Tag: books

family

Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self Love

Andi

I recently finished reading Jonathan Van Ness’s auto biography entitled Over The Top. It was a raw, honest telling of his life thus far.

He openly discusses not only his struggles, but how non linear his journey has been. I think this is important and seldom talked about. You won’t always set to overcome an addiction and then beat that addiction on the first try. You won’t always set a goal and meet it. You will fail. You will experience setbacks. There will be some event that sends you spiraling into your emotions and you turn to the very habit you are trying to break. You will or probably have felt like such a failure before. Why don’t we talk about how many times we’ve all tried to move one step forward and gotten shoved two back instead by an uncontrollable force or our own shortcomings. Jonathon doesn’t hide any of this from the reader. Some of it was hard to read. Honestly. My heart was breaking. It was refreshing to see someone be so honest, but also wrenching to see someone struggle so much. I cried.

I would also say this book is encouraging but also discouraging. It is encouraging in that someone could rise up and accomplish so much, and that society is slowly changing. Yet discouraging because it reminded me that I, as a parent, am incapable of protecting my child from all the bad out to harm them. I can be the most loving, supportive mother, but I still can’t force the world around us to also be loving and supportive.

And most importantly! I love Jonathan’s complete adoration of cats. For real, I watch the instastories eagerly hoping it’s another cat post. He tells a story of the bond he had with his very first cat and it melted me. I love cats. Just animals in general can be such loyal, compassionate companions precisely when we need them, but for me, that animal has been cats. I got my first cat when I was 12. I’d begged for one for years but always been met with a firm no as my dad hated cats. Finally, he caved when we found a rescue that had been dumped out in the country by my uncle’s house. She was a long haired orange tabby named Rachel. She was beautiful, however not as regal as my current companion. My cat now, Magnus, is 6 years old. He is a sleek black short hair, and he believes he is the Lord of a large estate. He has always been beside me, and one of my greatest joys is seeing him interact with my children. He will curl up and comfort them when they are sick. He head bops them, and they head bop him back. I would adopt every last black cat on earth if I could.

And the Romanov’s??!! Look. My young life was drastically molded by a select few films. Anastasia was one of them. I Loved it, but my mother did not. She believed it was wicked due to the presence and practice of Rasputin. (Which, to be fair, the story of the REAL Rasputin is…unnerving) I remember going over to friend’s houses to watch it at sleepovers. It still remains a favorite movie of mine. And did trigger a good deal of reading about the actual Romanov family, but that left me far more sad than the movie.

Not to mention how much Jonathon loves figure skating. I, too, dreamed of becoming an Olympic figure skater when I was young. Except unlike his dance routines, I designed all my own costumes. They were detailed. Growing up with a seamstress, I knew what went into crafting an outfit from scratch. I put all the knowledge and a lot of bad math into these costume designs. Most of them were blue, and contained a lot of floral elements.

But truly, what I find most important is learning about a person different than myself. My grandmother would encourage me to read all kinds of books, even books I didn’t think I’d agree with. She was trying to encourage me to think critically from every angle and not be narrow minded. Meeting someone who is different from you and listening to them, learning about them forces you to see from their perspective. It challenges your viewpoints. Diversity is good. Reading can be an easy way to do this. This is why I often look for books that I think I will learn from. Even though I am religious, I find books by athiests enlightening, or written by leaders of other world religions. They might be able to teach me something I’d never considered before. While I think it is good to meet and interact with all kinds of people, maybe you can’t meet these people face to face, that’s why books are so helpful. I can learn about Jonathan Van Ness without meeting him face to face by reading his book.

Which I greatly encourage you to do as well.

family

How to Organize your Schedule

Andi

I just got my 2020 planner, so lets talk about that.

I have to schedule everything in my daily life. Not everybody has this need, some people don’t need any planner at all, but I am not one of those people. Since I have the Anxiety expansion pack, I have to have a planner. I cannot function without one. Not everybody that has anxiety has this issue. I’ve talked to several other people who tell me that having a planner makes their anxiety worse because seeing everything that needs to be done written down in one place puts their brain into over drive and then shuts down. However for me, if I don’t have a set plan and specific path laid out for that day, the open endedness and the uncertainty give me panic attacks. So I have to make a plan.

I’ve heard from older women who’ve been through the young kid stage already to even plan events like sex. If you write that into your schedule it’s more likely to happen. Sex is important to an intimate relationship and when you’re busy, it often gets pushed to the side. But isn’t sex supposed to be spontaneous deep and intimate? Wouldn’t planning it remove the passion? Now, I know it would seem that scheduling sexy time would take the feeling out of it. But I have two counters to that, kids are unpredictable, if you’re going to get it, you need to get it when you can. You may end up with a scared kid who had a nightmare in your bed and that ends sexy time real quick. And sex is vital. It’s good for your physical and mental health and the strength of your relationship. It’s going to look different for every couple depending on you and your partner, but its important enough to make sure it happens.

You also should be scheduling a few other events. Getting regular dates with your partner and having that time together alone without the children is just as important as having that passionate sex. Make regular date plans for yourself and your partner. These don’t have to be fancy or expensive. You could go get ice cream, go for a walk, sit at home and watch Netflix. Whatever you want to do to get that quality time together. For example, we went and played putt putt on one of our dates, and went to an art museum for another. Your dates don’t have to be dinner and a movie on a Friday evening.

Side note: one of the biggest hurdles couples have is finding a babysitter and the cost of leaving their kids with someone else. Something we’ve done is we’ve made a small group of friends. People we’ve both gotten to know and spent time with. Now, we trade off babysitting with them. They keep our kids one evening for our date night and then we will keep their kids so they can have a date night. It puts me at ease knowing my children are with someone I trust and it doesn’t cost money.

I also encourage you to schedule dates with your friends. You need have time out with people that you like to be with. At least one of these dates should be without your kids. Many times, I’ll make a coffee date and we’ll grab coffee and go sit at the playground because one or both of us have our children. This is of course good for us and our kids, but we also need that quiet time away as well. Myself and a couple friends have a night about once a month where we leave our kids with our husbands and we go paint. Its only a couple hours, but it’s always a refreshing breath of fresh air. Same goes for your partner. Make sure they are getting a little time away with their friends as well. We all need that time to recharge and refresh.

I sometimes worry that my kids are getting out enough. That they aren’t getting enough exercise or fresh air or human interaction. So guess what? I schedule that in too! Dates with their friends, or days outside. That goes on my list of needed activities.

And, don’t forget we need to be scheduling those doctors, dentist, vet, etc. Appointments for ourselves and for our families. I have to write down reminders at the first of the month to myself not to forget to make those appointments.

I went ahead with the Happy Planner this year and got it from Joann’s 50% off and I had an eligible coupon. I also got some stickers to go in it and specifically some Damask Love stickers because I love Amber and I love her designs and her bright colors. Last year I had a generic brand planner I got from Walmart. It worked, but I just didn’t like it as much. I also tried a planner app on my phone to test out a virtual planner. I didn’t like how I couldn’t view things in a zoomed out manner. I understand how there are so many different apps available, but the good ones you have to pay for. Or like the one I downloaded for free, but then I’d have to make in app purchases to get better features. Its just easier for me to buy a paper planner. Its customizable, it gives me the overview and the daily details exactly how I want, and I get more creative freedom with it.

Because I need to plan every detail of the day, I need a planner that has big spaces for me to write everything down. I also need somewhere that also has an at-a-glance look so I can see what’s up this month. Since I need both day-to-day scheduling spaces and a wide view calendar I choose the Happy Planner because it provides me with these things. In addition if there were any specific thing that needed to focus on that year I can add that to my book. There are tons and tons of add ons for the Happy Planner I did not purchase. Do you need to have a section for Meal Planning? They’ve got that! Do you need a section for your health habits? They’ve got an add on for that too! Do you want thousands of glittery stickers? You can get those too!

I do have a budget app on my phone that I use so I didn’t get the Happy Planner budget section you can buy. I bought it once a couple years ago and didn’t really use it, so I knew it would just be a waste of money. The app that I’m using just adds everything up for me and I have to do no math. I think maybe that’s why I prefer the app for budget management when otherwise I prefer using tangible books.

This year, I got something that was kind of a soft color palette. I really like the rainbow ring binder that was on one of the other ones but the rest of the book didn’t quite fit my style. It was rainbow, but with stripes or circles and I like flowers and designs. If it had been rainbow flowers, I wouldn’t have thought twice, but it did not. So mine has a much softer color palette because I chose the one with the bicycle on the front with flowers and vines on the inside.

But because I do love bright colors, I did pick up some Damask Love stickers that I can add to my pages. If you are unfamiliar with Damask Love and Amber, she was a finalist on NBC’s crafting show “Making It” and is now doing the Disney+ show “Disney Family Sunday”. She does mostly paper crafting, and she is clever, brilliant and talented. Her work is always very brightly colored she does not do toned down color or blank pages. I grabbed some of her stickers so I can have a mixture of both soft color on the base and some bright popping add in stickers. I did buy a sticker packet as well that is Happy Planner brand. Productivity is the name of the sticker packet because productive is what I need to be.

At the outset of the month I will sit down and write in the general pencilings of dates. It gives me a framework for what the month will look like. Sometimes if I have things set out farther I can do rough frame for a couple of months at a time. For instance, I can have the structure made for January and loosely around February. This would be when I made any doctor appointments that needed to be scheduled and get those nailed down first. If you work a job, make sure you get that schedule written in now too. Then, I turn to my formula. I have a formula for everything. Like I’ve said, I need structure. My monthly formula includes several events that need to happen each month. Events like, a date night, a day outdoors, 24 hours with no social media, a lunch date with friends, etc. If an event requires making a plan with someone else, I can pencil it in, but I’ll have to text the person and coordinate a definitive time and date. That’s why I always use very erasable pencil for this part.

At the beginning of the week, usually on Sunday afternoon, I will sit down and make the more specifics of that week. Like everything else I do, this too has structure. Each week contains a day to Deep Clean, an Outing, an Activity, a Walk, and a Craft. Everyday I clean and tidy, but once a week I deep clean. This is when the floor gets mopped or the window tracks get cleaned. Days with outings and the activity may overlap with the months events. An outing may be a trip to the Zoo or to a Playdate. This may be the month’s day outdoors or the month’s Lunch with friends. An activity may be like a trip to the playground or something more like blowing bubbles or playing with play dough. Anything that gets us outside. Whether that outside is at the park or outside on our patio, it’s an activity and its outside. Doing a craft and taking a walk are pretty self explanatory. After each of those is placed I’ll write in the mundane tasks that have to be done. Cleaning the litter box, laundry, vacuuming, things like this.

Now for meals, I grocery shop every other week. I’ll sit down with Pinterest and my Recipe Books and list the meals I want to make for the following two weeks. Lunches and Breakfasts as well. From that I’ll write down all the ingredients and make my grocery list. I order my groceries for pickup, but my husband likes to hand pick his produce and I like to handpick my meat. So our pickup is dry goods, juice, frozen food, etc. Then we will go into the store to get fresh veggies, fruit, and meat. When I sit down on that Sunday afternoon, I’ll decide for the next two weeks when I’m going to make the meals I’ve chosen. Take this as you will adjusted to whatever you need whether that is more structure or less.

So let’s get specific. I’ll use my calendar as an example.

In the month of January, you see I’ve got my list of events to fit into the month. I really need to get that printed instead of scribbled in the margin, but it is what it is. I use pencil on the months overview so it can be erased and changed if necessary. For January you can see we are taking our day outdoors at the Playground, we had a lunch date, a Date Night on the 17th, we took two outings, one to the Butterfly Pavilion and one to the Children’s Museum. I also schedule a “pajama day” where we don’t get dressed and don’t do anything but lounge about all day and play games or watch movies. This would be an example of a monthly overview for us.

The week of, the scheduled events can be written in ink, and they are because I like the way it looks better. I’ll take whatever event or activity and write that in on the day. This would also be when I wrote in the meals for each day. And then whatever weekly activity, like my day to Deep Clean, gets assigned a day of the week. For that first full week of January you see I’ve written in the big events of the week, which were our lunch date and 24 hours of no social media. Then the daily mundane tasks like cleaning. And also the not daily but still regular tasks, such as watering the plants, baths, etc. There are other boring tasks that need to be done, but aren’t regular, such as if I need to sweep the patio or pull out and clean behind the couches. This week I deep cleaned on Monday, cleaned and organized the closets on Tuesday, we were out all of Wednesday, Thursday was our lunch date, and Friday was a pajama day.

Once all the boring words are written in, I can add some color. I use a few stickers that I think fit into the activities of the week and look cute. I get out my markers and highlight the biggest tasks that need to be done, or the most exciting. I like to add a few little doodles too. And then in the margin I list my weeks objectives. What do I most want to accomplish this week? Is it to do yoga every morning this week? Is it to write in my journal 3 evenings? Is it to get the toy box to close? For this example week, my goal was to get all the Christmas decorations put away – NO EXCUSES I wrote. I have a bad habit of writing things down, but then putting them off and drawing an arrow to the next day. I had delayed it long enough, and in fact I did delay it a few days even then.

I keep us busy. I like to always have a task ahead. Staying active keeps the kids from getting into trouble because they’re bored. It keeps all of us from getting too much screen time. It helps me keep my anxiety regulated. I need a good planner to make that possible.

Whatever your daily life looks like, if you need some way to keep yourself organized, I suggest finding a planner. That may look differently than mine, but I can’t tell you how much having a planner has helped. I hope I can give a little encouragement or guidance to someone who is flailing trying to figure out how to make this work and make life less stressful. Keeping a schedule this way has aided me in getting my life organized and put my mind at ease that we are fitting everything in.

family

The Whole Brained Child

Andi

Several people had suggested this book to me, but its apparently a pretty popular book as it had a good sized waiting list.

I wanted to read it as I was struggling to find a firm standard to raise my kids that was wholesome and uplifting to them but wasn’t uncontrolled and insane. Growing up the way I did, if a kid made noise or lost control in any way they were not only a bad kid, you were a bad parent. If you didn’t spank your kids, they were bad kids and you were a bad parent.

I didn’t like the way that kind of parenting made me feel, not to mention how it made my kids feel. I was angry all the time, and the strong armed aggressive parenting I’d been taught fueled the anger. I was making my kids into loud angry children and I did not want that for them. I began finding books on childhood development and growth. I wanted to know how best to mold them into good humans. So enters this book. It’s written by neuroscientists, and explains well how the human mind, and specifically the child human man mind is functioning in various scenarios. I think I gleaned as much from this book for myself as for my kids. There is never a point that I felt guilty or ashamed of myself either. You know how sometimes another parent in an attempt to relay what they’ve learned and what methods they use make you feel like such a terrible parent? Like they are so much better and know more and you have nothing figured out? I never felt that reading this book. The authors portray a very gracious tone throughout.

You might even measure yourself against some sort of perfect parent who never struggles to survive, who seemingly spends every waking second helping her children thrive. You know, the PTA president who cooks organic, well balanced meals while reading to her kids in Latin about the importance of helping others, then escorts them to the art museum in the hybrid that plays classical music and mists lavender aroma therapy through the air conditioner vents. None of us can match up to this imaginary super parent.

Haven’t we all done that though? That’s why we feel so much guilt and shame. We look at someone else who seems to have it all together and we don’t measure up. But reality says, none of us measure up. Not even that PTA president we think has it all together. When we all bring ourselves to the same level of understanding, we realize, we are more alike than we are different. It’s important not to look down on another person and its important not to hold another person up on a pedestal either. We all make mistakes.

When we learn what our brains are doing and what needs to be done to change that, we have stronger tools when a challenging situation arrives. We can now view and study the mind like never possible in the past. We can see what neurons fire in specific scenarios. This is incredibly helpful to parents as we can know better what to do to grow and strengthen our child’s mind.

One recurring theme I’ve come across that appeared in this book as well, is that children are capable of far more than we think they are, and in our unknowing, we don’t encoursge them to do more. This instance was about emotions. Being able to understand and express complex emotions, and being able to handle big overwhelming emotions. Some adults have trouble doing that. But if we are able to cultivate that growth, kids are able to manage emotion in a healthy manner. This is not only something kids are capable of, it’s something that needs to be developed so they have a mandatory tool to take with them into adulthood.

One big parental temptation is to make decisions for our kids, so that they consistently do the right thing.but as often as possible we need to give them the practice at making decisions for themselves.

A big thing I see quite a bit are parents that jump in to help their kid with a difficult or scary task. I’ve even been reprimanded by other parents for not doing this. We need to allow our kids to make decisions for themselves and experience mistakes. We need to step back and let them figure out how to solve a problem. If they made a bad choice, we need to let them handle the consequence of it (so long as that consequence isn’t dangerous). The way a child learns how to manage risk is by managing risk. Stay close by but don’t interfere unless they are at serious risk of harm. Let them climb to the top of the jungle gym. Let them balance on the fallen tree trunk. Let them decide what shoes to wear. Children need to be able to make their own choices and learn critical thinking.

Recent studies have found that the best predictor for good sibling relationships later in life is how much fun the kids have together when they’re young. The rate of conflict can even be high, as long as there’s plenty of fun to balance it out. The real danger comes when siblings just ignore each other.

One last big point that jumped out at me was with sibling conflict. I have more than one child and I’ve often worried about this. My older siblings hate each other, and I don’t want that for my kids. But how do I prevent it? According to these doctors, the key is fun. It doesn’t matter if they bicker and fight a lot, so long as they have fun together. This means that the trips we take as a family, the playtimes we have are incredibly important. Playing and having fun is vital to their development and will affect them long term. That’s something I think we all need to remember. If you feel bad that you can’t give your kids the biggest, most expensive, fanciest house and clothes, remember it’s not that important. What is important is that you took your kids to the playground and played with them. What’s important is that you helped your kids make some messy and probably odd looking muffins. Playing with your kids and giving them the space to play together is what stays with them all their lives. The science has even confirmed it.

This is a must read for any parent. It is insightful and enlightening. It explains everything simply and clearly. The Whole Brained Child is an excellent book. I highly highly recommend.

family

Christmas Eve Box

Andi

This idea floats around every year, and I decided to dive in a give it a try. We already have a Christmas Eve tradition, and this fits in perfectly.

This is a Christmas Eve box. A gift to be opened on Christmas Eve by the kids. It contains Christmas pajamas, popcorn, hot cocoa, a Christmas book, some candy, and The Polar Express.

Pro Tip: I learned the hard way that Christmas PJs are a common tradition and they sell out quickly. Especially if you want matching ones. I’ve gotten pajamas at Walmart, Target, and Carter’s. Good thing about Carter’s is they have decent sales and coupons. But I’ve taken to buying the pajamas before Thanksgiving just to be sure I’d get the ones I wanted.

After it’s opened, we get everyone into their pajamas and read the book. Then we make the popcorn and cocoa. We drag every pillow, stuffed animal and blanket into the livingroom and build a fort. Grab the snacks and turn on the Polar Express.

The kids usually fall asleep in the livingroom, and we carry them to bed and tuck them in.

It’s a warm and cozy tradition, and I love it.

family

Chicken Pot Pie

Andi

When we got married, I was given a Pioneer Woman Cookbook as a wedding gift. At the time, she was just bursting onto the big stage and had quite the buzz. Being that we lived in Oklahoma then, her popularity was amplified. Everyone loved her and loved that a rural Okie had made it big. Shortly after, she opened her Mercantile and groups of ladies started making trips to visit. She was only a short drive away after all.

I never really got onto the bandwagon. Her kitchenware is indeed pretty, but I wasn’t going crazy over her. Her recipes looked delicious, and the book itself is well designed, but the recipes also looked involved and too time consuming, so I never used it. Until now! I finally used my Pioneer Woman Cookbook!

My husband loves chicken pot pie, and so do I. However, I’m also slightly lazy and would buy those frozen individual pot pies for sudden cravings. But, he convinced me I needed to make it from scratch, because of some unseen magic that makes him persuasive.

I was surprised actually by how simple it turned out to be. I did cheat a little bit though. She made a pie crust from scratch, and I did not. She also probably used fresh picked veggies from her garden, I used some frozen, some fresh. None of them homegrown however. I also doubt I used the right baking dish. It was in the midst of this that I suddenly realized I couldn’t find my deep pie pan and had to opt for a casserole dish instead. I did have to use a pot, to cook the chicken, then a skillet to mix all the ingredients, and then the baking dish for the oven. So clean up was a little intense.

I also forgot to snap a photo before I dug into it. But this way, you can see the yummy filling! And believe me, it was yummy! It had the perfect savoryness and crispyness. I’m going to say, yes, it was more difficult than popping a frozen pot pie into the oven, and more messy as well. But I will also say, yes, this was infinitely tastier too.

So, on the whole, I’d still give the recipe a thumbs up because it did taste so good. It’d loose a couple points for the number of dishes I had to wash afterwards. But for a warm, delicious fall dinner, it is worth it!

family

The Montessori Toddler

Andi

I have had an interest in the Montessori method for a while, but on the whole, was still rather ignorant of all it entailed. So I found the book The Montessori Toddler by Simone Davies and started gathering information.

Many of the methods used in Montessori are things I already implement in our home to some degree. In some areas, the author takes things to a further degree than I have or to a more involved level. So in some areas I thought, this was simple, I already basically do that. But in others I thought, goodness no, there’s no way we could do that.

As with any parenting book, you can take the pieces that will work in your family dynamic and mold them to fit into your life. For instance, I can’t completley redesign the set up of our home to emulate a Montessori style room. For one thing, we don’t have the money to buy everything I’d want. But I can take the idea of learning activities displayed in a simple manner for the child to choose from and put them on top of the kid’s bookshelf. This didn’t cost me extra money, I just reorganized how our learning tools were kept.

There are 4 principles that jumped out to me and one element we couldn’t implment I’ll touch on briefly. If any of them piques your interest, I suggest grabbing a copy of the book and giving it a read through. It’s probably available at your local library and is sold on Amazon.

I’m going to get the one unsustainable element out of the way first. In a Montessori classroom they do not have any fantasy for children under the age of 6. The reason for this is because young children cannot usually distinguish between reality and fantasy. While this is true, we could not enforce such a rule in our home. There was already an enormous amount of fantasy and fiction in our home before we had children and they have been exposed to it from the beginning. In addition I have already seen a positive effect fiction has had in my child’s life. Exposure to a fictional robot triggered a strong fascination with space. Because Mars rovers look like robots, he eagerly soaked up all knowledge about them, and the planets, and astronauts, and space shuttles. He will tell you he’s going to the stars if you ask where he’s going. We’ve built rockets out of boxes, out of building blocks, and out of legos. So many crafts and activities that use dexterity, hand eye coordination, concentration and imagination were accomplished because of his love of a fictional robot. If this exposure means he really thinks lions can talk then that’s a hurdle I’m willing to jump. He will learn magic isn’t real soon enough. But there is no one size fits all approach in parenting. So if no fantasy works for you, go with it! That’s part of unique family differences.

Now moving to the amazing things I drew from this book. First is the principle of freedom within limits. Second is child involvement in everyday life. Third is the use of consequences instead of punishment and fourth is preparing the parent.

Freedom within limits is an idea that I love because the child is safe and learning boundaries, but still has some control over their lives. That doesn’t mean they can run willy nilly wherever they want or they do whatever they want whenever they want. That means they have a safe boundary inside of which they have the freedom to explore as they please.

Allow all feelings but not all behaviour

That’d be the difference between asking, “what do you want to eat for lunch?” And “would you like to eat macaroni and cheese or alphabet soup for lunch?” Or instead of giving them a full closet of all of their clothes and asking them to choose what to wear, only put out weather appropriate clothing and allow them to choose from that. They still get to choose, but from within a set boundary of choices. It allows the child to express their feelings and process all their emotions, but keeps them from harming themselves or others. So instead of preventing them from crying about being buckled into the carseat, you can acknowledge the emotion but they still have to be buckled in.

Letting the child be involved in daily life will encourage them to be involved later on. Kids love to do things and mimick what the adults around them do. My son gets angry if I put his dirty diaper in the trash and don’t let him do it. Instead of trying to distract them so you can clean the house, get them involved in the cleaning. It may take longer than it would’ve taken you, and it may not end up as precise as you would’ve done it, but it helps kids learn to help around the house and is good for their overall developement.

If we start to feel frustrated when it is taking too long, rather than get irritated we can acknowledge that this time we are going to help them, and try again tomorrow.

The author suggests toddlers can do even more than I’d already let my kids do and giving them child sized materials to use. Such as a small broom and dust pan. I have a toy vacuum that has a roatating brush inside that spins when its pushed. It goes in the closet with the big vacuum and comes out so they can vacuum when I do. One area for instance she suggested that I was not already doing was with the laundry. Constantly moving the kids, telling them to get off the bed or go play got tiring. So I tried letting them help fold their own clothes and put them away. The laundry did not look as pretty, but it wasn’t as stressful as times past. Of course supervise, but let them do as much as you are comfortable with them doing around the house. It will not only make them happy at this young age, but establish good habits as they grow older.

Using consequences instead of punishment is not a new idea, but maybe it’s new to us because it may not have been the way we were parented. I had already decided not to use threat and force to make my children comply with me out of fear, so this more gentle approach to discipline fell right in line with what I was doing. This section was more of an affirmation for me that I wasn’t crazy for parenting in this manner.

The word discipline comes from the Latin word disciplina meaning “teaching, learning”. So we should consider what we are teaching our children and what our children are learning from the way we discipline them.

The discipline should be directly related to the issue. Don’t take ice cream away because they were screaming for instance. It would look more like having to put a ball away and not play with it anymore because they were asked not to throw it inside the house and they continued doing it.

Lastly is the preparation of the parent. This section really spoke to me. I often find myself irritated and strung out and snappy with my kids over menial things a then feeling guilty about it immediately after.

It is difficult to be respectful to our children when we allow them to go beyond our limits.

If we aren’t respecting ourselves and our own limits, we won’t be able to respond kindly to our chlldren. We need to mentally prepare ourselves each day, and in the long term be doing things to fill our emotial tanks. So if that looks like waking a little earlier to have some alone time in the quiet before the kids wake up, or sitting down to crochet, or picking up a good book to relax with in the evening then make those part of your daily routine. You need some time set aside for yourself as well. Whether that means your partner keeps the kids so you can get a coffee or go to Target alone, or you going out to an art exhibit with your partner or friends, set that time aside and take it. We all know the phrase you can’t poor from an empty glass because it’s true.

Another tidbit from this section was that only you are responsible for filling your tank. Other people may be able to fill it, but they are not responsible for it. They aren’t inside your head. Only you know where your limits are and when your tank is running on fumes. You have the responsibility to recognize when you are close to losing your temper and stepping away to cool down. You need to take the initiative to say, I need some time alone and going on a bike ride.

This book was helpful, clearly written, and very well put together. This is such a small tibbit of the information it offers. I couldn’t begin to recount everything that is discussed. I liked it a lot, and would suggest it to any parent.

I did draw a few quotes from the book to try and give you a glimpse of what it entails, but of course if it interests you, I suggest finding a copy.

If you would like to purchase this book to read for yourself, I have provided a link directly to it on Amazon. It is worth buying for the wealth of knowledge it contains!

https://amzn.to/3548dtA

Art, family

The Secret Garden

Andi

The Secret Garden. The influence this story has had in my life is immense. We didn’t have a big TV in our house; we had a tiny 13 inch TV my dad would use to repair video cameras. So the number of films I remember from my childhood is very small, but this was one of them. I would hide trinkets in the slats under my bed when I was young. I was constantly knocking on walls hoping they were secret passages. When I was in a production of A Christmas Carol as Ebenezer’s school teacher, my entire costume was based off of Mrs. Medlock. The film was also my first introduction to Maggie Smith 😍. I loved this movie when I was little.

Somehow though, I was never provided with a copy of the book. I had an abridged picture book of it, but that didn’t count, as it was mostly just pretty paintings. I do still have it though. I was an adult before I got ahold of an unabridged copy. I loved the book as much as I had loved the film as a youth.

My only criticism now is that Martha and Dickon’s mother was omitted from the movie save for one small mention of her from Martha. But, throughout the movie they really expounded on Mary feeling unwanted and forgotten which was only eluded to in the book. I appreciated how they fleshed Mary out a little more for the film adaptation.

This story may be why I love growing things so much. It might be why I have such fascination with old keys and old houses. It’s probably why I talk to birds and cats like they can understand me.

Regardless if it is or not, I love this story so much, and I will continue to watch it and read it again and again. I will read it to my children and show them the movie so they can experience the same story I loved when I was their age. And it’s a reminder to me that the littlest joys they experience may the greatest memories of their youth.

family

Paper Portal

Andi

I pulled out a book from my shelf this morning titled Adventures in American Literature. It is a collection of short stories and poems all dating before 1900, and I was enjoying the light reading before the day really got started. Whilst flipping through I noticed a lot of margin notes and scribbles. They were all over in that scrawny cursive like my grandmother used to write in. I bought this book at an estate sale, so I know nothing about the previous owner, save for her name scribbled inside the front cover in that same scrawly cursive.

Upon reading these margin notes though I can surmise she was an English teacher, and wrote her lesson plans directly in the book. They say things like, “what is the rythym” and “finish further reading section on Tuesday” some as simple as “melancholy” and “tone?”

I also found some scribbles written in ink that look like a child’s doodles. Probably sitting at grandma’s house bored and found a book to look at.

This one however is the only note with a date, 3/12/31. Its marked with rhythm above the lines and Monday written beneath it. It’s like a paper portal into an American classroom 90 years ago. The feel of the pages, the smell of the old leather binding, even the way she writes, and of course the date stamp. Meaning this note has been sitting in the book nearly 100 years after being used to teach children about poetry. The poem she was noting here says this:

To him who in love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language; for his gayer hours

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile

And eloquence of beauty, And she glides

And then continues on the next page, but the teacher did not continue notations. I’m curious why. The poem is clearly not finished, and yet the following page is empty of hand writing.

History preserves itself in tiny capsules like this and leaves us with little mysteries to wonder at and enjoy.