Ice Cream in a Bag

The Best

This year my goals started out being about temporal things, like food storage etc, then we decided to move every few months and live out of boxes. Not going to work for gathering and saving food storage or planting a garden. So my goals have changed and I have been really focused on finding the best for my family. I want us to always be surrounded by the best ideas, things, and habits. I want my children to learn to be discerning when they make choices and know why they chose them.

I started by eliminating tv and movies for the kids, they really are not the best activities for the kids to be spending their time on. And guess what, it makes a big difference in their mood, obedience, and their thought processes. It really wasn't that hard either. It is so fun to see what the kids come up with together when they have to be creative and find something fun to do. I also organized two bins in the hall closet full of activities like play doh, moon sand, coloring, painting, magnets etc. They love being able to pick an activity out of the bin and it is so much better for their brains. We have also been spending a lot more time outside, granted it is summer now but I try to make an effort to let them play outside for a good amount of time everyday. Having a playground right outside the door really helps. (I should say that the kids still sometimes watch movies when friends come over or when I'm gone and John lets them watch one.)

I read Simplicity Parenting over the last couple weeks, by far my favorite parenting/child raising book I have read, I really recommend it. Almost every concept in the book I had been contemplating before reading it and now I am so glad to have reason and research to back up my previous thoughts. It really helps you remove all the excess things in your children's lives so that they are left with the opportunities to really learn and grow like children should. We went through our toys and got rid of a bunch of them, keeping only the things that stimulate and encourage imagination. It is so nice to have only a handful of toys for them to clean up and they have an easier time choosing and sharing what they have. They also seem to get involved in deeper play with fewer toys, I love it.

It is so liberating to simplify possessions and habits and to learn to live with less. It really feels good. I cant wait to get home to all of our things in storage the get rid of most of it . . . not really but probably a lot of toys, books, and clothes will go, and all those things we have been saving because someday we might possibly use them. I don't want to think about, spend time on, or spend money to store those things.

Also, Im pretty sure the longer Mae's hair gets the curlier it gets. Check out these ringlets, my goodness.

Food

Most of the time we eat one breakfast and three lunches everyday. Forget dinner. I think lunch is the perfect meal and John would choose to eat breakfast all day. Since John only eats breakfast with us we have a few more lunches and then John eats his own meal when he gets home from work late at night. So it can be really hard coming up with meal ideas for me and Wes to eat that is healthy and filling and most of all fast. I came up with this chart to reference so that I can be sure that we are eating well balanced meals. Lately my motivation to put more than two minutes into a meal is zero, so this has helped. Am I missing anything?

New Activity

I usually put Wes down to play after breakfast and start cleaning or organizing or whatever I need to get done but Wes gets bored pretty quick and starts pulling on my legs and wants some attention. So, I have tried to come up with some fun things to do together that will stimulate his mind. When I was young one of my favorite things to do was to sort pom poms in a muffin tin, pretty simple. So I found these pom poms in the dollar bin at Target and voila! I had hoped Wes would semi sort them somehow but I think he is still a little young for that, he mostly enjoyes putting them in and out of the bowl to the tin and back into the bag. Eventually he started throwing them all around the house so we picked them up and put them away, I think his attention span tops out at around 10 minutes (or less) that is when it's time for something new. I also found some great puzzles in the dollar bins and those are fun too, Wes likes to pound the pieces in once I have helped him get them in the right spot.

Playhouse

We got Wes a little tent/playhouse this week, he has loved playing in it, trying to eat the stuffed bananas it came with and reading books with daddy inside.






This last one is how I found Wes when I got off the phone, he has learned to climb the tables and destroy anything he finds on top.