To kick of this year we started by having a Family Home Evening in which we wrote down our goals for the year. We always did that growing up and I just think its a really great way to dive into a new chapter of life. I put them on the fridge and in our bedroom so that we could see them throughout the year and be re-inspired when we read through them.
Tommy's Goals:
- Potty Train
- Be reverent and fold arms during the prayer (it is seriously a battle every time guys)
- Taste one bite of dinner (the other serious battle).
Elsy's Goals:
- Make bed every day (that hasn't happened once yet... eek)
- Pray - say morning prayers (oops... that hasn't happened either...)
- Cook with Mom every Monday (wow... we only did that once so far!)
Dang, see its good to review them now and then to remember that you need to resubmit yourself to trying!
While most of Logan and my goals are personal I will share a couple with you. For example Logan wants to go to the temple once a month, start running, and get some career goals accomplished. I made goals to have weekly family history time, cook a vegetable for dinner every day, and have a spiritual experience every day.
Of course, goals were meant to be broken! But that is what makes them goals! So we are going to keep trying when we forget or mess up. We are only in February after all... we only have to be completely better at them by December, right? Haha!
Well, one of my goals was to do more sensory bins for my kids. Both of them have texture issues, especially Elsy!, and it is greatly manifested at the dinner table. I read somewhere that playing with new and interesting textures can help kids when it comes to being able to try and eat new and different foods. So I decided to try it. Logan got me an amazing, cordless Dyson vacuum for Christmas and I figured I could tackle messes more conveniently with it so we got down and dirty. The first bin I started with was just plain sugar that I shook in ziplock bags with food coloring in them. The kids LOVED it. I feel like something is a success when the kids play with something for longer than 15 minutes. These two played in the sugar ALL MORNING! Granted, there was sugar snow all over the floor but thanks to my trusty Dyson I had it all up in a jiffy.
(NOTE: Sugar is super fun the first couple times, but after a while it starts to get sticky... especially if your kid has a runny nose *gag* or discovers that it is the same sugar you put into recipes and decides to eat it and lick it off their hands. In either of these cases, a Dyson will not do the job. Neither will moping the floor 4 times. Or scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees. And then the sugar will end up not being a play thing any longer. Just saying.)
Oh my Elsy girl! She is just a doll! When we got home from Christmas break we officially decided to let her stay up from naps. It was just time. She is three and a half and was starting to have a really hard time going to sleep at night because she just wasn't tired enough. She also started to wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep for over an hour. So we decided it was time. This has been a big challenge for me because nap time is a huge pick-me-up for me. It is when I usually read my scriptures, get chores done, plan piano lessons, craft and sew, and even catch my own nap. Elsy just wants me to play play play with her and I just can't. Those two and a half hours are times where I just get so much done. I struggled with the idea of letting her play on the iPad or watching a movie every day but I just couldn't quite do it. I am pretty strict with the kids with screen time and I decided 2.5 hrs a day was just not what I wanted for her. So we have been experimenting with what works. I bought her some fun workbooks that she loves and sometimes she will paint. But I have found that the best thing during nap time is to have a friend over for her. She leaves me completely alone and her and her friend play non stop and it is just wonderful. I can get everything done... even a nap in! (shhh don't tell the friends mom haha!) I usually let her have a friend over during naps about twice a week.
Wednesday's are my family history days. During nap time I read and learn about my ancestors and then in the evening I write on my blog to keep our own family history. Elsy has been snuggling up to me the past couple weeks while I read from the family history books my grandpa and grandma Volmer gave us and I will read to her out loud. I never think she is listening but then she will chime in and comment on things every now and then. Its been pretty fun.
Good ole Tommy boy. He is such a hoot. He is so rambuncious and we just can NOT get him to hold still.... ever. We just switched him out of the high chair and into a booster seat at the table because he kept trying to stand in the high chair... but now he just stands on the booster seat! He has fallen a few times but always catches himself and he will be yelling and I will find him holding the edge of the table with his fingertips and his body suspended between the chair and the floor. He really is so strong.
I mentioned above that it is a battle for prayers every morning, noon, and night. And it is really just because he doesn't want to sit still! He wants to keep playing, eat his food, jump, skip, ribbit like a frog. He only holds still if he has a pacifier in his mouth.... speaking of which we just stopped letting him have it during the day, its only an 'in-the-crib' thing now. It was hard at first but it only took a day or two and now he is fine with it. He has started to do what Elsy used to do though when we did the same to her and that is him saying he is sleepy all the time because he hopes he will get it. "I seepy!" he will say when he is sad, "I seepy!" he says when he gets in trouble, "I seepy, when he doesn't want to do something.
We had a thunder storm this week and a big clap of thunder made him jump so high he skipped and then he ran straight to me bawling. He clung to me with his arms and legs and I had to pry him off limb by limb to change his diaper. He loves to pretend he is tough but he sure is tenderhearted.
We decided to renew our lease here at our housing complex for another year. In order to do that though we decided we needed to de-junk our lives! We watched a documentary on minimalism of Netflix that inspired us to get rid of a lot of things that we had been holding onto for no reason. We went through every inch of our apartment and got rid of so much stuff! We filled the whole back of our van with clothes, toys, books, kitchen appliances, shoe racks, etc. I couldn't believe we had so much stuff we never use. We got rid of a whole bookcase, bar stools, and a dresser. I haven't missed a single thing yet and it has been over a month.
One of the things we decided we wanted to do when we renewed our lease was to make our room feel more like a bedroom. It was a bedroom/office/piano room combo and it just never felt clean to me. We decided in all our cleaning out that we would clean out our closet, buy a dresser, and move Logan's "office" into our walk in closet. That really opened up our room and makes it feel so much more cozy to me. We got a nice dresser at IKEA as well as a shoe cabinet to free up some space in the closets to put more things in storage. Elsy and Tommy were great helpers to Logan at first but I finally had to step in and let him have his space... and sanity!
This year Elsy became a Sunbeam at church! Here she is on her first day at primary. Ugh, I'm rolling my eyes because she wouldn't take a picture. She got that little head on a stick and on the other side is a mirror. She wouldn't stop looking in the mirror sadly. Since I am the primary pianist I get to watch her while she is singing and I just think she is so darling and grown up! I may have messed up on the piano a couple times because I was watching her sing over the top of my music. After two weeks I taught her how to raise her hand... she seemed confused as to why she never got asked to do anything! Hehe! I taught her but she still didn't get picked for a couple weeks, there are a lot of kids! But she got picked for the first time this week and it was an answer to my prayer because she wanted it so badly. She just soaks up all that knowledge and all the music and sings everything at home.
So one of my goals this year is to potty train Tommy. I am in no hurry, even though we started potty training Elsy when she was 22 months old. I just want him potty trained before we have another kid, so I have at least 9+ months to accomplish that. But he has started to get interested in sitting on the potty now and then so I let him just sit in there. Sometimes he likes to read a book but mostly he wants me to sit on the stool next to him and talk to him. So far my patience has led to three poops and one pee into the potty! I'd say that is pretty good! Usually, he just poops in his diaper and then asks me "a tote!" (a toilet!). He likes to watch me dump his poo in the toilet and then he wants to sit on the toilet for a minute or two before I clean him up. He is so silly. If I could just get him to tell me "a tote!" before he poops... that would be great.
One of the things that I have discovered that helps Elsy stay occupied during nap time is stringing pony beads on yarn. She loves to do this and loves to make me nice long necklaces. I guess in this picture you can't see but I am wearing a matching necklace to Elsy's.
Elsy always gives me boosts in my confidence. She tells me I look beautiful all the time. And even better she will often give me a big tight hug and tell me "You are the best mommy ever!". It is so sweet and makes me feel special and like I am doing a good job. I really am trying to get this Mom Thing down. It is a challenge every day but a good challenge never hurt anybody... at least I keep telling myself that.
Tommy absolutely loves books. Here he is reading a book in his crib at night. His favorites are I SPY books and look and find type books... or anything to do with cars. Grandma Bean gave him the Richard Scary book about Cars and Trucks and Things That Go for Christmas. Each page he has to look for the Goldbug and since he loves look and finds he loves to just pour over the pages and find that little Goldbug. Grandma Volmer gave him a Micky Mouse look and find book for Christmas as well. He loves looking through that one too. I hate to admit it but I ended up hiding both of those books for a while because I just couldn't stand to read them one more time. I probably read the Richard Scary one 2-3x a day for a few weeks straight because Elsy got hooked on that one too! But Tommy is so so sweet about books. He always caries one around and when he finds me he will say, "Book, please!" and want to sit on my lap to read it. Today he bawled his eyes out outside the bathroom door because I was in there when he wanted me to read a book, please. His other favorite book was given to Elsy by Grandpa Bean a few years ago when she was Tommy's age. It is called "The Approved Inter-Universal Pan-Dimensional Omni-Galactic Alphabetical Guide to the Cosmos for Beginning Space Explorers". And if the title didn't give you a hint as to how hard that book is to read, let me just give you a sample of a few of the words that you have to read while trying to teach your kids the letters of the alphabet, "U is for Urganticonian Maximum Capacity Star Bus," "X is for Xylomortipraxian Automated Moon Buggy," "C is for Carthalonian Supersonic Dyna-tron," and my favorite, "E is for Elephantine Hair Creature of Winklehutniczortlebladder 9." Not to brag, but I have actually gotten pretty good at reading all the crazy words in that book. ;) And the kids even have some of those words memorized. It is hilarious. But the most surprising thing is that it is actually teaching Tommy his letters. On every page I say, "Where is the A?" and he will point to the big A on the page, "Where is the B?". This week I started saying, "What letter is that?" instead and he knew over half of them. So that was pretty cool.
Elsy and Tommy's new favorite nightly activity is playing Trap. We used to go out on a walk or to the park after dinner but since it is winter and dark we have to be imaginative. My dad used to play trap with us which just basically included him laying on the floor on his back and holding onto any limbs he could grab and then not letting go while the rest of the siblings try to wrestle him and/or save the trapped victim. It almost always ended in somebody getting hurt and crying. He still plays it with my younger siblings... and they are in high school haha! But Elsy loves to play it. Its kind of nice because I get to just lay on the floor and basically do nothing except hold onto an ankle for a while.
Elsy has discovered how to take pictures with my phone. Most of them are random and just take up tons of space (especially the burst photos of like 57 images) but some of them I really like. Like this one, for instance. I just love her pink chubby toes and chunky legs.
Elsy learned how to write her name! This was actually taken a couple months ago but I had to remember to include it. We were visiting Logan at his work and Elsy was writting on the white board and she just wrote her name, right there, for the very fist time! We were so proud of her and she was so proud of herself so we had to take a picture. Her S could still use some work, but hey! She is only three.
Book time with my buddies!
We decided for scripture time, in an effort to get Tom to hold still during it, to give him his own picture scriptures to follow along. I can't tell you it has been successful... because it hasn't exactly been successful really. But we are trying, nonetheless. I just feel like it has been so easy to teach Elsy about the gospel because she just sits and loves to listen and learn. But Tommy just wants to crash his cars together or fight with his Link sward and it has been a real challenge for me. I am trying to think of ways to help him out. Let me know if you have any ideas...
My dear Logan has perfected the cottage loaf of bread. Oh yum it is so delicious. I am the WORST at making bread. It never comes out right. But Logan has always had a knack for it and I am so grateful... and I am even more grateful that we have had these cottage loaves around quite often now days.
Elsy came home from Joy School one day as an owl. She wouldn't stop "Whooooo"-ing, even for the picture.
Two of our family goals this year involved Saturday morning activities. We decided that on Saturday mornings we will be doing chores as a family. And then, if everyone helps and does their part we will go out for a Saturday Snack. We have only done this twice because Saturdays can be pretty up in the air sometimes, but it has been a lot of fun.
We just love Panera! And the kids love the cinnamon rolls there now haha!
Here is my pretty Elsy girl holding the bag my mom made her for Christmas. It has become her scripture bag for church and she carries a Book of Mormon and a mini Children's Songbook in it. She loves to sit in the pew on Sundays and just flip through her Book of Mormon. She is so close to the Spirit, even at her young young age. I am grateful for her example to me.
I feel like my focus so far this year has been finding peace and joy along this crazy journey we call life. There is so much hardship and suffering that we each go through on a daily basis. But I have also discovered there are so many blessings and so much good in each day as well. I have been praying for God to help remind me throughout the day to see those little bright spots. At first I started noticing them after the fact but after a lot of practice, and more praying for help remembering, I feel like I am starting to recognize those little blessings in the moment more often. I often forget that the reason I am living each day is not to get dinner made, clean my house, workout, and keep the kids happy but is to help me prepare for my eternal destiny after this life. I often get swept up in all the to do's and forget all the whys. It is definitely a work in progress but I have been finding more and more that when I remember the why I can find joy in each day and even a little bit of peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment