To Feed the Hungry

While the girls were playing "Store," Primus was the cashier.

 From the other room I heard her say, "This box is to feed the hungry.  Put money in here to feed the hungry."

I'm so glad I take my kids grocery shopping with me often!  Learning happens outside the classroom all the time.

Who Are the Mormons?

How does lack of sleep affect you? How do you deal with it?

I've been told, with amazement, by several people that I seem to function well on little sleep.

Quartus goes to bed at about 9pm.  A couple hours later, he wakes up and I bring him to bed with us. Then he nurses for the rest of the night, waking me to flip him over to the other side.  During the day, he doesn't nap.  Rather, he dozes for 30 minutes at a time, usually in the car.

Tertius gave up naps when he was around a year old.  About that same time, he went through a year long phase of not going to bed until 11pm or midnight.

Primus didn't learn to fall asleep on her own in her own bed until she was 18 months old.  And then she would still wake up and come sleep in or next to our bed everynight until a couple years ago.

Secundus is my only good sleeper.  She was putting herself to sleep and sleeping through the night by 2 months.

Add to all that the fact that I am a night-owl and prefer to stay up past midnight.  But my children do not share this trait and no matter how late they go to bed, they are always awake around 7am.  I don't think our situation is terribly unique, but suffice it to say that I've had more nights of limited/disturbed sleep than good/long/refreshing sleep in the last 7 years.  So how do I survive?

Well, I may just be used to it by now.  But I think a better explanation is that I definitely act differently in public than I do in private.  (And "public" includes Facebook.)

I'm an extrovert.  When I am out and around people, I get energized so it seems like I've got it all together.  But if you were to have seen me at home before stepping out the door, you would have had something entirely different to say!  

Sadly, when I'm home with just my family, I'm not always the most chipper person.  If I'm tired, the kids usually get the worst brunt of my crankiness. 

Also, since I am so go-go-go all day, if I sit down to nurse Quartus in the rocking chair around 3pm, I will definitely fall asleep.  If I let myself relax for even a minute, it all finally catches up with me.  And sleeping upright in a rocking chair is not comfortable!  So when I wake up, I am still tired, sore, and more cranky!  When Tertius was a baby, I remember that every time I sat down to read stories to the girls during the day, I would doze off.  It was so hard to stay awake to even get through one book! 

Things that work for me to make the tiredness and crankiness not as bad...

1. Don't relax. Don't get comfortable.  Whoever first started spewing that, "nap when the baby naps" garbage is an idiot.  I mostly kid, but see paragraph above.  If I get a cat-nap during the day, I will usually regret it.  Not only do I feel tired, sore, and cranky, but I get overwhelmed by all the stuff I should have been doing while I was napping (see number 4 below.)

2. Go to bed by 10pm.  I still need my personal time in the evenings when the house is quiet.  But 10pm is so much better than midnight for my sanity the next day.

3. Wake up before the kids.  I know, seems counterproductive.  But if my sleep is disturbed abruptly by the kids, then it doesn't matter how many extra minutes I was able to squeeze in; I'm going to be super cranky!  My day goes a lot smoother if I can wake up on my terms, wake up slowly, and read scriptures in the quiet time before everyone else is awake.

4. Don't let messes around the house get too out-of-hand.  I need to keep me and the kids on top of things all day so I'm not left with a disaster zone at the end of the day.  When the house is in chaos and I'm tired, I tend to explode because I feel overwhelmed. It's not pretty.

5. Rely on Hubby.  He tends to be blind to messes so I just need to remember to tell him, "Look at that mountain of dishes [puzzles, action figures, dirty table, etc].  That right there is driving me crazy.  Will you kindly help the kids take care of it before I start chucking things out the window?!"  If I ask for his help, he always obliges. 

So how does lack of sleep affect you?  How do you combat it?

"I be a Man!"

I decided that I want to make a more conscious effort to encourage Tertius to be a gentleman.  

Here's a fun picture of my little ladies and gentleman having a fun "tea party" with my breakable dishes-a rare treat!  They love to do this.  They pick costumes from the dress up box and eat their finger sandwiches while practicing their best manners and saying things like, "Isn't this lovely, darling?"

Once a week the girls have a four-and-a-half hour class in a town thirty minutes away.  Since it's a long drive, it doesn't make sense for me to drop them off and then come back to pick them up.  So that means I have to find something to keep the boys and I occupied nearby.  

I am really enjoying this time with just my boys!  We usually do an errand, have a picnic lunch, play at a park, and visit the library.  

Last week I asked Tertius to hold open the door to the library for me so I could get the stroller through.  I praised him and went on and on about how polite he was being and what a little gentleman he was.  He seemed very pleased with himself.

The next week, before I could ask him to, he ran over to the door and held it open for me.  As I walked through he proudly proclaimed, "I be a man!"  

I couldn't have been prouder of him.  Yes, son, you are learning to be a real man.  A gentleman.

Adapting an educational game for 3 levels...

This year Secundus is working on learning her Dolch sight words.  This great website has some cute printable board games to be used to help your child  practice.  But since she is the only kindergartener in her classroom, who can she play the game with?

Well, we have an easy fix; Primus and Tertius love to play, too! 

Here's what we do: when it is Primus' turn, she has to write one of her spelling words (as selected by me) on her whiteboard.  Secundus has to pick and read a sight-word card for her turn.  And on his turn, Tertius has to identify a letter of the alphabet.  If they get their word/letter right, then they get to roll the dice. 

One game.  Three levels of play.  Three children having fun learning.  One happy mommy.

A woman is like a chocolate chip cookie...

As I baked a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies yesterday, I lamented to my husband that while I like the taste, my cookies are always flat and not the prettiest.  I told him that I was thinking about trying out a new recipe. (I've been using a recipe from my mom's really old Betty Crocker cookbook.)

In response, he discouraged me from searching for a new recipe and declared that he didn't just like the way my cookies taste, he LOVES them.  Then in case I was wondering about his sincerity, he proceeded to eat about a dozen of them.

Yep, he's a keeper.  :)

That got me thinking...sometimes I'm like those cookies.  They don't meet conventional standards of what makes a beautiful cookie.  You won't see them on Pinterest, or in a bakery, or in the pages of a cooking magazine.  But at least one man loves them.

It's easy to feel down about myself because I don't meet conventional standards of what makes a beautiful or "perfect" woman.  I could bore you with a list of the things I am not good at and celebrities I don't look like.

But none of that matters.  I am a daughter of God.  He created me exactly the way He meant to, with unique talents and physical appearance. I am beautiful because He made me and He loves me.

I am so thankful for that knowledge and for my wonderful husband who helps me remember what's really important.