Do Simplicity, Focus, and Recollection Characterize your life?

No?  Huh.  Mine either.  But it kind of sounds nice, doesn’t it?

This is a question that I’ve been thinking about lately, and it came from a list that is used as an aid in an Examination of Conscience. 

An Examination of Conscience is pretty much what it sounds like – taking a few minutes at the end of the day to think about the choices and decisions you’ve made throughout the day, as well as your thoughts and actions, and seeing how they line up with what you believe is God’s will for your life.  Some things are pretty easy – the next time M sprinkles glitter all over the kitchen floor I’ll try to remember gentleness and patience are a better path to take than yelling and turning into Crazy Mommy.  And some things take a bit more soul-searching – did I spend my time wisely today?  Did laziness keep me from completing all the *reasonable* duties of the day, or was I honestly trying to do too much? 

It’s nice to do this on a daily basis – improvement in our (my!) spiritual life will only happen if we are conscious of our weaknesses.  

The main thing to remember in order to not get discouraged when I have several bad days in a row is that there is always grace.  Grace to start over again, and get back on track. 

 

Moderation in all Things

This aid in an Examination of Conscience was written by Joseph Michalak, and based on the virtues (patience, love, temperance, hope, faith, etc.).  It asks a series of questions for each particular virtue, and assists one in thinking about the day.  This particular question comes from the section on temperance, or balance – something we are always talking about and striving for, right?  That elusive balance that will make everything go smoothly and everyone happy forever and ever.  The end. :)

There are several other good questions in this section too; questions like…

• Do I live a blanced and integrated life?  Do I recognize the signs of imbalance?
• What is a healthy pace of life for me?
• Am I gentle, especially in teaching and in giving correction?
• Do I find myself preoccupied with what others think of me?
• Do I aim at excellence in those things God has given me to do?
• Am I at home with silence?

 

Tranquility of Mind

But the one in the title of this post is the one I can’t stop thinking about.  Do simplicity, focus, and recollection characterize my life? I wasn’t even sure what was meant by “recollection”.  Here’s the definition:

Main Entry: rec·ol·lec·tion

Pronunciation: \ˌre-kə-ˈlek-shən\

Function: noun

Date: 1624

1 a : tranquillity of mind b : religious contemplation

Life never seems simple, but why shouldn’t it be?  Why shouldn’t we be tranquil and given to contemplation?  Why should it be so hard to just say no to some things? 

 

Having a Plan

I love to plan.  I actually have been known to spend so much time and energy in making plans that I’m worn out before we even begin doing anything.  I think having a plan for our days is a good thing, to the extent that it brings a sense of order to our life and our home, and leads to simplicity and peace. 

However, this is seldom the case with my planning, and I know I’m not alone here.  Why does having a plan have to mean enrolling my child in every available activity this summer, and then spending time rushing around everywhere?  Sometimes we moms even get anxious if we are facing time alone with our children and have no set plan. 

Well.  I’ve started taking some decisive actions to begin living this kind of life.  It won’t happen all at once, and I’m sure things will have to be tweaked here and there, but I’m aiming for peace in my heart and in my home.  A lot of this will be changing habits, creating a more orderly home, freeing up time, being quieter and more thoughtful throughout the day, focusing on what’s important and trusting that God will help me do what’s necessary each day in order to meet this goal.  Or at least get close to it. ;)

I guess that’s my teaser for the series I’ll be writing detailing these changes.  Stay tuned!

Have a beautiful and peaceful day! :)

Nurturing Positive Relationships and Socialization Skills – a list of goals, and some rambling…

I was asked to read Homeschooling for the Rest of Us, written by Sonya Haskins because many of my readers are homeschoolers. I’m working my way through it and have found so much great advice that I want to share some of it as I go along.
I am, technically, not a homeschooler. M is only 3, won’t start kindergarten until he is 6, and most likely will go to the private school associated with our church. However, I do place great importance on the fact that as his mother, I’m his primary teacher, his most important teacher at least for now. And, if you read this blog you know we do a lot of preschool learning activities. It comes naturally to me, I love doing it, M loves it even more… and it’s a way for us to spend special time together on a daily basis.
I struggle occasionally with what I should be doing with M. This brief time that he is mine alone… these short years of early childhood innocence… they are such a gift and I love being with him (that’s not to say it’s not a very tough job sometimes). But I feel the pressure of the clock winding down on us. What should my priorities be as his mother and first teacher? Well, love of God, knowledge of our faith, caring for others, manners… things that have to do with relationships. Strong, loving relationships are so much more important than academics at this age (probably this is true of any age). I admit, it’s harder work for me to help him develop a virtuous character, than it is to plan unit studies. (Evidently my own character isn’t quite perfect either – who knew? And still God entrusted this little guy to me; it floors me sometimes!)
What I love about Sonya Haskin’s book is that she stresses “relationships first, academics second”, especially for early childhood. What she writes about this topic is such an encouragement to me, and an affirmation that my instinct is right in this area.
What I particularly am appreciating right now is a list of goals regarding relationship growth (good social skills lend themselves to good relationships, right?) that Ms. Haskins provides early on in the book. For a list-maker, list-reader, and list-needer like me, it’s great to have something that I can refer to once in a while in order to make sure we are on the right track.
Here’s her list of what skills should be learned in early childhood…
“Students should be able to:

• take turns
• share with others
• use appropriate language
• use appropriate voice tone (yelling outside, quiet talk in side)
• say “please” and “thank you”
• praise others and avoid insults
• ask for help when needed
• stay on task
• look at others when spoken to
• communicate clearly
• wait patiently for lunch
• take care of belongings
• listen attentively
• resolve conflicts appropriately (no hitting, no biting)
• follow directions
• work with a team
• share ideas coherently
• understand age-appropriate social concepts
• help others" (pp. 45-46)
  

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this! Are there other things you’d add to the list? Let me know in the comments!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Thursday Thinking – My Top Ten List

Monica wrote a wonderful post here, a long, long time ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. When I am frazzled and feel like I’m trying to do too many things at once (yet without getting anything done) and any sense of priorities and time management have long since been thrown out the window, this idea of a daily checklist pops into my head. I know I need that sense of direction and some sort of guide for how to spend my time.

I had one of those days yesterday. Too much to do and too little time to do it all, and I seemed to be spending all my time and energy on trivial things. M wanted me to spend time with him, and all I could do was get irritated… with him and with myself. I wanted to spend some special time with M, but I also wanted (and needed) to do a dozen other things. I was running crazily around with the subtle feeling that I was, just maybe, making the wrong sacrifices in order to get less important things checked off of the to-do list.

I sat down at the kitchen table and finally just did it – wrote my daily top ten list – and it took me all of 5 minutes. 5 minutes of a little clearer vision and some listening to what my heart was trying to tell my brain. :)

Shortly after writing this, I sat down again and tried to place each item in order of importance. Things like tidying up and making a healthy dinner are not on the list, even though they are important to me, but these are things that are already built into my days and are habit and routine already.

Ready? Here it is…

1. Quiet time for prayer/reflection/Bible – aim for both morning and evening, but at least morning. 10 minutes minimum, most days I should be able to spend a good 20 minutes at a time though.

2. Meaningful time with my husband. Connecting with him and paying attention to him and even (gasp!) doing something nice just for him each day. I have to admit I find it easy to put him last.

3. Morning prayer with M – something short, but to get us both off on the right foot together first thing. And, to raise an awareness in him of the importance of this. We used to do this at breakfast, but lately we’ve gotten out of the habit as M isn’t hungry early on and when he’s ready to eat we just say a quick grace, nothing more (I eat much earlier).

4. Spend 20 minutes, minimum, reading books with M, preferably while cuddling. Books at bedtime don’t count towards this.

5. Spend 20 minutes playing with M, doing something he wants to do. (Most likely this will be tot school activities, since this is what he loves to do together, but I will not push it… it’s too easy to make that more important than it should be for a 3 year old).

6. Ensure that housekeeping chores on the list for the day are done.

7. Rest/quiet time for M (and probably me) each afternoon – at least 30 minutes.

8. Some sort of art, craft, or sensory activity every day.

9. Music time – anything simple – putting on a favorite cd and playing a game or dancing, learning a new song, playing with our instruments, etc.

10. Outside time if weather permits.

Number 10 will be a higher priority in spring. In Minnesota it just isn’t always possible to go out in the winter… my cut off is 30 degrees, which is actually pretty warm by MN standards. I know kids at school go out in much colder weather. I don’t like to be cold, I’d prefer to hibernate to tell you the truth. ;)

Many of these will be accomplished in the regular course of our day… if we go out and play in the snow, that’s outside time, sensory time, and play time together all in one. And the Art Box will normally take care of number 8. I just like having them written down so I have hard evidence of what’s important to me and a guide for how to best manage my time each day.

And, just so you know, I DO spend time with M each day, usually several stretches of time throughout the day, but it’s hard for me to put that first. I always think I’ll play with him after I get something important done. Having it written down is a reminder that it really is more important than a lot of the other things. And, I’m trying to remember what Maryanne pointed out in this awesome post of hers… that spending time with your child early on in the day makes it easier for them to spend time on their own later. They need that attention and affection from us, and it’s hard for them to do much without us if that need hasn’t been met.

And, as a side note, you can see blogging didn’t make the list at all. As much as I enjoy it, it could become a full-time job if I let it, and that’s not what I want, not to mention not what’s best for my family! However, I’m pretty sure I’ll still find time for it (obviously I did today!). :)

I also have a list of priorities for each week (which I’ve had for years, updating it occasionally)– what needs to be done at home, a meal plan, activities outside of home, errands, etc. I plan to post about this sometime soon. A new year around the corner is always a good time to think about these things!

I’d love to hear what your daily top ten consists of!!

Have a beautiful Christmas Eve! :)

Thursday Thinking – Focusing on What’s Important

Last week I rambled on and on about how to make our fall schedule work and getting everything I want to do fitted into our days; and it occurred to me after reading my post a few times that my focus was entirely on the wrong things.

I’ve been way too focused on tot-schooling / pre-schooling M. Way, way, way too focused. I love planning school activities, but when I’m totally stressed out because I just don’t know how I’m going to get it all done, something is very wrong.

M is only 3. He has the rest of his life, well his childhood at least, to learn about patterns, color shades, the sounds “C” can make, and so on… he doesn’t need to learn it all right now. Especially if Mommy is grumpy about it. He'll be going to school at age 6 (we will most likely not homeschool), and I only have a few more precious years with him. This thought has hit me with force the past few weeks. I don’t have time to work on getting my act together and figuring everything out. I need to be kind, patient, and gentle with him now, love him now, and help him to grow in love now.

I get a great amount of enjoyment and energy from putting things together to do with him, but my focus has shifted from “I want to have fun one-on-one time with you and maybe help you have fun learning in the process”, to “we’ve got to do this because I spent 2 days putting it together and I want to blog about it.”

Putting things together for him and planning our tot school time together is something I’ll continue to do as I can find the time, after all the important stuff is done. I want to keep it in our life, just not at the top of my list of priorities. It never should’ve risen to that spot in the first place.

Housework is another stressor for me – I don’t like cleaning (*news flash!*). But I do love the feeling of having the household running in an orderly manner. It’s important to me and so I’ve come up with what I want/need to have done on a regular basis. I hope to post about that some time soon (because this post is already too long and you are probably sick of these long rambling posts of mine!).

This post was a real eye-opener for me and I hope you’ll click over and read it – It says all my heart needs to remember as I “mother” M. I’m going to print it out so I can read it every day.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Thursday Thinking – Rethinking our Routines

We’ve been working on setting up a new routine here this week and there’s still a lot of adjusting and fine-tuning to do. 

Setting aside a large amount of time for “school” one day a week just isn’t cutting it for us right now.  We’ve been trying to make sure to spend one day per week at home, which I feel is reasonable, but I’ve been trying to get all the house-cleaning done that day, set aside a large chunk of time for tot school, and stuff in a bunch of other items from the never-ending to-do list… and I’ve been left feeling pretty… well, crabby, to be honest.  Stressed, exhausted, unhappy… that’s just not the mood I want to be in when M and I have special time together. 

So, I’m thinking of having activities that M can do by himself on Tuesdays (or whatever day it ends up being) that I can check in and out of while I take care of other necessary household *stuff*.  I’m not sure how I want to set this up… maybe tot trays or workboxes.  I like the Montessori method of having a specific “work” area that the child brings the work to, and which he cleans up before picking a new activity.  In my mind it works beautifully, but realistically I’m not sure M will really cooperate with it.  He’s not exactly a pick-up-after-himself sort of guy. :)  But we can all learn, right?  I bought a bamboo mat for him to use as his work area at Target this week as an optimistic act of faith. :) 

The other part of the plan is to then have 20 to 30 minutes a day of what I’m calling “circle time” in my head.  I don’t know what I’ll call it when talking to M; circle time sounds a little funny when it is pretty much just he and I!  But it will be time for a story, one or two activities, poems, songs, flannel board, etc.   I plan to make our weather chart part of this on a daily basis, sense we’ve gotten away from doing it.  Also, we will add in prayers, character building lessons, learn the days of the week, and maybe a game once in a while.   I think I will have it all revolve around certain themes.  The current theme is autumn, and I’m thinking there’s enough resources out there that we could easily do seasonal and holiday themes for a very long time! 

We’ll either try to do this in the mornings or after nap time, before it’s time to start cooking dinner.  M rarely takes a nap any more, I just have him rest for a while after lunch – this is when I let him watch a little TV (usually a dvd of Clifford shows or something along those lines), or sometimes he sits in bed and looks at books.  I’ve thought of doing our “circle time” after lunch since it would be easy to fit in then – but after trying it a couple of times I’ve found it to be disastrous.  He may not need a nap, but I definitely need a break of some sort at that time of day.  That is my energy low point and I need to take that time to rest, focus on something else, and just recharge my batteries. 

We’ve got a busy fall ahead of us – Mondays we have a pray/play group with a bunch of moms at church, then we run errands before lunch; every other Tuesday we will have a class at our local nature center (“playful polliwogs” – isn’t that cute?); Thursdays we’ll alternate between story time at the library and another church pray/play group at various moms’ homes;  Fridays will be our days for field trips or play dates with just one or two friends.  There’s also some activities at the local community center scattered throughout the calendar that we want to go to.  Whew.  I hope we can manage it all… and I hope that if we can’t manage it all I will have the presence of mind to rethink things and say no to some activities.  It’s hard to do, isn’t it?!?!

So, just thought I’d spell it all out here so I have a record of my plans, and maybe I’ll even get a few great suggestions!  Feel free to tell me how you get things done and still have time for your child(ren).

Happy fall!  Have a beautiful day! :) 

Thursday Thinking – A Mother’s Work

Recently I sat and listened as a friend went on and on about how competent another friend of ours is… she really has her act together, works hard, and does a lot for others.  She (the absent friend) is a great person, great friend, and an excellent teacher at a local elementary school. 

This conversation was in no way intended to make me like “less”, but in a way it did.  I wasn’t being compared to the other friend, but I was comparing myself to her in my mind.  It is most likely my own sense of insecurity, inadequacy, etc. that made this conversation have such an effect on me.  I felt like a complete failure in comparison.

Those of us who are stay-at-home-moms, I think, are susceptible to those feelings of inadequacy from time to time, especially when we think about how everyone else seems to really “have it all together”. 

This friend of mine (Miss Wonderful :) ) is not married, and does not have children.  We are at two completely different stages of life.  There is just no fair comparison to be made.  And since we are all different, I’m guessing that applies to comparisons with everyone else too!

G.K. Chesterton wrote a book in 1912 titled, What’s Wrong with the World. It’s a series of essays about the times in which he lived.  Some of it is outdated, but much of it still applies.  I like to read a portion of it from time to time, because it always gives me food for thought. 

Yesterday I ran across the following passage, and wanted to share it with all of you, hoping it provides you with the same encouragement that it gave me (REMEMBER, it was written in 1912!):

“[A woman is surrounded with] very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything.  Babies need not to be taught a trade as to be introduced to a world.  To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in the house with a human being at a time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. …when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question.  For I can not with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. …How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe?  How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone?  No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.  I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.” (What’s Wrong with the World, by G.K. Chesterton, p. 97)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Thursday Thinking – Scheduling My Life Away, part 2

Part one of this post is here.

To be clear, the title “Scheduling My Life Away” is referring to the enormous amount of activities I can try to cram into our days… activities that are offered everywhere I turn; activities that carry with them the unspoken message that my child will be lacking in some serious way if I don’t sign him up for this or that, that if I were a better mother I’d give him these experiences regardless of the cost to my well-being (or sanity). It also applies to all the other things we are asked to do, feel we need to do, etc. The craziness with which we fill our calendar pages.

These are the things that can make us so busy, busy, busy, that while we feel we are being productive (because if you aren’t busy you must be lazy!), we can easily lose sight of exactly what our life is – what is truly meaningful in it – normally that’s the people we love dearly: our families. I don’t want to have such a busy schedule that my family’s needs are not being met in the best way possible.

At one point a while after having M, I realized that our home had become quite chaotic (Really? Why didn’t anyone tell me that could happen with a new baby?!) And I realized that it was up to me, as the mother of the home, to change this. I was happy in a way, but lacking a sense of peace that I truly longed for. Longed for in a way I can’t express. It is deeper than the desire to simply be happy.

And so I began to examine all of my activities and my schedule for our days within the framework of this desire for peace in my home. I began to see that at this point in my life, this is part of my “job description” as a wife and mother.

Really, our gifts and talents are given to us to benefit and serve others. Keeping the house clean and life running in an orderly fashion is not a very glamorous job, but out of the three people who live in this house, I am the one best suited for doing it and I can honestly say, I’m the one who can best see what needs to be done and is capable of getting it done. Yep, yep, yep. :)

For real peace, our priorities must match up with the responsibilities we have at our particular season of life. Blogging, for example, simply can not be first on the list! ;) Neither can anything that is just me pursuing my own interests. Because when I do this, anything that my family needs from me is seen as an annoyance, an irritation, and an inconvenience. It’s a struggle because we do need time for ourselves, and we need time to rest and recharge our batteries, but it is so easy to confuse resting with escaping.

What brings true rest for me? Time alone to think (I’m extremely introverted), prayer, proper sleep. Those are things I have to schedule into my days. Those are things that are so much more important than play dates and shopping and everything else!

What can be ok in moderation, yet easily turn into an escape? Time on the internet, reading, shopping, hobbies… anything that tempts me to skip my duties in order to spend time on it.

If only our hearts were in line with our duties, right? Oh, if only.

I need and pray for a conversion of heart when I’m cleaning the bathroom and hating every single second of it, ready to cut down anyone who dares to need my attention at the same time I’m slaving away for them, knowing I probably won’t get even a simple “thank you”.

Yet, I would do cleaning and laundry and cooking for a friend who is ill joyfully, happy to help them out. Happy to help keep their home running a little more smoothly. Happy to take on extra work so that their family had one less thing distracting them.

Why can’t I feel the same joy in taking care of my own home and my own family, the people I love more than anyone else? Why is there this disconnect between my heart and what I do for my family?

I’m pretty sure it’s because I’m still trying to live my own life, pursue the things I want to. It’s because I’m selfish. Apparently I have not yet learned that happiness is not to be found in doing my own thing, it’s to be found in loving others through our actions.

I’m working hard on spending the time at home to do what needs to be done. I don’t want this to just be a place where we sleep and a "base station” for all the running around we do. I don’t want to be so tired all the time that we eat whatever we can find or fast food.

I want to bring peace into our life together, then we can go do all that fun stuff and know that things are ordered correctly in our lives. The opposite of peace is disorder and chaos, after all. The one is achieved only by fighting the other.

I believe I veered away from the track I was on when I began this post… and I know I can be a bit of a chatterbox! If you’ve made it to the end, congratulations!

I hope you have a beautiful and peace-filled day!

Thursday Thinking - Why do we do “tot school”?

(Don’t know what tot school is? Check it out here.) I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately. I’ve been trying to create a little more structure in my days with M, and giving more thought to planning tot school time.

And, sometimes, a little voice in my head says, “Why are you spending (*wasting*) your time on this? He’s only 2!" And it’s true that most of my “real-life friends” don’t do these things with their children (at least not in a planned or structured manner), and my mother didn’t with me. (And I like to think I turned out pretty OK. ;) )

I strongly believe that small children need certain things – love, attention, and affection top the list. Obviously they also need their physical needs to be met – good food, good rest, and exercise. And we are obligated to discipline them, help them learn to get along with others, and to discern right from wrong.

Developmentally, here’s what I think is important:

• Creative time - let them play with play-doh, paint, draw, whatever – just let them create something every day (or at least as often as possible).
• Free play time, completely child-directed.
• Outside time, as often as possible, regardless of the weather.
• Books, books, books, and more books, and time together with a parent to read them all.

Tot School for us started long before I even knew to call it that. It started by making library lists of things M wanted to know more about. I think airplanes were our first subject. Then came trucks, cars, bikes, anything with wheels. He is all boy. :)

Soon, autumn, my favorite time of year, was coming, and I wanted to share my love for it with M. Colored leaves lend themselves nicely to all kinds of crafts and art and so we added in a few activities along with books about the seasons.

Suddenly my mind was swimming with “themes” to learn about and I turned to the internet for help finding activities.

And, fyi, there’s a lot of info out there. Wow.

I was drawn into the world of crafty, artsy blogs of moms with toddlers and preschoolers; I learned what Montessori actually is; I found out that homeschooling moms are not weird, they actually really have their act together, and boy do they have a lot of resources they are willing to share!

Somewhere along the line I stumbled across the whole Tot School internet world. And I loved it. Making my own games and activities for my child really appealed to me.

{All the learning toys on the market appealed to me too, and I went through a not-very-discriminating period where I was buying anything “educational”. I eventually learned to be a bit more picky, but that’s another post for another time.}

At a very young age (less than 1 year old), M learned to recognize letters by constantly asking us to name his little foam bath letters for him. He has always been interested in the ABCs and finding new ABC activities for him has simply been a way of providing him with what he needs and wants to learn about.

I’m trying to follow his lead more in other areas too – if he’s interested in numbers and counting, I find ways to help him learn more about them. If he’s not interested then we turn to a completely different activity.

Preparing tot school activities is mostly a hobby for me, something I really enjoy doing. I enjoy doing it so much, actually, that I really need to remember it’s just a hobby, not a full time job! I must admit one of the top reasons we do planned tot school time is so I will spend one on one time with M, doing something other than playing with his matchbox cars and making car noises again and again and again. Because, honestly, that makes me crazy. And the last thing we need, any of us, is a crazy mama.

Tot school looks like a lot more than it is, I think. We mostly do it on Tuesday mornings, for maybe an hour. Then if he asks to do it on other days I usually have 2 or 3 activities picked out to give him.

I try, purposefully, to not do it all the time, because I do think the items I listed earlier are more important. I don’t want every little thing to be a teaching moment. In Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk, David Elkind writes about how children play. While much of their play is truly work, in that they are learning something, sometimes it’s just play. Children need to play in order to work through emotions, feel in control of something (dinosaurs eating people is the current game my son enjoys controlling these days), and in order to simply relax and have fun.

If we try to turn everything into a lesson, they may give up on what they were doing – not work through the emotions (teddy being scared, etc), or simply feel that mom is always taking over and controlling every thing. Not a pleasant thought, right? It’s certainly not how I want to be seen through his eyes.

I don’t believe tot school is making M smarter than other children. You know, simply learning your ABCs at an early age doesn’t mean you are smarter. It simply means you learned it sooner than someone else!

I think most parents spend similar time with their children. We do tot school on purpose simply because that’s what works for us. I get distracted easily and I’m very task-oriented, which means I could easily forget to just sit and relax and have fun with my son if it weren’t planned and scheduled into our day!

Also, it gives me a chance to see how much M knows, what he’s interested in… it gives me a chance to simply know him better. He’s a great little guy to know! :)

Do you purposefully do tot school activities with your little one? Have you ever felt discouraged when someone doesn’t understand why you are doing this? How have you responded?

I hope you and your tots have a beautiful day! :)

Thursday Thinking - Scheduling My Life Away - part 1

Ideas for this post have been floating around in my head for weeks. Before I even started a blog I was thinking of how I would write out all my thoughts about schedules, routines, and such. I love organizing - organizing space, organizing people, organizing time - I'm an organizer. Not that I am organized, but I seem to be perpetually organizing something.

Just like life, it's an on-going process of learning, re-doing, and trying something different, until you find what works.

It looks like a lot of bloggers are thinking about the same thing lately. I've read several just this week questioning how to fit everything into an already busy life. I think the fact that school is starting up soon for many families has spurred a lot of moms into action as they try to get a hold on how to manage their households and too-busy lives. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

Actually, when summer began I had, oh, about a million plans for what we were going to do. We were going to go on field trips to museums, go to puppet shows in the park, to special events at the library, to prayer and play groups on every Monday and Wednesday every week, keep the house clean, keep the family fed (healthy food of course), do planned tot school activities several times a week, daily art projects, clean out the basement, etc. etc. etc.

And, somehow I also envisioned lazy days hanging out in the backyard, with nothing to do, as well as a perfectly-content-and-at-peace-mama who never lost her temper or sense of pure serenity, always patient and gentle and kind.

What was I thinking?!

It wasn't too long until those pretty pictures in my mind weren't so pretty anymore and were actually causing a whole lot of stress. And I was tired. T-I-R-E-D. Tired just from thinking about all of these plans, and wondering what was wrong with me - I only have one child! I know mothers who are on the go all the time with 4 or 5 children! How do they do it?

These questions swam around in my head one morning as I prayed for the energy just to get out of bed and maybe get the laundry done. My 2 year old came in the room and climbed up in bed with me wanting to play and snuggle. That's when I mumbled something about "Tired. Need sleep." (And so, a blog was born.)

My favorite, non-child-centered, blog is conversiondiary.com. The author, Jennifer, had this great post one day. In it she mentions finding out what restores your energy when you are feeling drained. Is it relaxing with friends, chatting, socializing? Or is it being alone, quietly working on some project or just thinking? If it's socializing, you are an extrovert. If it's quiet time alone, you are an introvert.

I, most certainly, am an introvert.

I've had to realize being on the go all the time is not healthy for me.

And I don't think it's necessary for a 2 year old to do everything available for them to do. If we are always doing special things, they aren't special any longer. He may decide it's the norm, and there we are - stuck trying to do bigger, better, more-special things.

A 2 year old needs a mother who is at peace within herself, so much more than he needs fun activities to do.

I started asking myself a few questions when planning our activities for each week:

• Will he have more fun going to this particular activity than he would just staying at home and playing?
  
  
• Is there anything extraordinarily important about this activity? (Is it a once in a lifetime opportunity? Is it a great chance to learn about something he's shown an interest in?)




• Do I feel that this would be an enjoyable outing for us and a chance to get out of the house (which we occasionally really, really need) or would preparing for it, messing with routines, missing naptime, etc. just bring a lot of stress into our lives?



• Do I feel I have to do this because others are doing it? (If that's how I'm feeling, and the only reason I'm contemplating doing something then it's a major red flag that I'd be happier not doing it. And Mama's happiness is what it's all about. Seriously.)

• Will the needs of the family as a whole still be easily met if we do this? This includes having basic housework and chores done, meals planned, laundry, etc. It's ok to plan time to do these daily things that must be done in order to keep a house running in a non-chaotic manner. It's ok if other things have to go in order to do these things. Taking care of my home and family should be a joy and a privilege, not something I do with my leftover time after running us all ragged.

They've made a difference, these questions. We've chosen to not do at least 5 things on our original summer activity list in the last 2 weeks. And it's been great. Homelife is under control. We've spent more time playing outside (and in Minnesota, we have to make the most of these warm days; they don't last very long!), more time on normal, every day fun things, and more time just plain being together.

I also want to talk about how I'm working on setting up my schedule in a way that takes into consideration my priorities, child development and child stress, as well as actual time-management for the things that must be done, but that will have to wait for part 2, and maybe part 3. :)

Have a beautiful, lazy summer day! :)