Be In Less of a Hurry

As a homeschooling mom I have 20 hours of things to fit into 16 hours of my day.  Things get left undone. I can't help it.  I'm sure many mom's out there can relate to this problem, whether you're homeschooling or not.  As I started out this year I was cleaning off my desk.  I was about to throw an old Ensign away but I paused and opened it up.  It opened to an article by John C. Thomas entitled "Don't Be in a Hurry".  I thought the title was appropriately funny as I hurried to get things ready for the school year.  Here are a few quotes from the article:

"When we put God first," President Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994) promised, "all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives."  This is one reason President Spencer W. Kimball (1895-1985) could say that "we will move faster if we hurry less."  Undistracted by other gods, we trust the lord to help us allocate our time and talent to their bery best uses each day.  As a result, we do more good and we make real progress.

Nephi put it this way:  "Ye must pray always, and not faitn;...ye must not perform anything unto the lord save n the fist place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Chirst, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy sou."  (2 Nephi 32:9)

Neal A. Maxwell likened thoughtful "intervals between [our] tasks" to " the green belts of grass, trees, and water that ...interrupt the asphalt," and he said that when we "plan some time for contemplation and revewal." we will feel drawn to our work instead of driven to it.

As speaker in church recently said, "it's not a sprint, it's a marathon" when referring to this life.

The most important thing in my day is having the spirit to guide me.  Having so many "important" things to do each day, I have to choose which ones to do, and which ones to leave out.  I can try and do this on my own and I will not succeed.  I can prepare myself and try to do the Lord's will and I will succeed.

Dissapointment

Yes, we all have disappointment creep into our lives.  This week we were all geared up to have a President's Day party and go on a trip to Philidelphia to visit Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.  First the party had to be postponed because the kids didn't deserve a party that day.  Something about undoing all the folding I had done the night before (three hours worth of folding turned into a sea of clothes on my bedroom floor).  Then our good friends who were going to go on the trip with us came down with a throwing up sickness.  That's not the most fun thing to travel with.  Two disappointments in one week.  My kids were handling it pretty well.  We decided since we weren't going to go to Pennsylvania that we could at least go check out Fort Stanwix on Friday.  The night before that trip Hoyt wakes up in the middle of the night throwing up.

Strike three.  We're out.

So now I sit here in my PJ's and say... it could have been a worse week off.  At least there were no ambulance or police involved.

No Magic! (They come that way.)

I could spend the next few minutes patting myself on the back, but what's the use, I know I would be lying through my teeth.  The reason for the celebrations or lack thereof is that my 2 year old is potty trained! AND she potty trained in 4 days....completely....even sleeps in underwear.

When younger parents ask me for potty training advice I always say my first advice is to wait until they are three.  They will not be ready until they are three.  Well, I didn't take my own advice because Sanoma was begging to be potty trained.  We kept ignoring her and ignoring her pleas, and finally we gave in.  I think she had 2 or 3 accidents and then she got it.  She was potty trained.  Amazing.  I'd like to say that I did it, but I didn't.  She did it herself.  She was ready, she figured it out herself.

I wish all my kids had been that easy, but they weren't.  My previous daughter took 1 year to potty train.  We would go for it, all the way, 100% and after a week of cleaning up accident after accident after accident I was going crazy and had to quit.  A few months later we would try again, then quit.  I think we started over with her about 4 times.  I was ready to pull my hair out, try something desperate.  We just had to keep trying and keep trying.

What have I learned from this?  Two things.  Each child is different...and no one will every want to buy our house.

Singing Time

I love primary songs.  I love that they so simply teach good values and the gospel.  They also calm my spirit when I feel like breaking something.  My daughter is now passing off the articles of faith in primary.  We started singing the article of faith songs, adding a new one each day.  We have a CD with all the primary songs for this year on it, along with all the articles of faith.  I figured since we're learning the article of faith songs we might as well sing the primary song for this month as a review.  One thing led to another and I started teaching the kids the song for next month.  We worked together and made up actions for the song to help them remember the words.  It was fun work.  We all learned the song before the music director started teaching the song on Sunday.

Sunday comes.  My husband and I are now teaching the CTR 4 class in primary.  We sit right behind the Sunbeams.  As we started learning the new song for the month my 5 year old son raises his hand and tells the whole primary, "We've already learned this song.  My mom taught it to us so we could help the kids around us in primary."

I wanted to sink into the floor.  I tried hiding behind the Sunbeams, but they weren't big enough.

Lesson learned.  Don't say anything to your children that you don't want repeated in a very public place.

The primary director told me that my older daughter told the senior primary the exact same thing that day.

I love my kids.  I think I'll keep my mouth shut for a while now.

Time to Pick Up Toys!

When I say those 5 little words to my kids it elicits the most dramatic groans and moans.  I feel like my children could win an oscar with their acting.  I'm sure all parents could relate to this problem.  No kids like cleaning up toys or cleaning their room.  I remember despising that job as a child and I don't remember how my mother motivated us to pick up our toys.  We must have done it, because here I am, I wasn't lost in a mountain of toys in my childhood.

Today I wanted to share three games that we use to motivate good toy picker-upers.

Game #1 - I Spy

I'm sure all of you have played the game "I Spy" in order to keep your toddlers entertained.  You say "I spy with my little eye, something blue" and then the child names all the blue things they can see until they find the blue thing you have chosen.  When I'm feeling really lazy and I have extra time we play I Spy the cleaning version.  I will sit on the couch in the school room and say "I spy with my little eye, something orange."  The kids then run around picking up toys that are orange and putting them away.  If they pick the same toy I picked they get to be the person sitting on the couch saying "I spy".  The person who is "it" changes every turn.  The kids are motivated to put things away because they want to be the one sitting on the couch.  The only problem with this game is that it can take a very long time to get a room cleaned.

Game #2 - What's Missing

This is a common cleaning up game.  One person goes out of the room and the people remaining put away one, or two, or five! things.  Then the person who was outside the room comes back inside and guesses what everyone else put away.  My kids get bored with this game pretty quick, but it's good to have the bag of tricks anyway.  We can't do the same thing every day...unfortunately.

Game #3 - The Job Bucket

Get a bowl, bucket, whatever.  Get a bunch of pieces of paper.  I cut 3x5 cards in half with my paper cutter.  (The prep on this game seems like a lot, but it's worth it, and it doesn't take as long as it seems.)  Then I decide which rooms I'm going to clean.  I stand at the door of those rooms and on each slip of paper write down one thing (or one group of things) that needs to be put away.  I fold the papers in half and drop them in my bucket.  For example I'll write down "clothes in Nia's room", "hair clips", "pop beads", "books on floor", "15 pieces of trash", or "little people".  Once I've written down everything, or pretty much everything, from one room I go to the next room.  I try and make the jobs about the same size, but some are small and some are much larger.  I sit the kids down around the bucket and say "go!".  We all pull out a chore and read what it is.  We run to put that thing away and then come back and get another chore.  Each chore completed goes into our pockets.  If the chore doesn't specify a room they have to clean up all of that item in all the rooms we're working on.  I offer a reward to anyone who gets more chore tickets than me by the time they are all gone.  I have only one reader in the family, so the littlin's are coming running up to me the whole time asking me to read what is on their ticket.  I don't mind that, everyone's cleaning, after all! This is the fastest game, but you can't play it every day, but it's one of my favorites.

Game #4 - M&M Cleaning

Ok, I said I'd only tell three games, so this a bonus!  I've found that the kids can get frustrated because they don't see much success when they're cleaning up, at times it seems to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r, especially for a 3 year old.  I've found a way to have instant success!  I get a laundry basket.  I tell the kids to pick everything up off the floor, or everything that is not where it belongs and put it into the laundry basket.  Wala!  Instantly clean room.  The only problem is that you now have a laundry basket full of stuff that needs to be put away.  No problem!  Offer the kids one M&M for each thing they put away from the basket.  If the basket is really full you can offer 1 M&M per 5 objects.  If you want to make it really fun you can require them to say something cute like, "I put away _____.  May I have an M&M please." to teach them to say "May I".  I usually just sit by the basket with a bag of M&M's and within no time at all the basket is empty and we're ready to go onto something else.

If you have any other ideas for cleaning up, please post them below.  I could always use some new ideas to spice up our life.

Fort Stanwix Trip Canceled

Ok, so Fort Stanwix didn't happen.  It was one of those days where I woke up and I had a very bad feeling about what I was planning on doing.  The spirit was telling me and my husband both that this trip was not a good idea, so we canceled it.  Who knows what would have happened if we had gone, but I'm glad we didn't.

Another Day

Hi All!  I am still alive.  Things have been crazy.  We were going to put our house on the market by November, but then we didn't.  So, I've been getting the house ready to sell, and then not getting the house ready to sell, then Christmas happened, and then...well, I'm still not bounced back from Christmas yet.  It doesn't help that my husband has had a big deadline or been behind on his deadlines for the past 2 months. When my husband is not there to help out our school suffers.  It's not fun.

We're going to Fort Stanwix tomorrow.  So I'm planning on having some cool pictures and stories to share on my next blog.