All posts in Do I Call It Parenting Advice?

Killer Time Management for Busy Families (Marriage Mondays)

by admin on September 7, 2010 in Better Check Out Blogs, Bits Of My Personality, Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Marriage Monday with No comments

Do less…
I picked this topic out of the choices given because it has been specifically something I am working through of late. With school starting up again everything else kicks in to gear; church and social opportunities as well as activities for the kids and the parents. I was full of anxiety as time eaters invaded my schedule. There was going to be no time for mistakes, the little things, LIFE…

As a single income family of six in the city I find we struggle with the temptation to try to keep up with the culture around us. Financial damage is NOT worth taking on in order to put ourselves out there more. Family time equals family health and this highly valuable commodity must be fought for now a days. Personally I just can’t take a crazy pace either. It quickly becomes to much for me and I hate missing the moment while I rush to another moment. Time is so precious and so easily taken away from a family.

Less in more in my world… The simple life is to be sought… Over and over we must remember it isn’t the rat race we want to join but the race that Paul talks about, that race to the finish line, that race with Jesus.

With all these things heavy on our hearts my husband and I chose this year to do less then others expect of us. It isn’t easy and goes against the energy outside our front door, the cultural mind set that pushes and pulls with its demands on a family. Our main activity this year is to seek out more time to be, time to be for all six members of the family.

TIME, handle with care!

P.S. Check out this link to a post I put up in the middle of our amazing summer, it relates, and is about all the fun to be had when you have an abundance of time to do nothing really!

TTFN

Looking for Seeds and Not Just the Weeds

by admin on August 18, 2010 in Bits Of My Personality, Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Life Keeps Changing, Mama Heart Mushings with 2 Comments
(My boy having a good look at the camp scenery and also his first taste of real freedom from Mom and Dad!)

It was good for Big Girl that I let her experience a week away at camp first, she is the oldest after all but I am glad that Big Boy has also gotten to have his first week away this year. He could hardly sleep the night before sports camp and was the perfect helper in the morning. He practically loaded all his stuff and his three siblings into the van with out my help. We got there early and so he got first pick of the beds! A big deal in the world of camp!

Almost the moment he was gone I was thinking about what a wonderful boy he is (in a haze of mama mush and heart sick loneliness with one fewer child around). You could say I was seeing him in a rose colored light and could only think of how lovely he is as a helper around the house and what a gentleman he is when we go out together.

While I know none of my children are perfect, and wouldn’t want to place the weight of such a silly notion on there little shoulders, I think it is so healthy for a mommy to think about the qualities growing in their children’s souls. It is important to look for and be thankful for the seeds of love and quality sprouting in their hearts. With kiddo chaos easy to find and troubles ready to spring up like weeds daily it can be really hard to remember each child is a special little gift from God. Instead it becomes all to easy to see them as a herd of animals out to get their parents.

Thank you Jesus for each of my babies and may they grow in you and for you!

TTFN

Patience and A Trip North

by admin on August 10, 2010 in Adventure and Me, Bits Of My Personality, Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Four Little Eggs In My Nest with 1 Comment
(Just me and my four babies on a big northern adventure!)

If parenting isn’t the perfect opportunity to learn more patience then I don’t know what is. I feel like I am always choosing to be patient or to wig out but every now and then there is a chance to step into an obvious opportunity to practice patience. It looks big and can either be a disaster or a victory. Heading north to my folks for a week with out my man was such an opportunity. Four kids, one mommy. Now I am no fool so I went at this challenge with some help. I had a plan and I wasn’t afraid to stack the odds more in my favor (as apposed to anarchy’s favor). My beast van (I call it that because it is large) was newly equipped with a DVD player. I had a cooler full of snacks and each child had a lap table to color on, books and a back pack of toys.

Even so… patience was required and I decided early on I was going to have to just pace myself, slow down and embrace kid speed. Good thing I was realistic! A six hour road trip turned into almost a nine hour one.

The kids found every reason possible, and invented some too I am sure, to pull the van over. We had potty breaks, snack breaks, emotional break downs… put a new movie in breaks, restart said movie breaks, I don’t like movie and have changed my mind breaks… On one such occasion my oldest was standing next to the van with me. This stop was hard for me, we had barely started driving after the last one and where only minutes from a city and could have stop some where nicer once there. She looked at me and with a big smile said ‘Traveling is exciting!’ Shucks, that makes it worth while! She is having a good time, they all are… so I should too… so I did.

We stopped a few times just to let the kids run. I invented some relay games and got them running so many laps they where more then happy to get back in the van. We ate our fill of cheese strings, peanuts, yogurt tubes and triple chocolate chip cookies. They watched and I listened to a couple movies and I even got to listen to some of my favorite road tunes: TFK, Toby Mac, Jill Barber and Mikey Bubbles (Guess who that is!? My man gave him that nickname) among others.It was all worth it. When we arrived at my parents acreage in the valley, surrounded by trees and bedrock I wasn’t even over whelmed. We where excited and in good spirits. All of us where thinking about beach days and lazy afternoons, fresh air and adventure.Everyone cautions you about asking for more patience but the fact is you are a happier person once you accept the gift it holds.

TTFN

Rock Climbing

by admin on July 1, 2010 in Adventure and Me, Better Check Out Blogs, Better Check Out Links, Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Four Little Eggs In My Nest, Mama Heart Mushings with 1 Comment
I can’t decide if she faced a giant or not!

My girl has many things she is too cautious about. I wonder if it is being the first born that will often make her very standoffish and mistrusting? She has many things that get her easily worked up and even afraid and so way back we started encouraging her to fan the flame of the areas in life she was brave about.

Like every little woman, she is braver then she thinks.

When she started standing up in class (randomly) and sharing songs and poems she had written we knew she had a spark of bravery and thankfully she is now in a fine arts school where she is encouraged in those areas.

When she was almost two she started climbing everything in sight. She could shimmy up her bunk bed no problem and started sleeping on the top at a very young age. She worked on the monkey bars, starting in kindergarten, so determinedly that she had callouses and raw patches on her hands and had to be forced to take a few days off of them to let the raw spots heal.Yesterday night was family adventure night. We had ice cream and burgers then watched Big Girl try something she has been dreaming about for a while, rock climbing! Lynn Hill has entered into conversation a lot lately. Check the link to her blog, she is a well known climber and my girl thinks she is pretty great. Well Big Girl got a little bit of a taste of Lynn’s world last night and she LIKED IT! It was wonderful to see her impressed with her own abilities and not holding back but getting up there.

(The other three sat at the bottom JUST MESMERIZED!
Baby Boy kept pointing and saying ‘Uh Oh!’)

TTFN

Summer Days, Soccer Craze!

by admin on June 25, 2010 in Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Four Little Eggs In My Nest, My Romance with No comments
The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn’t move, kick it until it does.
~Phil Woosnam, 1974

Soccer is a BLESSING!
Because it gets our family together!

Garnet and I where just having a calm cup of tea on the patio together while the kids played when all of a sudden I was on my own because a soccer match broke out! Only on my own long enough to sit and take a few pictures and then join in. It just so happens that we always seem to have a rip roaring good time as a family when we have a good soccer match in the yard.

(The crowd is wild!! Well maybe not… eventually they got involved in the game too and then they got pretty wild. No more side lines for these two babes of mine. Just last year they could only watch!)

(I always love to see my man with the kids. He is very good at playing with them and I appreciate the effort he puts into that!)(Baby Boy is fearless about getting right in there, as you can see… the problem is he often just wants the ball and once he has it he will run off the field with the other players in hot pursuit!)
(Little Woman is yelling out the rules, just like her role model Big Girl would. She makes her sister proud!)

We laugh so hard and play so hard together! Summer days are here! My older two will be home any minute now from their last day of school… school might be officially over today but we have already been intoxicated with the joy of summer for some time!

Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world.
~Ada Louise Huxtable

TTFN

A Little Elbow Grease!

by admin on June 23, 2010 in Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Four Little Eggs In My Nest with 1 Comment

Can it get any cuter? Both my girls scrubbing away at the tub and with great enthusiasm! I was frustrated with how all of their toiletry habits had slacked off lately and so I decided a good dose of cleaning the bathroom would enlighten them to the necessity of toiletry manners. How was I to know that they would get a kick out of it and actually enjoy it?

The girls took it very seriously and kept checking, by rubbing the tub wall, to see it the ‘gunk’ was gone and then they took turns using the spritzer bottle because it was so fun it had to be shared. By the way, that is my all natural home made cleaning product so I know it will not hurt them to get it on themselves as they work.

Started in the tub but pretty soon they had cleaned up the sink, floor and even the toilet! All was done with a sing song. Little Woman kept saying ‘it is like we are princesses’, I am assuming she means Cinderella (he he he). Big Girl took the opportunity to write more songs and practice them in the bathroom acoustics. The reverb in a bathroom is so handy, who can resist it? Gives you the chance to learn pitch control.

I know, it all sounds like a mother’s fairytale but once they where done they actually asked if it could be there job! They where so proud of themselves! Everything was so shiny and they had done it all by themselves! I am finding more and more you don’t need to punish your kids with chores… put a little faith in them, give them a crack at it and you will find a little confident princess or two at the end.

P.s. I strongly believe in boys learning good house cleaning too and although Big Boy managed to fall asleep and skip the job he got away with nothing. I have three bathrooms and there was plenty of work in the other two waiting for him the next day.

TTFN

Pedicures for My Girls

by admin on June 5, 2010 in Dem Kids Sayed WHAT?, Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Mama Heart Mushings with 2 Comments
(See the heart? Cute!)

Seed was planted when I read a fellow blogger’s post about her girls playing SPA. Memory was triggered by my sister asking if I wanted to get a pedi done with her. I realised I had bought a pedi set a while back to share with my girls and hadn’t broke it in yet!
Last night was the night! Big Boy was at his grandparents, Baby Boy was stuck to Daddy (shadowing him all over the house) so Big Girl and Little Woman and I had a spa night!

It is a lot of work, by the way! Basins filled with warm water for the minty foot soak and all the other supplies to gather up, spa music selected and put on for mood, girl-y magazines to add to the feel and I felt ready to pamper them.

They soaked for 15 minutes and then I used a sea salt scrub thingy on their feet, but they where so ticklish it was a short scrub. Enjoyed the laughter though!


Once their feet where pretty and clean I set up the nail station. Nails where trimmed and cleaned.
Choosing color for their toes was by far their favorite part!


When it was all done their little toes looked so cute together! Big Girl went with a pattern of the blue and pink and Little Woman just wanted blue.


Waiting for the paint to dry was worth it! Once finished Daddy said they smelled like mint-y cake. They couldn’t help smelling their feet off and on for the rest of the evening. “Mmmmm, my feet smell like pizza.” insisted Little Woman, she says everything smells like pizza lately.

Spa night worked out great! They where quiet and relaxed the whole time (other then the giggling out bursts during the sea salt scrub) and it really mellowed them out for the rest of the night.

Busy fussing with them, my toes remain unpainted and I do not have clean soft feet that smell like mint-y cake… BUT my spa treatment was to put the crew to bed and sit down to a cup of tea, some treats just for Mommy and a post card from my oldest sister to read. All in all a lovely girls night!
TTFN

Easter

by admin on April 5, 2010 in Bits Of My Personality, Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Holiday Messages, My Year of Right Sacrifice-TIME with 1 Comment

Well… Garnet and I aren’t the type who go all out for holidays. We try to make them sweet and special for the kids but in our hearts we are just the kind of people who aren’t big on dates.

Easter… I stood in isles of chocolates and spring colored STUFF yesterday till I got a headache. I then went and found some fair trade chocolates at another location and ‘sigh’ that was enough for me. I find a lot of it ways heavy on me. This makes me all the more thankful that the kids get to enjoy the run around hunt in there grandparents back yard and the treats once in the house, the beautiful ham their grandmother loving made them and the pretty dresses and handsome spring colored outfits they get to wear all day without the heaviness of understanding that a parent feels as they wade through the commercialization of it all.

Easter aside, I love Jesus. My chest feels heavy with emotion as I consider what he did on the cross and the heaviness lifts as soon as I think of him lifting forth from the grave three days later.

As I walk through this year, having felt it was labeled ‘Right Sacrifice’, I am aware of the importance of reflecting on the cross. I am also a bit surprised that this time of year didn’t jump out more at me because of my years label but I think this will make me reflect all the more the rest of the year and grow in thankfulness, all the more, for Jesus and his PERFECT example of sacrifice.

Garnet and I sat the kids down today, before we went off to our entertaining Easter events, and we told them a little about what we think of when Easter arrives, meaning we told them a little about our Jesus. I hope seeds of love where planted that will spring forth in time.

Happy Easter, have a lovely spring:)

TTFN

Two Down

by admin on April 1, 2010 in Bits Of My Personality, Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Four Little Eggs In My Nest, Mama Heart Mushings with No comments

Always lovely to watch you kids succeed at those BIG lessons in life (wink). Perhaps tying shoes isn’t a big big deal but it is one of those life lessons that makes a Mama proud.

Big Girl wasn’t allowed to start grade one without knowing how to tie her shoes. It took a couple days of hard work before she was doing it with ease. That was a different school with different rules and this year I must admit I didn’t worry about my boy doing the same for his grade one year. He got Velcro shoes again in the fall but it is spring and he already needs bigger shoes. I bought him laced up shoes that are so cool he really wanted to master it.

I showed him a bit each day for the last couple days but I must admit I wasn’t as in to it with him as with Big Girl last year and kind of expected him to figure it out, especially with Big Girl trying to give lessons as well.

Yesterday, out of the blue, he came bounding up to me and proclaimed he new how to tie his shoes! I was surprised, that morning we had had trouble getting them done in time to catch the bus. He sat right down and did both shoes quick as could be.

“Wow, how did you do that?” I asked him.

“Madame taught me!” (that is what he calls his French immersion teacher).

Well I hugged him and praised him for being so smart and sighed with relief that I didn’t have to be the hero this time… let the teacher do the teaching! She must know what she is doing;)

After all, it takes a village to raise a child right?! I appreciate people who take honest and caring interest in my kids. He has such a lovely teacher.

TTFN

Contraband Carbs

by admin on March 31, 2010 in Do I Call It Parenting Advice?, Four Little Eggs In My Nest with 2 Comments
Food Fight!
Not the throw it around kind but the battle for the stomach and future health of my child kind!(We make our baby food around here but the above picture is one of the tricks for feeding Baby Boy that worked for me for a while, before he became a carb junkie. I would make baby food and then put it in clean jars so he thought he was getting something special.)

We have implemented a contraband on all carbs into our home… correction, all simple carbohydrates, starches really.

This is a serious intervention on behalf of our youngest. Baby Boy is a bread addict. He would eat nothing but starch foods all day. Don’t even get me started on crackers… he is a nut for crackers! If he even sees someone having one or spots a box of them he freaks out, yelling for one. With all this junk easy at hand he often gets what he wants and I have noticed his sleep, mood and diet have suffered greatly as a result. Time to step in!

For the last two days we have all had to go without for his sake. It has been tough. At first he thought he would win and just not eat but today he realised he was hungry and finally tried some of the protein and veggie items I was setting before him. THIS IS HUGE, he usually flatly refuses to even try none starch items! Anyone who has had a one year old knows you can’t make them eat stuff by force but you can take away all they want till they have to eat what remains (the good stuff). I am hopeful this will continue to go well. Watching him down the scrambled eggs lased with veggies tonight made me enthusiastic about a healthier well rounded diet future for my boy.

P.s. You should have seen the sad faces at the table last night when I informed them all they would be eating their stew without crackers in support of our cracker addict.

TTFN

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