Perceptions by One has been moved to here: http://perceptionsby1.wordpress.com
I have a new post up today, please come, read, subscribe, take part!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Read all about it!
New post: http://perceptionsby1.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/let-the-editing-begin/
Remember to follow my new blog address hosted on wordpress.com! Thank you!
Remember to follow my new blog address hosted on wordpress.com! Thank you!
New Post
New post up at: http://perceptionsby1.wordpress.com
Be sure to follow the new site - subscribe by email, or add it to your favorites!
Be sure to follow the new site - subscribe by email, or add it to your favorites!
Friday, May 20, 2011
New Address
Due to some new information, and finding what works better for me, you can now find my blog here:
http://perceptionsby1.wordpress.com
Please add this to your bookmarks and keep following!
I've even imported all of my previous posts to the new address, so you can continue to enjoy all of my content.
Thank you!
http://perceptionsby1.wordpress.com
Please add this to your bookmarks and keep following!
I've even imported all of my previous posts to the new address, so you can continue to enjoy all of my content.
Thank you!
Surviving or Thriving?
Every so often I step back and evaluate how my journey as a mom is going. One of the big things I like to ask myself is: Am I surviving, or am I thriving? (I evaluate my kids, and ask this same question about how they are doing, but for this post, I want to examine my heart and mind.)
As I have been evaluating myself this last week, my conclusion is this: I’m surviving. The tell tale signs:
- I don’t wake my kids up. In fact, if they’ll sleep until 11am, they won’t hear a word from me about it. 8 or 8:30pm is still bedtime, and the more peace I get in the morning, the better off I am.
- Breakfast and Lunch are the same meal. Usually cereal. Then we do a little school, then I offer some sort of snack (usually fruit) and beg my children to go have a quiet time. (Who wakes up at 11am and needs a quiet time by 1pm?!)
- I would burn down my husband’s bedroom door with my evil stares if I could. Abandoning the household to go hide in your bedroom the moment you walk in the front door is more than infuriating. You want time to yourself? Get up at 4am like I do, instead of letting your alarm go off for an entire hour, therefore throwing off my rhythm and writing time. Yes, I can still hear your alarm when I close my door, and I don’t think it’s fair.
I could add to this list, and complain a lot more about the mess my house is in, the amount of dishes that pile up, the laundry that needs to be hung up and put away, etc. And all of this complaining is a clear indicator that I am surviving parenthood right now. Thankfully, having learned to ask myself this question, I have a few things I know work to get me back on track toward surviving.
1. Make a schedule. Decide when to wake the kids up (10:45 is not early enough…) get them up, feed them breakfast as it’s own meal, different from lunch, and at a much earlier time.
2. Following breakfast, we start on school. I always feel better about the day when we have school completed by Noon, can eat lunch, have a 1pm quiet time, and free play for the afternoon.
3. Turn off the TV. We added cable to our home for a minute, and decided yesterday that the cable goes. Hubby will be making that phone call tonight. It is a waste of time, and it makes it really easy for me to be lazy with the boys. And they’ve morphed into super-monsters that demand to be entertained by the talking box ALL day. Yuck. We’ll go back to our DVD’s and keep them limited at that.
4. Give up some me time. Like, from 8am to 11am. I still get up at 4am. From 4 to 8, I’m on my own, writing, or wasting time on Facebook, or reading other blogs, or whatever it is I decide to do. That is my time. 4 hours of my own time. The only interruption is when hubby wakes up he has to notify me, and when my coffee cup is empty, I must refill it. I’ve decided that’s good for my circulation though, so getting up to walk to the kitchen is probably a health benefit more than an interruption.
So, it’s 6am. In two hours, I’m going to wake my kids up, and I think I’ll scramble some eggs and peel some oranges for breakfast. The first few days without cable, and waking them up early will be the roughest, but as I reinforce my desire to be intentional as a parent, I will watch my children thrive. And that is what I want far more than teaching them to be lazy.
What do you do to stay on track as a parent? Do you notice that sometimes it’s easy to fall into a “lazy” routine? How do you fix it? Are you thriving, or surviving?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Discovering and Utilizing My Elements
I've been trying, since the whole ventilator thing in January, to discover my passions and to separate them from my interests. More simply: There are things I am merely interested in, and things I am genuinely passionate about.
In searching, I've discovered I have two elements, and they battle for my time, attention, and energy.
Element #1: Children.
Mine, others, all of 'em. I love kids, I love teaching kids. I love being surrounded by their silly conversations, their laughter, and their smiles. I am opening a home daycare once again, because I truly am "in my element" when surrounded by kids. That's part of the reason I love homeschooling!
Element #2: Writing
I cannot stress how much I love and need to write. I start feeling weird if I don't spend some time on it every day. It's like my brain backlogs, over fills, floods, and gets compressed under all the information. Then, when I spend some time writing, I decompress, relax, open the floodgates and relieve the pressure. Emotionally and mentally, I need to write. I love it, it is a driving force unlike any I've ever known. It wakes me up at 3 AM, keeps me up at night, and could easily occupy my day if my first element wasn't already doing so.
These two elements, at times, feel like polar opposites. Not that kids aren't great inspiration for writing, but when I have kids around there is no writing. I know, because I've tried. But they require my attention and focus in a way that I cannot offer when I am writing. Because when I am writing, I am in another time and place all together. So, I will continue to grow in my elements. I will stop trying to blend writing into my "kid" element, although my kid element provides lots of fuel for my writing element.
I will also try to be intentional about seeking God, and His plan, for both elements.
What is your element and how are you living into and growing the potential of your element? How long did it take you to discover your element?
In searching, I've discovered I have two elements, and they battle for my time, attention, and energy.
Element #1: Children.
Mine, others, all of 'em. I love kids, I love teaching kids. I love being surrounded by their silly conversations, their laughter, and their smiles. I am opening a home daycare once again, because I truly am "in my element" when surrounded by kids. That's part of the reason I love homeschooling!
Element #2: Writing
I cannot stress how much I love and need to write. I start feeling weird if I don't spend some time on it every day. It's like my brain backlogs, over fills, floods, and gets compressed under all the information. Then, when I spend some time writing, I decompress, relax, open the floodgates and relieve the pressure. Emotionally and mentally, I need to write. I love it, it is a driving force unlike any I've ever known. It wakes me up at 3 AM, keeps me up at night, and could easily occupy my day if my first element wasn't already doing so.
These two elements, at times, feel like polar opposites. Not that kids aren't great inspiration for writing, but when I have kids around there is no writing. I know, because I've tried. But they require my attention and focus in a way that I cannot offer when I am writing. Because when I am writing, I am in another time and place all together. So, I will continue to grow in my elements. I will stop trying to blend writing into my "kid" element, although my kid element provides lots of fuel for my writing element.
I will also try to be intentional about seeking God, and His plan, for both elements.
What is your element and how are you living into and growing the potential of your element? How long did it take you to discover your element?
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
What my day has looked like so far:
6:00AM - I got up, and began sorting pictures on my computer. It was running sluggish until I removed 5 gigs worth of photos from it. Thank goodness for discs!
7:00AM - IT got up and wanted to watch Little Einsteins. I gave in.
8:00AM - IT wanted me to watch Little Einsteins with him. I gave in, thinking that AT would be up soon and we'd get some school work done.
11:00AM - AT woke up, started playing Little Einsteins again, because IT and I had fallen asleep. The TV coming back on woke up IT and I.
Noon - We left the house for the ATM, gas station, bank, ATM, and came back home.
1:45PM - We arrived home. I printed our spelling worksheets.
2:00PM - I let AT post another blog post. (http://zaymole3.blogspot.com/2011/05/target.html) (Yes, this is a little homeschooling project that my 5 year old wanted to do. I agreed. I get a lot of weird looks and comments when I admit that.)
2:20PM - I'm finishing this post, and we are going to go do school. And I secretly hope it's one of those super smooth days where we knock the work out and can get back to doing....all of this nothing that we've been doing.
When people look at me and ask how exactly I home school and keep up with it, my first thought is always something like "You should see how late I sleep some days!" Now, granted. I'm a writer that gets up at 4:00AM about 5 days a week, so I can work on my novel, but sometimes I get to nap from 7am-9am before the boys get up. That, my friend, is how I do it. I go to bed at 9pm, I get up at 4am, I nap from 7am-9am, then we start our day. And some days, we don't start school until 2pm, because that's just how it goes.
Oh, and my husband comes home and cleans the house. Because I am realizing that I just don't do so great at that. I pretty much just don't worry about it. And he walks in and screams like a lady (a poor lady scream, as Megamind would put it) and he vacuums, and gets the boys busy picking up all of their toys, and he cleans up after me. And he reminds me to switch the laundry (or he just does it!)
So, I don't do it alone. I don't do it precisely. I don't do it perfectly. I don't do it at the same time every day. Some days I don't feel like doing it. Some days go better than others. Some days I have no patience, and I make those days free play, and I highly encourage my kids to spend the day in the backyard or their bedroom. Other days, I'm in the groove, and I jump out of bed (or my writing corner) full of energy, I hunt my kids down, and drag them exuberantly off on some adventure. Sometimes they come willingly, and sometimes they are kicking and screaming the whole way.
This is just kinda how it goes around here! And we love it (usually)!
7:00AM - IT got up and wanted to watch Little Einsteins. I gave in.
8:00AM - IT wanted me to watch Little Einsteins with him. I gave in, thinking that AT would be up soon and we'd get some school work done.
11:00AM - AT woke up, started playing Little Einsteins again, because IT and I had fallen asleep. The TV coming back on woke up IT and I.
Noon - We left the house for the ATM, gas station, bank, ATM, and came back home.
1:45PM - We arrived home. I printed our spelling worksheets.
2:00PM - I let AT post another blog post. (http://zaymole3.blogspot.com/2011/05/target.html) (Yes, this is a little homeschooling project that my 5 year old wanted to do. I agreed. I get a lot of weird looks and comments when I admit that.)
2:20PM - I'm finishing this post, and we are going to go do school. And I secretly hope it's one of those super smooth days where we knock the work out and can get back to doing....all of this nothing that we've been doing.
When people look at me and ask how exactly I home school and keep up with it, my first thought is always something like "You should see how late I sleep some days!" Now, granted. I'm a writer that gets up at 4:00AM about 5 days a week, so I can work on my novel, but sometimes I get to nap from 7am-9am before the boys get up. That, my friend, is how I do it. I go to bed at 9pm, I get up at 4am, I nap from 7am-9am, then we start our day. And some days, we don't start school until 2pm, because that's just how it goes.
Oh, and my husband comes home and cleans the house. Because I am realizing that I just don't do so great at that. I pretty much just don't worry about it. And he walks in and screams like a lady (a poor lady scream, as Megamind would put it) and he vacuums, and gets the boys busy picking up all of their toys, and he cleans up after me. And he reminds me to switch the laundry (or he just does it!)
So, I don't do it alone. I don't do it precisely. I don't do it perfectly. I don't do it at the same time every day. Some days I don't feel like doing it. Some days go better than others. Some days I have no patience, and I make those days free play, and I highly encourage my kids to spend the day in the backyard or their bedroom. Other days, I'm in the groove, and I jump out of bed (or my writing corner) full of energy, I hunt my kids down, and drag them exuberantly off on some adventure. Sometimes they come willingly, and sometimes they are kicking and screaming the whole way.
This is just kinda how it goes around here! And we love it (usually)!
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