Simplifying Halloween

October 31, 2012 By 4 Comments

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I thought I would share with you what our current Halloween plan is for our family.  Halloween is not my favorite holiday at all.  My husband, Dee and I came into our marriage with similar thoughts and preferences about celebrating Halloween or not.  However, to be clear, we don’t think that those who enjoy Halloween or go trick-or-treating are participating in evil and don’t have problems with our friends and family who choose to do different things.  I have read several different perspectives on it and seen different families (all of whom I love and respect) celebrate in different ways for the sake of connecting to their communities or just plain fun.

For families that have any hesitation about Halloween, I think there is often a mix of turning away from things we don’t want to be a part of, but not turning away from people.  For us in this season (which will change), two big factors come into play.

  1. Our kids are pretty young.  Along with that, a couple of them are pretty sensitive to scary things (ie, talk about it for days and days or screaming and crying or nightmares, etc.).  I don’t want to give them images and experiences that are going to affect them for days or weeks.  Also, with four small children, it would be a big task to walk outside from house to house gathering candy.  Some days, it’s all I can do to get them through a parking lot without one running away.  :)  I honestly cannot fathom managing costumes, getting them to not eat the candy immediately, and have everyone stay with us.
  2. I’m super cheap frugal.  It’s hard for me to think about spending money on four costumes or lots of candy.  I know. I know.  I could save money by making costumes myself, but really y’all, I’m not creative. at. all.

So, in light of all that, for the second year, we are having a Halloween version of Popcorn Fiesta complete with chocolate candy, marshmallows, and roasted pumpkin seeds.  We are going to all climb into our bed (yes, we’re going to try and fit everyone) and watch a fun movie together.  And we’re definitely not against dressing up.  Our kids play dress up all the time, so if they want to throw on one of their outfits they already have, great and they will definitely be cute!  Karis has already been talking about it from her memories of last year and she doesn’t feel left out of anything at all.  She thinks chocolate and marshmallow popcorn with a movie is the greatest!

Perhaps my favorite explanation of their perspective and practice of Halloween for their family is from my friend, Kelly in her post here.  She does a great job explaining the intentional transitions of their Halloween celebrations.

What are you guys doing tonight??

Simplifying Our Mornings Pt. 1

October 10, 2012 By 3 Comments

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When Vera started 1st Grade in September our mornings had to get started 30 minutes earlier than in the past.  I didn’t want to have to wake the kids up any earlier than necessary, so I evaluated how we were doing things and tried to make things more efficient.

Like Stacey mentioned yesterday, the kids and I prepare their clothes a week at a time and put them in organizers in their closet.

I thought that this was already pretty efficient, but this school year we have even taken that a step further.  In the morning instead of having the kids open their closet to take out their clothes, we pull everything out the night before.  Our 3 little ones in preschool and kindergarten also have to take an extra change of clothes (which makes for even more laundry each day…AAHHH!!!), so this includes preparing their backpacks with a clean set of clothes.

By knowing that we have prepared their clothes and backpacks the night before, we are able to eliminate more stress from our mornings so that things flow smoothly and quickly enabling our kids to get as much sleep as possible before the school day starts.

How do you simplify your mornings to help you get out the door in time with as little stress as possible?

Simplifying Life By Admitting I Can’t Do It All

October 4, 2012 By 2 Comments

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As Michelle has mentioned, this season has been a challenging transition for both of us.  I’ve mentioned it as well sharing about our new events and my attempt at a new schedule.  But, pretty much right after I posted my new schedule, I started feeling really overwhelmed with…well, everything.  I couldn’t keep up with cooking or cleaning or blogging.  And I just felt like a failure as a parent.  I read some of your comments encouraging me to rest and I talked to friends and family about how I was feeling.  Almost everyone affirmed, I am trying to do a lot.  I have a lot of demands with 3 little ones practically all the same age.  And I am with them almost all the time.

After those conversations and remembering encouraging words from my friends and my mom and my husband, I had to admit it.  I can’t do it all.  And I’m not failing as a wife or a mom just because I can’t keep up with this pace.  This is a different season with different needs and challenges.  I want to enjoy my family and my home, not be stressed and overwhelmed and guilty all the time.  I’m a little teary just writing this because I think the Lord is freeing me from this heavy burden of responsibility I have carried to do it all, all the time.

So, these 3 precious little ones have started Preschool 2 days a week at a local church.

They just go for half the day.  But I can’t tell you how amazing 4 hours to myself feels!  Part of my challenge with the tasks that I have on my plate is I very rarely have a long amount of uninterrupted time to do anything.  With cooking and cleaning, I have been trying to do a little (that feels like a lot) every day.  And I basically feel behind all the time.  So I’m going to try to do most of my bulk cooking on one of those days and most of my cleaning on the other day.  Hopefully with this, I can feel the freedom to just play with my kids or sit down and rest during nap time.  Those hours also give me a bit of a mental break from having toddler conversations.  :)  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Have you had to admit you can’t do it all?

 

Simplifying Meals When Daddy Is Gone

October 3, 2012 By 1 Comment

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This first week of October is a tough one for me.  We have teams of almost all women in from the U.S.  I want so badly to spend lots of time with them, but the truth is I’m stuck at home.  My husband is responsible for the teams, which means he’s with them a lot of the times that he’s usually home.  It’s a holiday here, so my kids have an 8 day break.  Because it’s a holiday, our house helper has the 8 days off as well.

  • 8 days,
  • a not-so-present husband,
  • an absent house helper,
  • people I wish I could see but can’t since I don’t drive in China and can’t get anywhere with 5 kids in tow,
  • 4 kids home all day instead of in school plus a baby.

I’ve already shed a few tears this week, and we’re only 2 days into the break!

One of the hardest things for me to manage with Matt gone is meals.  I can’t make elaborate meals because I have to watch the kids.  Even if I can cook the meals, once I finally get everyone down around 8, I don’t want to spend an hour cleaning the kitchen (no dishwasher here).

My main goal with meals…  Make sure they don’t go to bed hungry.  Try to put something healthy on the plate so that I can pretend that they were well nourished.

Daddy’s first night gone, we ate like this:

In front of the TV during an undeclared movie night.  The menu:

  • pepperoni,
  • popcorn or pretzels,
  • raisins,
  • apples with peanut butter.

Remember, I aim really high by making sure they are eating one thing that’s healthy.  That was apples.  No veggies.  Our veggie drawer in the fridge was empty.  Popcorn doesn’t count, does it?

Tough days call for simplicity, and sometimes that means the quickest things I can get on their plates with the easiest clean up.

How do you manage meals on days when you have to keep things simple?

Frugal Birthday Party, Part 2

September 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

We had our almost-triplet birthday party a couple weeks ago for my three little ones.  Landis and the twins are 11 months and 3 weeks apart.

So, these guys turned 2.

              

Then, a week later, Landis turned 3.

So, along with 3 grandparents, 6 aunts and uncles, 1 big sister, and 5 cousins, we had a joint birthday party for all of them.  As I mentioned last year after doing Karis’ 5th birthday party, I aim to be pretty frugal and I’m not much of a party host.  So, with all that, I like to keep things simple.  There’s also the factor of 2 and 3-year-olds don’t have a lot of desires for an elaborate party.  They just enjoy being the center of attention, eating cake, and opening presents.

And while last year, I set out to make as much as possible myself like the meal for the family and the cake in an effort to save money, there are lots of different considerations including time and energy.  With this being the week before school started, I was honestly just tired.

I wanted to keep it simple and frugal. 

So the only decorations were each of them getting a headband or hat along with a little figurine for their favorite character.  Landis loves Snow White and well, I just thought it was cute to do Micky & Minnie for the twins.  We already had a Minnie headband and a Snow White figurine, so we just used those from home.  Then I filled in the rest at the Disney Store and those things doubled as gifts.  They also brought along their soft toys from home of Snow White, Mickey and Minnie.

Since we have so many adults eating, I really wanted to have good food that didn’t cost a lot, but at the end of the day, we just picked up pizza (with a 50% off online code), chips (on sale B1G1), a watermelon (from a farmer’s stand on the side of the road), and bought cupcakes from the grocery store.  They weren’t the gourmet cupcakes, but the kids didn’t know the difference once they licked the icing off!  And did you know cupcakes from one of those cute little bakeries are like $65??  I didn’t!  The 2 dozen I got from the grocery store were $15!  I’ll take it!

            

And then there are those little treat bags for all the kids.  I have a hate-hate relationship with those things.  I do understand and value giving a little thank-you to folks that take the time out to celebrate and bring gifts.  I just don’t love giving or receiving lots of bags of candy (I know!  I’m a Birthday Scrooge!).  So, I chose little things from the dollar store that hopefully the kids would enjoy, badges for the boys, rings for the girls, and dress-up glasses with noses.  Oh and did I mention I didn’t spend the time making these up individual little bags?  I put all the items in a basket and they just picked out a couple items.  Love a timesaver!

Overall, it was a great time!  We have such great family that love our children so well.  All the cousins LOVE playing together and the 3 birthday kids were happy.

If you want to get a better feel of how the evening really went, take a look at this time-lapse video my brother took while we were all together.

Fall Transitions

September 4, 2012 By 4 Comments

We have had lots of new beginnings in my house lately. I feel like the last few weeks have been full of getting ready for the upcoming transition. My oldest, Karis, started kindergarten last week. We got a placement in a Montessori School in our local public school system and are excited about this year! Karis had a great first week and is making new friends every day.

We love these uniforms!!

She felt so much better walking in the first day when she saw her best friend, Destiny.

Landis also started her first dance class. She is really excited about it so far and I like how it gives her something that’s all her own to do with other kids her age.

This class is so cute with all these little ones! (I didn’t get permission to post those adorable faces, so I blurred them out.) :)

With these changes have come several adjustments to our daily and weekly routine and I want to share more with you over the next couple weeks. There have been so many things to think through and plan for, so look for posts coming up about:

Adjusting our daily schedule
Planning for and packing the lunchbox
Transitioning the twins out of cribs
Our almost-triplet birthdays
Keeping 3 toddlers occupied during the day
And more…

Have you had lots of transition getting ready for the Fall?

Back 2 School Survival Guide

August 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

“Smooth Transition from Summer to School !”  Sounds great, doesn’t it?  But what about getting out of summer bedtimes, and getting homework done, packing the lunchboxes, morning and afternoon carpool, expectations, grades, extracurricular activities?  I could go on and on.

Well. Susan, The Confident Mom, has done it again with her Back 2 School Survival Guide.  She has taken all her years of experience in parenting and family coaching and put them onto paper to help moms like me and you make a smooth transition from relaxing summer days and travel to the routine of school days.

Here are a some of the topics she covers in the Back 2 School Survival Guide:

  •       Put your child’s back-to-school anxieties to rest.
  •       Help your child thrive in school and at home by setting up easy-to-follow routines.
  •       Make packing lunches a snap and learn to send lunches that are more likely to be consumed.
  •       Stay on top of activities for the entire family.
  •       Teach your children how to set goals and celebrate their successes.
  •       Discover new ways to have fun together as a family.
  •       Put homework hassles to rest.
  •       Learn that letting your child fail can ultimately lead to their success.
  •       Become a savvy back-to-school shopper.
  •       Get involved in your child’s classroom through volunteerism.
  •       Prepare for the “big K” (Kindergarten).
  •       Provide guidance to help your child deal with bullies.
  •       Help develop a healthy attitude towards others at school (including classmates with disabilities).
  •       Keep your children safe while using the Internet.
It also includes tons of printables including:
  •       Student Planner
  •       Master Family Planner
  •       Routine Checklists
  •       School Information Sheet
  •       Schedule Adjustment Worksheet
  •       Countdown Maze
  •       My Favorites Lunch Planning Worksheet
  •       Grocery Planner
  •       Family Fun Worksheet
  •       Family Meeting Agenda
  •       School Goals Worksheet
  •       Classmate Contact Sheet
  •       Important Dates At-A-Glance Sheet
  •       Lunchbox Notes, Jokes, and Quotes
  •       Note to Teacher Form
You can download all this now in the Back 2 School Survival Guide for just $14.  Click here for more info and to order

The Ever-Changing Family Schedule

July 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I realize it’s been ages since I’ve posted!  I’m still here, just trying to find my groove after getting back to China.  During the first couple of weeks the kids were in school and I just stayed busy trying to get back into a normal routine.  Now they are home through the beginning of September, and I’m trying to find our new normal.  Not much has gone as I expected!

I had a well-written schedule prepared for the summer.  Scratch that!  Nothing seems to fit into the schedule as I had planned.

I had our previous house helper whom we adore lined up to come in for 4 hours daily for the summer to help with some kitchen prep and cleaning so that I could focus more on the kids during vacation and less on housework.  She unexpectedly had to return to her hometown for the summer.

For the last week, I’ve been revamping our plan, finding our new normal, and revamping some more.  I’ve got some ideas for helping our summer days flow smoothly, but I’m sure that by next week, my plan will probably need more revamping.  Is there anyone else who feels like things are constantly changing now that you have kids?

Just for fun, here are a couple of pictures from Vera’s kindergarten graduation.  She has been at the same school with the same teachers and classmates for the last three years.  If you click the last picture to enlarge it, you can see that some kids weren’t too happy about moving on to first grade!

Hopefully part of my revamped summer routine will include more time for blogging!  If my posts are limited during the rest of the summer, please know that I’m enjoying my children and trying to keep them as my top priority while they are on summer break. :)

Potty Training Maintenance

June 15, 2012 By 2 Comments
Kitchen Timer 2

photo credit

I’ve figured out recently that potty training is one of the least enjoyable parts of training a toddler for me.  Because I choose to do the One-Day Boot Camp Method , which is intense, and my little Landis is the last one trained, who is also intense, it just feels intense.  It takes a lot of mental energy for me.  And I don’t love cleaning up the messes (I don’t know who does).

As we entered into this phase of potty training with Landis about 7 months ago, I remembered that she was not very easy or quick to train when she was an infant as we were working on sleeping through the night.  She just needs more maintenance.  And I think she likes to remind me she is her own person – not like me, not like her big sister, she is just Landis.  Anyone who knows her is smiling right now.  Well, potty training has gone well for her.  She has not worn diapers during awake times since that training day, October 25.  She initiated not wearing “night-night panties” (Pull-Ups) at naptime and has stayed dry.  Then about a month after that, she insisted on no “night-night panties” at bedtime.  And with only a few incidents, she has stayed dry.

But…we have had several days of her having accidents.  It doesn’t really follow a pattern or a particular circumstance.  In the beginning, I followed the suggestions of the training book, Toilet Training in Less Than a Day.  I didn’t make a big deal about it, but told her that’s not what big girls do, she made a mess, and she needed to clean it up and change clothes.

But then the accidents started happening more frequently some weeks and she didn’t really seem to mind.  The clean up process was not really a deterrent for her.  I didn’t want to punish her or shame her.  I definitely didn’t want to just put a diaper on her after all this work.  But I did want some type of negative consequence that would motivate her to independently go to the potty when she needed to and stop the accidents.  Honestly, some of them didn’t really seem like accidents.

So, I made up another training technique in the moment and it happened to work (not all of them do).  I said something like this:

“Landis, since you didn’t go to the potty when you needed to on your own, you’re now on a Potty Timer.  I’m going to set the timer and when it goes off, you have to go to the potty and try.”

She definitely didn’t like the idea of the Potty Timer.  It takes her independence away.  I usually set it to go off every 30 minutes and she has to stay on the Potty Timer for the rest of that day.  If she refuses to go when the timer goes off, she gets a different consequence for disobedience.  That has only happened a few times.  Other than that, she goes and at least tries.  She’s not happy about it and every time the timer goes off, I say something like “Since you didn’t go to the potty when you were supposed to and wet your pants, now the Potty Timer has to tell you when to go.”  I don’t say it in a shaming, condescending way, just matter-of-fact.  I want to remind her of the consequence and encourage her to go on her own and not have accidents.

So far, the Potty Timer has worked for my little strong-willed 2-year-old.  I’m not saying I used it once and she never did it again.  Landis almost always requires longer term training than that.  But the daytime accidents have decreased greatly and any mention of the Potty Timer gets her moving!

Now, if I can just figure out how to train boy/girl twins when they get ready. <sigh>

Solution for Summer Activity Ideas for Kids

May 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The Confident Mom Summer Survival Calendar
Ummm, is it really going to be June tomorrow?!  Did this sneak up on any of you like it did me?  The last few weeks, I’ve read lots of comments on Facebook from moms looking for ideas for what in the world to do with their energetic, summer-loving children during these hot months.  Susan from The Confident Mom has developed a great tool to help all of us tired, out-of-ideas moms for the Summer.

When I am thinking about a new plan to help me manage my home, sometimes (ok, a lot of times), I just want someone else to tell me what to do every day.  You know, like a checklist, a detailed plan where someone else has already done all the work and I can just pick and choose what I want to use from it.  Well, that’s exactly what The Confident Mom has done with the 2012 Summer Survival Calendar.  It includes:

  • a Calendar of over 3 full months of daily activities.  Susan has done all the research and found some of the best activities and ideas for kids and families.  Just click on one of the activities and she takes you right to the site explaining the activity and any materials you need.
  • an Action Guide with 10 Strategies for the Best Summer Ever.
  • Printable Forms to use with your family to agree on Quiet Time Activities and Ideas for Outdoor and Learning Activities.
  • Printable Forms for your Monthly Calendar, Weekly Planner, Summer Goals, and even a Weekly Meal Planner.
I think the best thing about this is it’s comprehensive enough to use for a complete family plan for the entire summer, but simple enough to use to just pick from the lists of over 150 quality ideas for family summer fun.  You can read more about it here.

The Confident Mom Summer Calendar is $9 and Susan offers a full, no-questions-asked money back guarantee if you’re not completely happy with it within 30 days.  I definitely think it’s worth it.  It will save me hours of online searching, looking for fun activities and it will help keep me organized.

The last thing I want for our summer is my kids being frustrated with me telling them to just “Go play.” or me being frustrated with the TV being on too much.  I’m looking forward to digging into some of these activities.

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