.) The kids use sponges to scrub the floor by hand. I assist them and follow with kitchen towels to dry. Then the kids get a bath and Mom gets a shower! It is messy, but really worth it. (This kind of work is really great for kids with SPD, too.)

My last bit of advice for cleaning with small children is to prioritize. What matters the most to you on any given day? Do you need the toys to be cleaned up before everyone goes to bed? Does the kitchen have to be cleaned at the end of the day? Decide on an attainable goal for the day and focus on that. There will be many things that do not get finished. Be patient, though.

Out project To Do list keeps getting longer. Do you have this problem in your home? I can’t seem to keep up with the day to day things. Then we add on a few things and the whole system goes out of whack.

Currently, we have seeds to plant and a garden bed to prepare. We have a homeschooling curriculum that I have to organize and read. Plus we have the remnants of the Tinker Bell party to clean up. Now we have added the wonderful new project of assembling a table for the kids. Will we ever finish all of these projects?

Almost everything on our To Do list is related to homeschooling , so I am hopeful that we can work together to get things taken care of for the kids’ sake. It looks like our next few weekends will be filled with school preparations. I suppose I can look at it as a learning experience for the kids! We can even consider it family time.

How do you keep up with the TO Do list?

Photo courtesy of koka_sexton

Do you ever feel like it is impossible to do everything that you need to do all in one day? I have been struggling with keeping up with the laundry and the housekeeping. I have even gotten the kids involved in the projects that they can do like stripping and making their beds, scrubbing the kitchen floor with soapy water and vinegar, and scrubbing the tub with baking soda. The work is endless, though!

I remember a workshop I took at a Mom to Mom that I used to attend. It was about how to organize your time. The speaker talked about how frustrating it can be for moms to be at home after being in the workforce. The work in a home is circular and never really gets finished each day, she explained, whereas in the workplace you have deadlines. When you are at home, you have to set reasonable expectations for what you can accomplish in a given day and what has to get done today. There will always be laundry, dishes, and vacuuming, but there are times when something is more pressing on a particular day, and that is what you focus on.

What great advice! I remind myself of that workshop frequently, especially when I get down on myself for not getting “enough” accomplished. I don’t understand how some moms can keep their homes spotless or even keep up with the daily chores. I know I cannot compare my life to other people’s lives, though, because my family is unique. It is an unfair comparison.

There are days that I cannot accomplish more than managing the kids and that is OK because that it what my family needs. I have to remember that I chose to stay home to raise my family not to be the housekeeper extraordinaire. I am teaching my children about life, and sometimes that kind of teaching requires me to get them involved in chores while at other times I need to show them love or I need to discipline them.

Each day I have to determine what needs my attention the most. I must say that most if the time it is my children who need my attention the most. The house can wait!

Photo courtesy of lorentey

I have neglected my mommy blog, and I am very sorry, dear readers!

I have been so very sick for the last two weeks, and I am finally recovering. I have been catching up on my housework now that I am feeling well. It is amazing to me how quickly the house falls apart when Mommy is sick! The kids are still too small to really do any housework without supervision. Besides, when I am sick, they have to do a whole lot of playing alone, which usually involves taking out every toy that we own. Basically, the family has spent three days trying to recover from the major upset we had. And I still have a mountain of laundry to finish!

Living as a sick mom means expecting kids to entertain themselves and cleaning up after the storm has calmed!

Photo courtesy of Ambrose Little

Living as a mom when you are sick is tough! I started to feel badly on Friday night. Of course, Sunday was E’s birthday. I was completely incapable of doing anything at all for him. In fact, he had to take over with the kids so I could nap. I feel awful about the whole thing! Lucky for him we are celebrating his birthday with lots of friends when we go skiing this weekend – not so lucky for me with the way I am feeling.

I’m waiting on the doctor’s office to call me back. My house is a disaster. I have a ton of work to finish for my workshop next week. And we are going on a ski trip this weekend. Agh! How am I going to manage everything?

What are your strategies for managing the kids, the house, and life in general when you are not feeling well? I need some help!

For some reason school was canceled in my town. (The storm was yesterday. Go figure!) Early this morning I received a  cancellation call from my ladies’ Bible study group because school was closed. I thought nothing of it because A2 is taking a gymnastics class at the Y for a few more weeks during the time we would normally go to Bible study. I packed all of us up in the car to drop C4 off at preschool and to head to the YMCA.

Sadly, the YMCA canceled classes, Open Gym, and Child Watch today because the schools were closed. I had planned to workout after the gymnastics class. Of course, I arrived at the Y just before the class was set to start. Boy was A2 disappointed and confused! Thankfully, because so many moms had shown up for Open Gym, the staff let us use some balls in the gym. A2 refused to play because she wanted her gymnastics class.

My day went downhill from there.

It was one of those days for us. All of my support programs were not running at a time when I desperately needed the support. I really needed to workout to clear my mind and lift my spirits. I needed some “me time”.

Winter is a tough time of year for anyone, but especially for me. I need exercise and sunshine or I get depressed. Since my kids are high energy, precocious, and strong willed, we need to keep busy. I keep a pretty full schedule for us between school, enrichment classes at the Y, play dates, the library, Mom to Mom, and my ladies’ Bible study. This winter I am taking advantage of the gym for myself, too. This strategy has served us well for the last few years. We all get a break from each other. The kids are able to make friends and burn some energy. I am able to talk with other moms, grow in my faith, and gain support as a parent. That plan only works if the programs are open and you are able to get to them.

Now I think I need to create a contingency plan for bad weather. It has been so difficult for us this year. It is either too cold, too windy, too icy, or too stormy for us to go outside. Besides, A2 hates the cold, and neither of the kids likes sledding. I have tried to get them out there to play, but they never last more than a few minutes. It doesn’t seem worth it to me to drag them out. So we end up stuck inside. We are starting to climb the walls around here!

Moms, what do you do when you can’t take advantage of any of your support in the winter?

Photo courtesy of .Fabio

Photo by zimpenfish

I had set a fitness goal recently. I planned on going to the gym twice a week and had hoped to see results quickly. I have discovered that getting to the gym is not really the problem. The actual problem is that I cannot get a whole workout in at the gym. Let me explain.

Little Miss A2 has figured out that the child watch folks will come get me after she screams for 10 minutes or if she wets her pants, which she has done promptly after going to the potty with me. Basically, if she has decided that she is not staying at child watch, she finds a way out of there. As a result, I have had very brief workouts. One lasted only 10 minutes and the maximum I have been able to get in is 20 minutes. Give me a break!

E has solved my workout woes, though. He got me a Wii Fit for my birthday. I LOVE it! I like how you play games in order to workout. You can also add other types of activity to your log, and it tracks your progress. This is going to be a great way for me to get fit! I also plan to use our gym, but now I have two ways to ensure that I get exercise without having to worry about child care.

Have you tried the Wii Fit? What do you like about it? Have you seen results from using it?

There was such a great response to my cry for help with getting organized! Thank you, everyone. I truly appreciate all of the awesome tips from you organized moms out there. I have been considering the abundance of technological options out there. However, with the need for a quicker fix, I had to think about what has worked for us in the past – always a good place to start.

With the immediate need for a simple, quick, and easy solution, I finally pulled out the trusty old, enormous dry erase calendar that E and I used to use back in the day. Boy is it a monstrosity! I wonder if that is why it works for us…

I have that dear, gigantic calendar hung up by the front door in hopes that seeing it often will help us all remember what we have to do each day. I am still carrying my small, portable day timer as the master calendar, but the big one is meant to help us day-to-day. So far our good ‘ole calendar has sparked a few conversations between E and me and helped us prevent double booking ourselves. I actually feel like we are both more on the ball about upcoming events! Even C4 is asking about what is on the calendar.

I am so glad that I finally DID something to rectify this situation! Doing something is often half of the battle for me. Now the trick will be to teach C4 and A2 that they cannot touch the calendar because we will never recover from that… That’s another story, though. At least now we are on our way to getting on top of the schedule!

Photo by Kevin Krejci

I have to apologize for neglecting to write a post recently. I have been fortunate enough to land a consulting job. I am working with teachers providing some training in teaching reading in the content areas. I LOVE this work, so it has been a pleasure to be this busy!

I am enjoying using my brain in a different way right now. Having children is rewarding. It involves problem solving, creativity, patience, knowledge of child development, negotiating skills, etc! That being said, there are times when caring for your children can be mundane. The children are exciting and watching them grow is completely fascinating to me, but the everyday stuff can be excruciatingly boring. Taking your two year old to the potty and waiting for that magic moment loses its excitement after a while. I’m sure that you understand what I mean! So working has been a break from the mundane and good for me.

As much as I have enjoyed this opportunity to work, and although it feels great to change my routine a little, I still feel like I couldn’t go back to work full time, especially not back to teaching. (I know the demands of the job, and I have to do the job “right”. I won’t settle for less.) I shared this sentiment with a friend and colleague who is still in the work force and does not have children yet. She tried her best to convince me that I could work full time by giving me ways to make it possible. I know that I could search for a less demanding teaching job. The fact of the matter is that I don’t want to.

I would rather devote my time to raising my children to be amazing people who love God and have a heart for service.

It is difficult to convey to my unchurched friends who aren’t parents the responsibility I feel as a mother. These children are precious, and they have been entrusted to me by my God. I feel, as all parents do, responsible to raise them well and pass on my values for “right” living. As a Christian mother, though, I feel an even heavier burden of responsibility to do this God’s way. I am feeling called by God to be with my children as much as possible in order to teach them well. To me that means that I home educate my children, at least for the next school year, and stay home with them. I am their first teacher, and I am their greatest advocate. No one else knows my children as well as I do except for my God who knows them even better than I.

Yes, opportunities will arise for me to work, but my work right now is to care for and educate my children while I serve the moms and other women in God’s kingdom.