The Lazy Organizer

Not only did I invite myself to go to Idaho to learn how to parent but I also invited myself to stay at Becky’s house when we drove down to the Manti Pageant.  She swears that it was her idea and she practically forced me to come but I’m still wondering how the whole thing started.  Originally it started here last fall…

I felt like a celebrity when a woman sitting next to me at dinner saw my name tag and said, “Are you Lara Gallagher?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “The Lazy Organizer?” “Yes.” Obviously I’m a woman of many words. “I read your blog!” she told me. Wow! She didn’t ask me for my autograph but still!!!

Luckily she has her own blog so you can all go say hi (Hi Becky!) and ask her why she didn’t want my autograph. I think it’s because she was more excited to meet Sweetness than me but that’s to be expected. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk so I can’t wait to check out her blog. From what I’ve seen so far it looks like she has 8 beautiful kids (many of which are taller than her), one son in law, and a basement full of food storage. She also hangs her laundry to dry. A kindred spirit!

Then I ran into Becky again at a conference last month.  We started talking about the Manti Pageant and the next thing I knew the girls and I were staying at her house which is beautiful and has a comfortable guest bed.

Becky posted this picture and said on her blog…

My new friend Lara came to stay and see pageant. We had a great time visiting and sharing. Our kids had a really good time. Her’s wanted to stay and mine said they were mean for leaving.

Yes it’s true.  My girls tried to get me to leave them at Becky’s house.  Who needs a Mom when you could have Becky and bunnies this cute?

We had a great experience at the pageant.  I don’t think it could have been any better even if we had been rained on half the time.  Oh wait.  We were.  That just made it so exciting and memorable.  And so did the fact that I lost my van door opener while we were at the pageant and spent the next morning looking for it only to find it in a bag when I got home.  Yes it was an organizing bag.  My son seemed to think that was pretty funny.  By the way, he was sick so we abandoned him and went anyway.  We didn’t want to but he tricked us by telling us he was going to come while we were packing up and then changed his mind at the last minute.

Another highlight?  Hearing, “Lara!  Lara Gallagher!” and turning around to see a complete stranger calling my name.  It took me a second to recognize who it was.  It was Stephanie from For Better or For Worse!  We have been reading each others blogs for three years now and we live not 30 minutes away from each other but have never met.  Then we drive almost three hours to another town and run into each other.  How weird is that?  Her kids are just as adorable in person as they are on her blog.

So what have we learned so far?  That Lara has no qualms about staying with people she meets on the internet but she won’t actually leave her children there.  At least not on the first visit.  We are coming down to Southern Utah this weekend by the way and if we didn’t already have hotel reservations we would probably be staying at your house, whoever you are that lives in Southern Utah.  Hey!  Do you want to come hang out at Sand Hollow reservoir with us on Friday?  Does anyone down there read my blog?  Come play with us!  I just loving meeting the internet.

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Once again I have to begin this by saying I have learned next to nothing from my 11 years of parenting.  If I have done anything right it has been purely accidental.  At this point I know a tiny bit more than next to nothing so keep that in mind as I’m sharing it with you.  Feel free to ask me questions in the comments and I will try to answer them there.  I’m sure there are many aspects to this that I am leaving out so ask away.

There are two reasons I get mad and lose my temper with my kids.

1. I don’t handle problems immediately.
2. I talk too much.

Here is what doesn’t work.

• There is a problem.
• I don’t deal with it immediately, either because I am too lazy or I don’t know how.  Usually the latter.
• The problem does not go away by itself like I’m hoping it will but escalates instead.
• Eventually I get mad.
• I start talking/explaining/lecturing and get even madder.
• Pretty soon we are all out of control.
• Nothing is solved.
• I hate myself for being a terrible mother.
• Wash, rinse, repeat.

Here is what does work for me.

• Have a system for dealing with problems.
• Handle them immediately.
• Keep my mouth shut.
• Let the kids learn from the experience.

It sounds easy enough but I have had no clue how to deal with problems.  Do I just love my little heathens unconditionally while they are bouncing off the walls?  Or should I spank them?  Should I reward them for good behavior and ignore the bad?  Or should I make them do another chore every time they look at me wrong?  Maybe I should just just go lock myself in my room with a good book and a quart of spinach smoothie.

Why have I been able to be so consistent with teaching my kids to work but not with their behavioral problems which are even more important?   Maybe because I haven’t been able to solve my own behavioral problems.  How do I teach my kids not to be rude when I am so rude?  Seriously.  I had a friend ask me once why I let Persistence talk to me the way she does with her sassy mouth.  Because I have a sassy  mouth!  Duh!  I can teach my kids to work because I am a hard worker.  I don’t set such a good example in the mouth department.

I have read a lot of books, tried a lot of different methods and not followed through with any of them.  This surprises me because once I decide to do something I am normally a follow-througher.  One of the things we discussed when my friends were at my house was that almost any system will work with kids if you stick with it.  I tell people the same thing with teaching kids to work.  Decide on a system together and stick with it.  For a long time.  A year later if you get tired of it change it and then stick with the new system for a long time.  Change is good but how are we going to know if something works if we don’t give it a fair shot when the going gets tough?

Usually what I do at our house is get really excited about a new system.  Try it for two weeks.  It works wonderfully and we are all thrilled.  By the third week my kids aren’t so thrilled with it and get lazy.  I get lazy and don’t follow through.  I get frustrated because the system doesn’t work.  We go back to doing nothing which we already know doesn’t work and I am left wondering if I will ever find something that does.

What I Know For a Fact

1. My children (and yours) are geniuses.
2. I wasn’t treating them like geniuses.
3. If I change my bad behavior then they will change theirs.
4. If I keep my mouth shut then they will figure things out for themselves.
5. If natural consequences aren’t working then it’s time for Mother consequences.

Time-Outs

Time-out is not a punishment.  They can read or play or do anything they want by themselves while they are in time-out.

• If a child makes a mistake like fighting with a sibling or talking back to their mother I tell them nicely to go to time-out.
• I do not explain or lecture or yell.
• I keep my mouth shut.
• It’s really hard.
• But I do it anyway.
• After a few minutes I tell them they can come out.
• Or after a few minutes they are asking to come out because they know I have forgotten about them once again.
• Now I have them sit on a chair in the living area so at least I can see them.
• I still forget about them.
• What can I say?  I must have a lot on my mind.
• After they come out of time-out I still keep my mouth shut.
• My children are geniuses after all.
• If they have a genuine question or concern then I discuss it with them but never unless they ask and only if they are calm and are not trying to engage me in battle.
• If they are trying to fight with me then they go back to time-out.

I put the baby in a portable crib in the hall because I would never take her to time out if I had to walk all the way down the hall.  I never forget about her because she is pretty vocal with her feelings about time-out.  It is so seriously fun watching how smart she is and how fast she learns.  My older kids are at least as smart as a one year old I think.  If she doesn’t need an explanation then neither do they.  Besides it just made me mad anyway when I had to say the same things over and over 5,000 times.  I was starting to wonder if they were the dumbest children in the world.  I’m happy to learn that they weren’t the dumb ones.  I was.

Consequences

If a child isn’t just making a mistake but they are being disobedient then they don’t get a time-out.  They get a consequence.  Think of it this way.  A sin of commission is a mistake (which we all make all the time) and they get time-out (which isn’t a punishment).  A sin of omission is disobedience and they get a consequence/punishment for that.  If you ask a child to brush their teeth and they leave a big mess behind then that is a sin of commission.  If they don’t brush their teeth when you ask them to then that is a sin of omission.  Does that make sense?

For my older kids a consequence is an extra  job that must be done during their next free time which is decided on later when I am thinking clearly.  The job isn’t what’s important.  The important thing is that they are obedient.  I tell them they have earned a consequence and then I ask them to try again.  That is the part I love.  Trying again.  I practice this myself too.  If the kids do something that makes me really mad and I start raising my voice then I stop myself and say, “I’m sorry.  Let me try that again.  Go to time-out please.”  Isn’t repentance the greatest?

Lovely’s consequence is a swat on the bum.  I know.  We haven’t been spankers but we clearly needed intervention with her behavior.  She isn’t old enough to do a job and she doesn’t understand anything else.  If you can find a different consequence that will work for a four year old, let me know because I will be happy to try it.  Really, the only time she gets a swat is if I have asked her to go to time-out and she doesn’t go.  In that case I calmly take her to her room and swat her bum.  She never cries.  She is much too brave for that and I don’t swat very hard.  I give her a hug and then we go back to where we started and try again.  I ask her to go to time-out and this time she goes.

Practice

It takes time to follow through with this plan of action.  Lots of it.  My children’s favorite time to act up is when we are getting ready to go somewhere.  I think their genius brains have figured out that I am less likely to send them to time-out because I am usually in a hurry.  The solution is this.  If you have to leave at 3:00, tell your kids that you are leaving at 2:00.  This will give you extra time to deal with their behavior as you are trying to get out the door.  The more consistent you are the faster they will learn to control their behavior.

When I was at my friend’s house one of her children came through the door and it slammed behind him.  I really didn’t think he had done it on purpose but I made some kind of remark in surprise.  He immediately turned around and shut the door again quietly.  I love it!  I want children who know how to shut doors softly!  Not because I care so much about the door but because I care about my children learning self control.

More of My Thoughts In Case You Haven’t Heard Enough

I’ve read books that say that punishing children damages their relationship with the parent but I have found the exact opposite to be true.  My children and I are all happier, getting along better and having more fun with each other.  Children do do not want to act out of control.  You don’t have to look very hard to see that they aren’t having a good time when they are throwing a fit.  They want guidance and limits and they need them to be happy and to become what God created them to become.  That’s our job and if we don’t fulfill it then we will live with the consequences of our actions for a long time by watching our children suffer needlessly.  That doesn’t mean children can’t learn self control when they’re older but it will be much more difficult, and embarrassing and painful.  Ask me how I know.

Ok, I’m going to shut up in a minute but I have to tell you one more thing.  A lot of you will think the things I’m saying sound a lot like Love And Logic .  I will confess that I read the book several years ago and did not like it.  When I found out that my friend Keri had studied Love and Logic I was a little concerned but I don’t think she follows it the way it is explained in the book.  She is above and beyond loving with her children and is far an away more logical than anyone I have ever seen. The things she does she has learned through study and prayer and that is the way I try to parent my children.  Books are fine to read and learn from but I can only do hard things with God’s help and parenting is hard!!!

Is there anything harder?

Photos

We had a great time at Lagoon last week.  By some miracle Sailor just happened to be home to go with us.  I was prepared to take the kids by myself but I was so happy that I didn’t have to resort to that.  Lovely and Sweetness and I got dropped off in Kiddie Land in the morning and hung out there most of the day while the big kids went on the big rides.  We had quite the caravan going with a stroller full of babies and a stroller full of food.  Don’t forget my comfy pink chair.  I didn’t.  I could have left my book and my sewing home though.  I thought I was going to have time to read and quilt with a 1 and 4 year old at an amusement park?

Some friends of ours joined us later in the day which was fun because they have a boy Muscle’s age, a boy Lovely’s age and a girl Sweetness’ age.  Persistence didn’t have a buddy but she kept up with the boys as usual.  The moms talked while the babies played.  That makes it sound so fun and relaxing.  What we really did was chase babies and 4 year olds around and talk when we could get a word in between all the commotion.

Good times.

I am still working on my schedule.  I know schedules are scary.  They feel restrictive and uncomfortable.  Why do we want someone telling us what to do and when?  Even if that someone is the person we were yesterday or last year when we made up the schedule?  Get off my back woman!  That’s also what my husband is thinking even though he hasn’t said it yet.

But what our husbands and our kids and our present selves need to remember is that schedules make things happen.  Schedules give us time for all the things we should do and want to do.  If kids want meals then they need to get to bed on time so Mom can do the mending and reading she needs to do while they’re asleep instead of doing it during the day when she should be making dinner.  If kids want to go to park day on Friday then we have to get our work done the rest of the week.  It makes sense doesn’t it?

I know this schedule kick I’m on is going to be transforming for our family.  I have already noticed a huge difference just in going to bed early and getting up early.  Huge.

Planning

What I have done this last week is to write down everything that is important to me and then schedule a time to do it.  Some of the things I want to do but keep putting off because I can’t find the time are studying photography, sewing, writing in my journal, etc.  If I know I have 30 minutes scheduled every morning to study photography then I won’t find myself surfing the internet reading photography blogs at 4:oo in the afternoon when I should be starting dinner.  At least that’s the plan.

I have a different schedule for every day of the week to fit in things like piano lessons, park day, field trips and errands but a day at home goes like this…

Monday
5:00 Photography
5:30 Blog
6:30 Email
7:00 Start Breakfast, get kids up and ready, laundry
7:30 Breakfast, wash dishes
8:00 Jobs, pick up, vacuum, bathrooms
8:30 Mom school
10:30 Exercise, shower
11:30 Get Lunch ready
12:00 Quick sweep for kids
12:30 Lunch, clean up
1:00 Personal study time for the older kids and I, quiet time for the little girls
3:00 Family activity time - go for a walk, play a game or work in the yard
4:00 Cook dinner and make veggie tray for tomorrow’s snack
5:00 Quick sweep for kids
5:30 Serve dinner and wash dishes
6:30 Baths, get ready for bed, clean bedrooms
7:00 Family reading time
7:30 Kids in bed, Mom gets ready for bed
8:00 Sewing (Every night!  Woo hoo!)
9:00 Reading
10:00 Lights out for Mom

Reality

I know we will never be able to follow it perfectly and we will make a lot of changes as we go along but this is a good start and for the moment I am thoroughly enjoying being bossed around by that one lady.  You know that lady that made the schedule in the first place?  She is one smart momma.  And she’s telling me my time’s up for blogging and It’s time to get working on the sweet baby’s quilt.

Find out more about SMART Habits.

Photos

Don’t ever try to take cat food out of your baby’s mouth unless you are up for a good biting, kicking, screaming match.  Apparently that cat food is good stuff.  Not that I’m going to be trying it any time soon.

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Have you ever met someone that makes you feel like you are doing everything wrong?  But at the same time  you are deliriously happy because they are going to teach you how to change and that it’s even possible to change?  I felt this way about the first organizing book I ever read.  “You mean I can LEARN to get organized?” Who knew?

“You mean I can LEARN to parent my children with love and patience?”  I guess the answer is yes.  It’s not that I’ve never read a parenting book before.  I’ve read plenty.  I just couldn’t do what they said so I figured I must be hopeless.

All I want is for my children to be kind and obedient and happy and polite and intelligent and independent and fun to be around.  That’s not too much to ask, is it?  That’s the lovely part about all their problems being my fault.  I’m the one that can fix them and now I know how.  Not just what to do but HOW to do it.  Do you know what I mean?  It’s easy enough to tell a  fat person, “Don’t eat a quart of ice cream every night with dinner.”  And they’re thinking, “What am I? An idiot? I know that the ice cream is making me fat. If I could stop eating it I would!!!”   Once you tell them that eating lettuce greens with every meal will make their sugar cravings go away they think, “Finally!  That’s something I can do!”

A Little Get Away

Last week the kids and I ran away to Idaho for a quick little overnight trip to visit my new parenting mentor, Keri and her sister, Jenny.  I met Jenny when I joined her study group two years ago and then I met her sister Keri when she came to teach our group a little parenting class in April.  It was Discussion #2 in my post, Talk About Parenting.  I was talking to Jenny on the phone last week when she mentioned that she was going to go stay with Kerri for a week so of course I did the only respectable thing I could do.  I invited myself to go with her.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.  We were doing so good after Keri’s class in April but as time went on I got more and more lazy about applying the principles I learned and we got right back into our bad habits.  I needed to be reminded of what I was doing and why and I really wanted to see in person how Keri interacts with her children.

We spent a fabulous two days of talking and cooking and eating.  I mean we cooked and ate and we talked while we cooked and ate because 3 moms and 14 children require a LOT of food.  I learned after the first meal not to wait till after I’ve fed the baby to go back for my own food because it will be gone.  Did I mention there were 14 hungry children?  In one house?  There was always enough food.  You just had to be quick about it if you wanted some.  The great thing was that Kerri eats the same way we do and don’t even get me started about how organized and efficient she is in the kitchen.  I need to make another trip just to learn that skill.

I am a problem solver.

I have always said, “Don’t come to me with your problems unless you want me to help you solve them.”  But Keri is a problem solver who minds her own business.  She never ever gives anyone advice unless they ask for it.  Can you imagine?  How am I ever going to be able to control myself like that?

For example, sometimes Persistence has difficulty getting along with girls her age.  She gets her feelings hurt and she stays mad for a long time.  I realized last week that she does this to get my attention.  If she whines and complains then I will step in to help.  If I don’t try to help then she will sit near me to sulk and pout.  Here is the new game plan:  Don’t get mad, try to solve her problems or ignore her.  Give lots of love, understanding and empathy.  Have faith that she can work out her own difficulties in life and then watch and learn because I a lot to learn myself.

This is the basic rule to good parenting and relationships.  Love them and then keep your mouth shut.  Try it, it works!

(Luckily this rule doesn’t apply to blogging so I can give all the advice I want here and you are welcome not to read it!)

A Fabulous Idea

Do you ever get tired of hearing, “When are we going to this place and when are we going to that place and why don’t you ever take us to the other place?”  Keri has trained her children not to beg for activities. At her house the parents decide what the outside activities will be and then they invite the children to participate with them.  That way they get to take their kids to special places without the kids spoiling the fun by begging for it first.  How cool is that?

Remember my post about deciding what you want for your family,  Dream The Impossible Dream?  That’s what Keri does.  She doesn’t settle for children who act like selfish brats.  She decides what kind of manners she wants her kids to have, what she wants her home to feel like and then makes it happen.

Baby Torture/Teaching

Not only are Kerri’s four older children obedient but so is her 14 month old.  I was in charge of him for a few minutes at the park while he was crawling around tasting dirt and sticks.  Pretty soon I noticed that his chubby little hand was three inches away from a plate of food.  In surprise I said, “Uh oh!” as I was about to jump up and move the plate but he immediately pulled his hand away and stared at me.  I laughed as I watched him study the food for a couple minutes and then crawl away to find something else to explore. My reaction told him that he wasn’t going to get away with it so he had decided on his own that it was best not to go there.

Babies need lots of freedom to roam and explore their world but there are some things that you don’t want them to experience so why not train them?  It’s as simple as putting your baby in time out for a couple minutes every time they do something that is off limits.  I was so excited to come home and try it on my 13 month old little Sweetness.

For now I have decided to teach Sweetness not to touch my computer and not to go in the bathroom by herself which might not make sense because if the rest of us were trained to keep the door shut then it wouldn’t be a problem but we aren’t always going to be at home and she isn’t always going to be too small to reach the door knobs.  I want her to learn that all bathrooms everywhere are off limits to her explorations. I don’t have a baby proof room nearby so I put Sweetness in a portable crib for her timeouts.  Sometimes she plays happily and some times she is sad about it but guess what?  Every time she comes out she stays away from the computer and the bathrooms for hours if not days.

I knew my baby was a genius!  I just had to get smart enough to keep up with her.  If you want to think timeouts for a 13 month old are child abuse then you are welcome to your opinion.  I personally think not teaching children self control is child abuse so let’s just agree to disagree.

Remember those 14 children in one small house?

They spent the entire two days getting along and playing happily and not making messes.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  There were only a couple occasions when children sulked and threw fits and it  embarrassingly always involved someone related to me.  My children act pretty good compared to some kids but they were no match for Keri’s magic mothering skills.  She doesn’t know it yet but we are moving to Idaho to live next door to her.  We need a lot of help.

I will try to post more of the things we have learned but the place to start, especially if you have small children, is to use time out.  For everything.  When my children were little I used time out for out of control behavior but I didn’t know to use it for the little things too, like playing in the toilet water.  As my kids got older I thought they had outgrown timeout.  Little did I know that time out works for kids of any age.  I’m still trying to figure out how I can get sent to timeout more often.

Photo

Two happy little girls with matching names and blueberry teeth.

• I took Persistence to a reflexoligist this week.
• No one else can seem to tell me what’s wrong with her.
• I’m desperate ok?
• You don’t want to know why I am taking blessed thistle.
• Just don’t EVER say I don’t love my children and want what’s best for them.
• I took a little field trip to Idaho to learn how to parent them.
• I’ll tell more next week.
• I have lots of love but I think I am losing brain cells.
• I’m exhausted.
• Even though I “slept in” till 6:00 a.m. this morning.
• I had trouble staying awake while driving.
• I’m going to stop blogging and go to bed.
• Good idea.

Photo

I’m not even going to explain this one to you.

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For anyone who is new to my blog, at the end of January the kids and I started eating a vegan diet and six weeks ago my husband joined us. Changing everything about the way we eat has been a challenge to say the least. For a few months it seemed like it was taking every ounce of energy and thought that I had but it is much easier now.

Aside from the physical challenges of it, it has been very easy for me mentally. I decided one day that this is what I had to do so I did it and did not look back. It was a lot harder on my family. They were not interested in my new ideas whatsoever so bringing them along with me has been a lot of work. I wrote about it in post, How to Get Your Kids to Eat Vegetables. The one thing I left out of that post was how important it is to talk to your family about making this change. Every book I read, every website I look at and every person I talk to I learn something and I take time to share all of that with them so they’re not just blindly following me. They are learning the principles I’m learning and having a change of heart.  It helped to get the bad food out of the house too.

Eating Out

Another one of the big challenges with our new diet has been, “What do we eat when we’re away from home?” Preparing vegan foods at home is one thing but when you are used to stopping at Wendy’s every time you are in town what do you do?  Well, instead of ordering hamburgers and french fries at Wendy’s we just ordered salads and baked potatoes of course.  That’s easy.  Except salads and potatoes cost more than hamburgers and french fries and it killed me to pay $20 for a sack of vegetables when I could go next door and buy the same thing for $5.  I just had to get organized.

Taking Our Food With Us

I started with my handy dandy cooler bag that I bought at Sam’s Club last summer.  This thing is so much more convenient than a hard cooler.  I can fit anything it it and stuff it anywhere.  Get one.  So I got my bag out and threw in every kind of vegetable and fruit I had.  How did that work?  It didn’t.  We would all pick at it and then a few minutes later we would all be hungry and grumpy and go home with a bag full of food that nobody wanted. I decided that the only way this was going to work was if the kids packed their own food so they could pack what they will eat.

Another thing that made this difficult for us was Sailor’s lack of a schedule.  I never know when  he is going to be home and we will all decide to go somewhere.  I hated trying to throw everything together at the last minute so this is what I did.  Every day after breakfast I had the kids pack a lunch and put it in the fridge.  Then if we went somewhere that day, great, and if we didn’t then they would just eat it for dinner that night.  This worked fabulously.  The fact that we were going way too many places, much too often is the topic of another post.

Tools of the Trade

Get a cooler bag.  One with wheels might be nice but these were $10 a piece so I was sold.  I liked it so much after buying it last summer that I bought another one this spring.  I pack the red one full of fruit and everything else goes in the green one.

I can also carry the bag horizontally if I’m taking a big salad bowl somewhere.

We had to have knives that were portable so we bought these PLASTIC knives that have PLASTIC covers.  I know.  All I can say is we have to eat.  Sailor bought the green knives so the kids could each have their own and we wouldn’t be fighting over them because we can fight over just about anything.  Trust me.

I also bought the little cutting board but I always forget to take it with me.  We use it every day in the kitchen though.  It’s nice to have a small one that’s easy for the kids to use and clean up.

I promise I did not color coordinate these photos.  The knives just happened to match the bags and I just happened to be wearing a green sweatshirt when I took the picture.  Imagine that.

What Do My Kids Pack?

One day my kids invented the veggie sandwich.  They came up with this on their own because I have never fed them veggie sandwiches (no meat or cheese) in their lives.  I was eating a salad for lunch and they got the brilliant idea to put their salad between two pieces of bread.  They thought they were so cool because they just knew this had never been done before in the history of mankind and they even named it The Veggie Sandwich.  These are not stupid kids I’m raising, I tell you.

Then the veggie sandwich became the veggie wrap one day when we were out of bread and now it is the veggie pita because we are all so enamored with pita bread.   So that’s what they pack every day; fixings to make a couple pita sandwiches, some vegetables to go with them and a couple pieces of fruit.  I pack the same thing for Lovely and Sweetness and I always have some nuts to snack on.

If people are hungry as we’re walking out the door then we will all make a pita filled with almond butter and honey but for packing lunches to eat later it’s always a veggie pita.  If we are gone all day we will eat our lunches and then go out to eat for dinner.

Eating at Restaurants

Our love affair with Wendy’s is over.  No one ever got filled up on the salad and baked potato anyway.  Now I usually pick a place like Costa Vida or Cafe Rio.  I order two big vegetarian salads and the four kids and I share them.  We all like it, it’s fast, it’s easy and it fills us up.  It’s not the healthiest food but it’s a lot better than the alternatives.  When Sailor is with us we usually go to Beto’s (fast Mexican food) and order veggie burritos without sour cream or cheese.  Subway is another place we will go and order veggie sandwiches.

The other day I took Persistence out shopping and we went to Souper Salad.  You would think a place like that could have at least ONE meatless soup but NO.  Out of six choices, every single one had meat and all but one had cheese in it.  We both had big salads but we had some soup too.  Like I’ve said before, when we are eating out at a restaurant or at someone else’s house we have to take what we can get.

What Sailor Eats

Sailor is a whole nuther story.  He runs trains out of town and has never packed a lunch.  When we were first married I packed him a lunch a few times but all he did was complain about it so I stopped and he has eaten out ever since.  If he hijacks my blog to try to dispute this fact don’t believe him because I’m telling the truth.

Low and behold he is now packing his own lunches so along with his 100 pound bag of rules that he has to take with him he has a cooler full of food.  As far as I can tell, this is what he eats.  Whole watermelons, bananas, oranges, cantaloupes, bags of lettuce, bottles of dressings,  avocados, whole wheat bagels, raw corn on the cob, etc.  All the guys on the railroad think he is a freak except for one guy who eats the same way.

Please Share

If you have other ideas for packing healthy food and eating out feel free to share them with us please!

You might be on time for church.

To make sure this didn’t happen two weeks in a row we all read scriptures before we left. And then we ate again (because we can eat a big bowl of oatmeal at 7:00 and be hungry again before 9:00 a.m.).  Then we still had way too much time so when Lovely asked me to braid an angel crown into her hair I agreed.

It took much longer than I thought it would and since it might never happen again I had to snap a couple pictures.  It’s a good thing because we were able to arrive our standard 15 minutes late for church.  Whew.  that was a close call.

I saw this braid on Anna Maria’s blog a couple months ago and tried it on Lovely’s hair.  It didn’t go very well but it turned out much nicer this time.  I didn’t have time to try to make it look continuous so I grabbed our one and only flower clip to hide the end.  It will be a while before we’ll try it again.  I’ll have to wait till Lovely and I forget how long it takes.

Or maybe I’ll do it every day till I get good at it.  I’ll time myself and then if anyone else wants to practice too we can see who is faster.

Ready.  Set.  Go.

P.S.  I tried to find a good video tutorial online for how to do this braid but couldn’t so you are on your own.  I suggest starting at one ear, go around the back of the head and then around the front to the other side.  I think you’re supposed to only pick up hair from the hairline and not both sides of the braid like I did.  Although I think the way I did it is very pretty it would have been easier the other way.  Let me know how it turns out.

I have pondered for years whether children should be reward or punished for their behavior.  I read some books by Alfie Kohn which messed me up big time.  He said children should be neither punished nor rewarded in order for them to become internally motivated.  After reading his books things with my children went down hill rapidly and we are still trying to recover.

How do you teach a four year old to become internally motivated to make her bed Alfie?  I’m here to tell you, you can’t.  And now I have C.S. Lewis to back me up.  Lewis is certifiably brilliant and inspired so I think I’m going to take his word for it.  Sorry Alfie.

C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory

“His position, therefore, bears a certain rsemblance to that of the mercenary; the reward he is going to get will, in actual fact, be a natural or proper reward, but he will not know that till he has got it.  Of course, he gets it gradually; enjoyment creeps in upon the mere drudgery, and nobody could point to a day or an hour when the one ceased and the other began. But it is just insofar as he approaches the reward that he becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed, the power of so desiring it is itself a preliminary reward.”

A couple weeks ago the kids and I spent an entire day cleaning out the garage.  Persistence watched the little girls and Muscles helped me clean.  It was a disaster.  We worked hard sorting and tossing and sweeping.  When we were just about finished Muscles said, “I don’t like cleaning out the garage but I sure like having a clean garage.”

Exactly!

…but we who have not yet attained it cannot know this in the same way, and cannot even begin to know it at all except by continuing to obey and finding the first reward of our obedience in our increasing power to desire the ultimate reward.  Just in proportion as the desire grows, our fear lest it should be a mercenary desire will die away and finally be recognised as an absurdity. But probably this will not, for most of us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship. “

This is what my point system is all about.  It is about rewarding my children for good behavior until they have good habits set in place.  Then their reward will be their increasing desire for acquiring the real rewards of good habits and a strong character.

Go ahead and wait till your kids are old enough to be self-motivated to clean their rooms and wash the dishes and see if it isn’t too late by then.

Read More About It

Did I mention that Persistence is now on the point system as well?  It is working just as fabulously for her as it is for my son.  I have made some changes along the way.  If you’re interested I will post about them.

Following the Dream - My point system.

Parenting is Hard! - My parenting adventures.  Scroll down and start at the beginning if you’re interested in what I am learning along the way.

Photo

Taken from my living room window early this morning as the fog was rolling through.

I started posting these videos 2 1/2 months ago and then forgot about them but I still wanted to show you how we like to live on the edge and break all the rules of safety for our children. This jumper isn’t attached to a door frame like it’s supposed to be.

This definitely doesn’t look safe.

But it can teach you how to do this.

Persistence is doing her best to raise her baby up right, to care nothing for her own safety. I think she’s just about ready for the Colossus ride at Lagoon, don’t you?

I am so excited that I have to share the news.  I hope that’s not too personal for you.  I nurse my babies for a year because I love them and I know it is good for them but it has been a struggle with all of them except Persistence.  Imagine that.  Nursing just might have been the only thing she didn’t fight me about.

I try to enjoy nursing while it lasts but I have to celebrate when it’s over.  Especially with this little twerp who has insisted on starving herself since she was six months old.  That is the point when my body thinks it is being overburded, stops making enough milk to sustain my babies and  I am forced to start them on solids whether I like it or not.  Muscles was a terrible nurser and had no problem with baby food.  Persistence and Lovely threw up half of everything I ever fed them, mother’s milk, baby food or otherwise but eventually they did ok.

Stubborn little Sweetness just couldn’t seem to decide she liked food long enough to gain any weight.  First she liked baby food and then she didn’t.  Then she liked avocados and bananas and then she didn’t.  Then she wouldn’t eat anything but veggie soup which was complicated when we went anywhere.  And she wouldn’t ever eat the SAME veggie soup.  I had to keep soming up with new versions to keep her interested.  See what I mean?  Twerp.

I know there are people thinking that her problems are my fault because of my new vegan diet but they started two months before I even thought about becoming vegan.  I even had Sailor buy her a gallon of whole milk to drink while I was in Virginia but all it did was give her diaper rash.  I tried cheese when I got home and it did the same thing so she is back to a vegan diet like the rest of the family.

There are three things that usually happen as soon as my babies are weaned.

1. The start sleeping in past 6:00 a.m.
2. They start cuddling with me instead of only wanting me for one thing. Except for Lovely.  She was always a cuddler.
3. They get more interested in table food and start putting on weight.

Sweetness is doing all the above.  Now we just have to wait till her molars come in so we can feed her a big juicy steak.

Kidding!!!  It will just be nice when she can chew a raw carrot like everybody else around here.