Quiet Time

I want to talk about Quiet Time.

This is not to be confused with my Mom Time.

(and it is so important to me, that I'm skipping over exercise time to talk about it!)

When I was just starting out on this parenting journey, I was lucky enough to have an older sister with kids older than mine.

She was a gold mine of information.

But, the number one nugget she gave me was the idea of "Quiet Time".

Every day, there is a time set apart for it.

The rule is, it must be spent in your room and you can't come out until the time is over.

When I first started this, we did only a 15 minute quiet time.

And there was some crying and door holding to get it to happen.

They could do what they wanted in quiet time as long as they cleaned up afterwards.

At the beginning, it would usually turn in to nap time.

As they got used to the idea, we gradually increased the time.

And as more kids came along, there was less quiet and more messy  creative play.

It became 30-60 minutes of my day that I looked forward to having some down time.

Life saver!!


We'd gone away from quiet times in our home.

My kids are older and not around that much anyway.

That is until now.

We are home together all the time.

And Quiet Time is back!


My kids complained a lot at first.

"We have to do an hour and a half of quiet time every day!!??!!"

"What are we supposed to do for that long??!!!"

Guess what?

It's saving our lives again!!

This time, everyone has to spend that time alone.

There's not many naps (though there have been some).

There's a lot of reading.

And a lot of creativity happening. (though no music is allowed - because quiet, right?)

I believe my kids are getting along a lot better with each other, because they have some alone time every day.

They play better together when they are together because they are not together all the time. Ha!

I usually end up working during that time.

Or just enjoying the peace.

If you are just starting out, don't expect perfect results at first.

We did the work to get to this.

But, it is worth the effort to get something like this in place.

Life saving, I tell you!

Thanks Pam.

Reality

What got done yesterday:

Made 4 batches of sugar cookie dough and 2 batches of frosting.

Created a dozen valentine cards with scrapbook paper, glue and glitter.

Cut out the cookies, frosted them, and put them onto plates to deliver to friends and neighbors.

Delivered around 7 plates of cookies.

What didn't get done yesterday:

Any dishes.

Any laundry.

Any cleaning.

Any type of valentine for my man.

Hardly any school work.

Making dinner (we had pizza).


I thought it was a great day!

My Blog "Marathon"

I have always wanted to do a marathon. 

And I really hope to run one someday. 

But,for now, I've decided to do a marathon blog instead. 

My plan is to post something every day for 26 days. 

There are a couple of reasons I want to do this.  But, mostly I feel the need to create something.

And hopefully combat the depression that comes this time of year.  (You know the kind that comes from no sun and freezing cold temperatures!)  

Anyone else want to join me?  I love reading other people's blogs.

And just so you know, I'm totally counting today and yesterday, so I only have to post 24 more times in a row!

Chaos Managed

So I just felt the need today to organize something; to get some part of my life in order.
I have been sick for the last two weeks and things are almost falling apart. (luckily I'm married to a lifesaver!)

So as I looked around at the stacks of dishes, piles of laundry, unvacuumed floor, scattered toys, miles of papers, etc. I decided to . . .

. . . plan and organize my garden.

I picked out what I'm going to grow and where I will plant it. I even drew a picture of what it would look like.
It just made me feel so much better.

When my lifesaver (see above) asked why the need to do that, I realized I just needed to be able to have some of my chaos managed without really putting any effort into it.

And you know what, it worked.

Later I did attack the dishes and laundry.
I even made bread.

So for me, I guess, just writing stuff down and feeling organized in one area helps me get started on the rest of the stuff.

At least I can hope so!

Aaargh!

I'm trying so hard to be a good blogger. 

I'm trying to make my page look not so boring. 

So I'm looking at all the cute backgrounds I could get for my blog and they all have flowers or cute little things on them that look like scrapbooks stuff. 

I am not a scrapbooker. Unless you count putting pictures on a white page and then writing something about it next to it. That's at least a step up from cutting out sayings that I found from magazines and putting them with the pictures. 

Of course, now I don't even print my pictures off of my camera or computer. At least, I try to leave my computer on so we can at least see some of the pictures on the screen saver (for 3 seconds). 

But back to the cute blog thing. I don't really want a cute blog. 

I just want it to look the way I feel, which if there was one with sweatpants and chocolate maybe I'd be all about that one. 

Actually, maybe my problem is that I'm not really sure what I'm doing here!!!! Help. Any tips or comments are appreciated! 

As for now, I will just continue on . . . you know . . . NEVER GIVE UP!