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Monday, January 21, 2008

Monday musings..

I feel like I've used that subject title before. I guess I get motivated on Monday mornings to just...well, muse!

I attended an amazing workshop at Merriconeag last Thursday night. It was Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne. He's an Australian with some of the best parenting advice I've heard in a very long time. He has done so much work with stressed out kids...and his message is so basic...simplify your life and your kid's lives. So, of course, if I were following the advice 100%, I would NOT be blogging right now! I have considered really putting myself to the test...no cell phone, no computer...but I'm not quite ready for that. I am going to cut back on their usage, though.

The areas that I'm working on with my children include simplifying their lives. I cleaned out Meka's room the other day: 2 trash bags are going to Goodwill. I struggle with gifts that well-intentioned relatives give our children. I struggle with the gifts WE give our children. But, when it comes down to it, if it's not purposeful, it goes. If they don't love it, it goes. If it does nothing to encourage their imaginative play, it goes.

Now my task will be to limit what comes INTO our home and our lives. One family at school buys their children NO Christmas gifts. They take a family vacation instead. How lovely is that? I think of how much we spend on Christmas and how wasteful MOST of it is and think, I'd much rather go away for a long weekend with our family.

Now I just have to work on the boy. Donny, what do you think?

This weekend we made an impromptu trip to Little Dog for breakfast on Saturday. We ended up running into a slew of friends! Two of Jolee's "classmates" from preschool were there...it just so happened to be her favorite two!

Saturday night we had a new babysitter. She seems quite nice. The girls liked her, so that's what really matters. We went out to dinner with "the grapes" and then went dancing afterward. We had such a great time! It's so nice to go out and have fun! As adults, it's hard to figure out what, exactly, that is!

Yesterday I went up to my dad's to have a family picture taken. What a trip that was! My sisters are the epitome of teenagers! I had Jolee and Meka with me, they had fun, so that's what matters.

We then met my mom at the nursing home she works at. We went around to meet some of her favorite residents. It was good to see her in her element, the place that has filled her with such positive self esteem over the past months. We all went to dinner afterward and had a lovely time. Jolee's behavior could have been a bit better, but we had fun nonetheless!

And today has begun...Elvia and Jolee and I will figure out something fun while Meka spends the day with mom. Until next time...

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous8:19 AM

    Just an idea left over from my kids were young....

    We are not "purgers". We think everything has value, or at least if it is not broken beyond repair, keep it. That made (or should I say MAKES) for a LOT of junk we're still hanging on to. But when everyone was small, when our house was small and there just wasn't room for all the junk the kids would accumulate, I would collect unused toys and put them away in bags or boxes and store them in the garage. Then, in about 6 months or even a year, I would trade them for toys I'd collected in the playroom just that day. The kids were so excited to see their "new" toys that it was like Christmas all over again. AND they played with these toys because they had either missed them or because they didn't have so much to choose from - or just because they were "new" again.

    So, as someone who really TRIES to get your kids meaningful toys that will stimulate their creativity and playtime thinking, I pass this idea on. I am keeping my fingers crossed that all of the toys from Grammy and Grampy didn't get tossed. Hopefully some kids at the Goodwill store or somewhere will be able to make good use of them if they did. In the future tho, keep the "recycle" idea in the back of your head.

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