A Good Break

School is out.  I'll admit I had a little trepidation about the change in schedule beforehand, but it has been so nice.  We've spent the last couple of days sequestered together with no where to go and nothing formal to do.  Its been so nice just being together after a busy year.  I'm working on planning some summer activities and making a summer routine, as I'm learning that positive speaking on my part hinges partially on how smoothly things function around here.  I'm also working on some awards I saw on this blog (71 Toes) to try positive (free) rewards for good behavior, both things I want them to work on and things they choose to work on (so I can encourage their goals, not just my goals for them).  One of the things I love about these rewards is it encourages the kids to praise their siblings, too, as each week the family discusses the awards together.

Some highlights of the last two days:  shelling fresh peas from our garden, the afternoon light shining through empty emerald-piled husks, reading a heap of stories just because we can, watching the National Spelling Bee with homemade popcorn, and snuggling up with my three year old in a tent in our backyard, watching my six year-old hold a blanket to her nose like when she was a baby, me wondering where the time has gone; the lights from the house glowing faintly through thin khaki tent fabric as we listened to frogs, a pasture sprinkler, quieting neighborhood sounds, and sleepy chat drift off in bleary yawns.

Right Now

I'm so in love with this little boy.

A Perfect Day

I had an epiphany yesterday about what perfection is and what it isn't.

I'm continuously trying to juggle many things.  Sometimes, there are multiples items or people that need my attention right now. 

I used to think perfection, as in everything being perfect all at once-- every one's hair combed, a clean house, delicious healthy dinners, volunteer work, children who've had plenty of quality time playing together like little angels -- was possible.   Then I heard this guy talk about balance, how if we're doing one thing we can't possibly being doing another at the same time (not to say we can't be efficient multi-taskers, but there is still only so much we can do at once).  Which means if I'm out on the golf course perfecting my golf swing, I can't simultaneously be home cleaning and cooking the perfect meal.

Perfection is really...balance; the meaning of balance changing as our circumstances and abilities do.  It's knowing what to prioritize and focus on, sometimes from moment to moment. 

My perfect day today included going to school with no make-up, a shirt with a toothpaste spot on it, and a cute monarch butterfly princess with a tangled mess of blond hair so we could get those teachers their thank you gifts before it was too late; leaving my blog to tidy up before the kids got home; choosing to sit with my son and chat about his day when he said "come on Mom, lets talk about petty things," (he wants to buy a pet) while he enjoyed some last-day-of-school ice cream (I wanted to make cookies, but you know how that turned out) ; choosing to change, feed, and change and feed again--my baby who had woken up unexpectedly; choosing to let everyone entertain themselves for a few minutes while I blogged. 

...Choosing to pull together some leftovers for dinner and tidy up the kitchen before my husband got home; spending a few minutes going through papers my kids brought home from school.  Choosing to leave my dishes so I could snuggle up with my three and six year-old and read stories in jammas.  Stepping over my pile of laundry to rock and sing to my baby, then gaze in wonder at my perfect sleeping creation.  Then coming back to the laundry and dishes for a few minutes, spending a few with my husband, and then off to bed so I can have enough energy for tomorrow. 

If you looked at my life from the outside, you'd see all sorts of imperfect things:  you would have seen a mom with no make-up and a faded shirt with an uncombed child at the school, Miracle Gro waiting on my porch for the third day in a row, toys scattered about, fingerprints on the windows.  But just because it may not look perfect all the time, doesn't mean I didn't do what my perfect was that day.  I wish I could have it all, but the reality is, I have to choose, many times between lots of good things.  And I want to focus on the things that last-- the ones that will make a real difference to my little people and my husband.  Some days that will mean choosing the laundry or the dishes in order to keep balance. But most days, I want to make sure I'm putting first things first: God, husband, kids.  It may not always be pretty, but it can be perfect.  My kind of perfect.

Some links:  Balance and Good, Better, Best

Family Night - Positive Words

I've been loving all I've learned about speaking positively and simultaneously wanting to share some of it with our family.  I feel if we change the way we speak to one another it could potentially revolutionize our whole way of life in a good way (we aren't bad in the way we speak to each other, we do fine, but we can always do better, right?). 

Every Monday night we have a family night.  Some days are better than others and our kids are little enough that lessons need to be short and sweet.  We talked about positive speaking-- I used stories from the examples in this post.  Even though the kids were wiggly and distracted at times I think they enjoyed it.   The best part was telling each other what we like about each other.  We're making these (above, an example of something my son made for me for Mother's Day) today so each child can be reminded of what we think is special about him/her and so we have positive words in reservoir for reminding when we need something nice to say.  :)

Well Filling

Night was falling, and in that sweet blue-ish haze, the moon was clear and bright; I was driving in my little car with the windows down as people switched on the glow of electric lights that diffused golden stars through the twilit night.  Frank Sinatra was singing to a brass band "Fly Me to the Moon."  I had chosen to leave my kids home with my husband while I ran to the store for a few minutes; it refreshed me and reminded me of the list I'd started about things that fill my well, things that keep it full so I can keep trying each day to be a better parent.  Some of the things on my list surprised me:

1.  Time alone
2.  Volunteering at the school
3.  Travel
4.  Exercise
5.  Spending quality time with my kids
6.  Dates with husband
7.  Reading a good book
8.  Blogging
9.  Nostalgia of old pictures/videos
10. Feeling pretty
11.  Being in remote natural places like the mountains or the beach
12.  Playing games late at night with extended family....we love Wildlife Adventure :)
13.  Laughing (see here)...I get a huge lift from listening to Car Talk on NPR just because the guys are so fun, and not because I'm that interested in cars.
14.  Time with friends
15.  Organizing something
16.  Cleaning or cooking can be enjoyable if the circumstances are right
17.  Having a clean house
18.  Any humanitarian work or service
19.  I just learned that I love being involved at the caucus level in politics!  Feel like John Adams for a day while still being a mom the rest of the time. 
20.  Listening to/reading great journalism.  (ie, Wall Street Journal)
21.  Going to church & having a close relationship with God.
22.  Building and using talents-- music is a big one for me

The reason I'm surprised by some of these is that I typically think of well-re-fillers as requiring little work or giving me time away from my responsibilities, but I've noticed that doing meaningful things, like service or time with the kids, actually gives me a huge jolt of happiness and the motivation to be better (if done with balance). 

As part of my project this month I'm working on getting more organized so I can clear the way for some of the more fun things on my list.  I've noticed that organization plays a big part in how positive I can be with my kids: on crazy days or in chaotic moments its much harder to be patient and kind.

What unexpected thing fills your well?

Little Things on a Saturday Morning

Woke up, my hard working husband gone, a cute little baby nestled up to me.  It was as if I forgot in the night I have a baby, and when I woke up it was such a pleasant surprise.

Later he discovered his belly button and mine too.

I discovered that if I blow in his face, his wispy brown hair flutters, he wrinkles his nose and squints his eyes and tips his face back in the cutest smile that shows his gums punctuated by a few little pearly white teeth.

Made a list of positive things about my kids, so I'm armed for some positive talk; I almost cried when my sweet little three year old beamed at the words we wrote about her-- sweet, forgiving, smart.  How have I never noticed how forgiving she is until just now?

Went for a run -- morning was beautiful and fragrant and air humming with insects.  White moths fluttering among bending willow branches.  Busy cyclists in bright pink and orange, a fair announcer echoing, parents holding toddlers on a yellow mini-train. 

On the way back, I looked across a large pasture toward the mountains and thought of all the different runs I've been on in different parts of the world.  For me they have come to symbolize what is great about the life I live right now.  When we lived in England, my son and I had a little "forest" we'd traverse, where we'd look at bugs, he'd stand on protruding roots and say "yah!" and I'd watch the sunlight filter through those beautiful English trees.  I thought life didn't get any better, and I worried that when our time there came to an end, I would leave that behind forever.  Yet in every place we've lived we've found a new walk we love, coming to symbolize that there is something good about each time of life we're in, we just need to find it and appreciate it and soak it in.

Today my baby would crane his neck backward and cheese a broad, grayish-brown-eyed smile through a slit between the bright blue stroller canopy and the stroller itself.  His little legs ended in chubby pointing-out toes, too small to bend with the stroller seat.  I looked out over the pasture, patches of tall red, brown, and green grasses, two horses, a rickety rust train taking its time down the tracks; the mountains, velvet with spring green, pines in tall herds running imperceptibly down the mountain, a rook-shaped piece of snow melting in the peak, and giraffe-spot dapples of shade and light from billowy white clouds. 

I may be working toward a destination but the best part is looking around at what I have right now.  :)

Speaking Positive Words to Kids

I've been researching how words affect people, especially children.  I picked up The Five Love Languages of Children (Chapman, Campbell) again this morning and felt enlightened by what I read.  It inspired me to make a list of "to remembers"-- I'm going to break this up into sections because my list is pretty long.

*  Point out the positive, ignore the negative (as much as possible)... The Power of Positive Parenting (Latham): the behavior I pay attention to, good or bad, will increase. 

*  Encourage....It's my role to help my child become what he/she wants to become, encourage what he or she sees as success and not just what I want him/her to do, otherwise I come off as manipulative and insincere....when the child sees I want what's in his best interest, he will respond better. There are so many inspiring examples of this in history-- I love Winston Churchill encouraging the British to resist Hitler during the Battle of Britain.

*  Tone of voice-- I read in The Lost Art of Listening (Nichols) that tone is key when communicating.  If I start a conversation with an agitated or frustrated or angry tone, it puts people on the defensive and they're less likely to really hear what I say or open up to me.  Kids may be especially sensitive to this.

*  Give targeted compliments-- throwing out too many generalized compliments doesn't fool kids (I shouldn't praise them for a great throw in baseball if it was really only just average) and sets them up for a hard scenario later in life when they need constant positive feedback in order to feel good about themselves (I read about this in the Self Esteem Trap- by Young-Eisendrath).

*  Words are powerful-- we remember them and play them over in our heads for years-- good and bad.  I read somewhere that the little voice we hear in our head as an adult is usually the voice of our mother, for good or ill. 

I found this blog called 71 Toes.  The author is also a mother of five and a great example of positivity in motherhood.  She has some fantastic ideas about building kids up.  I love this idea about writing your kids talents on their fingertips.

What is something positive someone has said to you that you have never forgotten?