Category Archives: training children

Summertime Scheduling (is that how you spell that, it doesn’t look right)

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This is another post that is going to make my Mom smile, and want to say “I told you so.” She won’t say it, but I know she will think it. I guess I am just a slow learner!

Schedules. This summer our days are scheduled! It all stared about March, when I was thinking over the changes our family had made, especially our morning routine. I have really grown to love having breakfast together as a family, where we start the day with a prayer, some scripture and good food. I was wondering what was going to happen in the summer time, and I really didn’t want to stop doing it all, it had been such a blessing. The only thing stopping me was my own laziness. I love, love, love to sleep in. I am naturally a night person. My perfect sleep schedule would be to bed around 1 am and up at 10. While the kids are in school that can’t happen, but in the summertime, with the ages my kids are it was entirely possible. However, The Lord has other plans for me, and I knew that in order to keep receiving the blessing we have been, that I needed to keep our breakfast routine. So much for sleeping in, luckily there are still Saturdays!

Then I stared to get little promptings about my kid’s education, especially regarding punk #1. I haven’t quite figured them all out, and I don’t know for sure what direction it is going to take me, but it did have me thinking about this summer. Punk#1 struggles, really, really struggles with life and school in particular. I knew that if I didn’t keep her tutored over the summer all the progress she has made would fall by the wayside. We don’t have money to pay a tutor, and I didn’t feel right about enrolling her in the summer programs at the school, I felt really strongly that she needed to be here, by my side this summer.


I started to look into summer workbooks and free programs on the internet and I found some good stuff and purchased workbooks for everybody. Here is the thing, I do that every summer, and every summer the workbook only has a few pages worked on and the whole thing ends up being a waist of money. That is when I decided we needed a schedule.

All my life I have been fighting schedules, even though I know they work really well, especially for me. I guess I can’t say that I have been fighting schedules, my babies have all had them, eating and nap schedules, I guess I have been fighting a written schedule. The week before school got out I sat down and wrote up a schedule. Starting at 7:00 a.m. and going until 10 or 11:00 I have every 15 minuets scheduled. It has been working beautifully! The kids try to get done early with their chores and their schoolwork (the workbooks are about 1/3 of the way done!) and then the rest of the day is free time. (I am a big believer in free time for kids). It has been wonderfully amazing. The house gets cleaned and school work is being done, all well before lunch time, which leaves us a lot of time for good, old summer fun!

The Quiet Art of "Being There"

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The quiet art of being there.

It isn’t expensive, it isn’t loud. It takes a lot of time, with very little preparation. It doesn’t require a grocery store, mall, or gas station. You don’t have to wash it, scrub it, shine it or dry it. It comes without parts, instructions or power tools.

It is a whisper, a kiss, a pat on the head. It is blowing bubbles on a sunny afternoon. It is a band-aid on a skinned knee, a tissue on tears, and a hug when the world seems out to get you. It is a feverish baby and a rocking chair in the middle of the night. It is sidewalk chalk and a welcome home message for Daddy. It is a sticky fist full of dandelions and running through the sprinklers on a hot afternoon. It is a stocking hat, gloves and a scarf on a cold morning and hot chocolate when you get home. It is that special dress washed and ironed for that special day. It is a story book at bed time and sugar sprinkled on cheerios. It is waving at the bus as it pulls away, cutting the crusts off of PB&Js and finding the first flower of spring. It is sunsets, and sunrises and a pile of ants. It is a silly dance, a silly song and learning your ABC’s. It is a warm bed after a bad dream and soft arms pulling you close. It is a smile, a cheer, it is a safe place.

It is a Mother.

The quiet art of being there.

Swing on over to Biblical Womanhood and see what others are doing to make their home a haven.

Running a Household

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I read once that a 7 year old girl should be able to run a household. When I first read that I thought “yeah, right!” It did set me to thinking that maybe my girls can do more than I think they can. Maybe not a fast or as well as I do, but they can do it, and if I don’t give them chances to try how will they ever learn.

On Monday night we had a little escape incident with some “pets”. My Partner in Crime collects and keeps scorpions. He has just finished building and moving his little pets into a new enclosure (http://biohazard-blog.blogspot.com/2008/02/tropical-scorpion-enclosure.html) and when I went down stairs Monday afternoon I realized that two were missing. (AAAAAAA) I closed the door to his office and didn’t say anything to the little girls (none of them are deathly poisonous, they just give you a nice sting and look scary). When PIC got home that night he took apart his enclosure looking for any small space that the buggies could have gotten into.

I ate dinner with the kids while PIC was attending to his pets and told the girls I was going to go help Dad, and to be good!

I went downstairs and helped for about an hour, when I was done helping I came upstairs to a wonderful surprise. My #2 punk decided to “play mom”. This is what she did. She bathed the three little kids, including the baby, got them in their pajamas and had them brush their teeth. She read with the 5 year old, and tucked the two little girls in bed, after saying prayers with them. She rocked and sang to the baby, kissed him, and put him to bed. She picked up the living room, putting everybody’s personal items on the chair “just like you do mom” so we could all put our “stuff” away. She cleared the dinner table, wiped it off, and put the center piece back on. She stopped at the dishes telling me “I didn’t want to play washing dishes”. I was blown away! She really did run the house! She is almost 8 (on Saturday) and she did almost everything I did, maybe things were a little rough around the edges, details come with practice, but she did a wonderful job! S I guess maybe I am teaching my daughters the art of running a home.

We did find the bugs by the way. One had fallen into the water at the bottom of the terrarium and lived (they are strange animals) the other was found back in a corner of the office closet. Mike has since changed the buggy set up.

Healthy eating

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After reading some other blogs written by friends about healthy eating and the cost of it, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I will agree that eating healthy can be expensive. You can get a big loaf of white bread for 99 cents, where a loaf of whole wheat can cost almost 3 dollars, and they are smaller loafs. I have decided the trick to eating healthy on a low budget is making as much of your food as you can from scratch. I bake my own bread, and I figure it costs me about a dollar a loaf, and it is whole wheat bread (and so yummy!) Also when cooking as much as possible from scratch you avoid artificial flavors, additives and preservatives. Yes, fresh vegetables can be expensive, however a big bag of traditional carrots (not the baby kind) is very cheap and it really doesn’t take that long to peel and cut up. This is a good reason to have your own garden. You can also get a bag of frozen vegetables for about 1.20$, not too bad! A ten pound bag of apples and a bunch of bananas or grapes (when in season) are all cheaper per pound than a box of cookies, and much healthier. I have a family of 7, and a 10 pound bag of apples lasts me about a month and a half, where as we can go through a box of cookies in an evening. I think it all comes down to how much time you are willing to spend on preparing food. To me it is worth it to feed my family good, nutritious food, while saving money. There are some items I am willing to pay more for. I am a big believer in organic milk and milk products, and that is a lot more expensive than the regular kind, about double. I do like to use sprouts, which can be very expensive, so I learned how to do my own sprouting. Same with yogurt, my family loves it, I make my own. I don’t use cold cereals either (except on Saturday and Sunday) I buy 2 boxes a month of Cherrios and that it is. I make my own granola, it is only a little cheaper but I know what is going into it.Here is a really good article related to healthy eating and budgets

http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/foodchallenge.htm
or
http://www.biblicalwomanhoodonline.com/blog.htm

P.S. In no way do I want to sound like I feed my kids 100% organic made-from-scratch foods, we eat our share of fast food and sugar! I would like to do better in this area!

I have a pet peeve that is sort of related to this post. It drives me up a wall when mothers say “oh, my kids won’t eat healthy, all they want are cookies/potato chip/juice….” I say…if they aren’t in the house, they can’t eat them. A child is not going to starve themselves. If they are hungry, and there are only apples in the house for a snack, they will eat the apple. I don’t buy chips, or cookies. The first reason is that if they are in the house I will eat them all, and we all know the last thing I need is more calories! The second is that if they aren’t in the house my kids won’t eat them. If you only offer the “good” stuff your kids will learn to like the “good” stuff. Now I am not saying that I never have treats, I love treats, but they are just that; a treat. I also have a dedicated “snack time”. I allow very little grazing. When the big kids get home from school they all sit down for a snack. I have a variety of snack foods. Cut up fruit, cut up veggies with dip, toast, sugar toast, hot chocolate and toast (wow that is a lot of toast!) pudding, fruit juice pops, yogurt smoothies (thanks Heatherann), graham crackers with peanut butter, graham crackers dipped in milk, cookies (I keep some in the freezer so they can be pulled out and baked quickly). They are things that are very simple, but will satisfy hungry tummies. Other times if the kids are hungry, they can always have an apple or a graham cracker. Remember, you are the mother; you are responsible for what goes into your kids mouths, at least when they are little. Don’t let a two year old decide what they are going to eat!