I'm Ready for Routines

 I'm resting a lot.

We're being lazy about bedtimes and meal times and waking times.

There's a lot that's good about that . . . but . . . *sigh* . . . I'm ready for a more regular life.

We still have our Morning Meetings.
We still sit down as a family for dinner and family prayer each evening (at least most of the time).
We still do chores and math and read together as many evenings as possible.

It's time for more.

I realized this week just how absent I've been from my children.  

Physically present.
Mentally absent.

Planning, choreographing, resting, organizing, studying, errand running . . . they're all things I do for my family.  (Yes, even the resting!)  But I don't interact with them as much when I'm doing these things as I do when we're in our school routine.

I'm glad I have lots of reading together and activities planned to do with the kids, so that I'm more mentally present with them.

More eye contact.
More listening.
More laughing.
More encouraging.
More connecting.

(And, of course, this also means more correction, more frustration, and more conflict!  Let's assume it's all worth it.)

This week I worked on our curriculum plans and choreography for American Rhythm.

The kids did a lot of last-week-of-summer-break pottering around.

One of Brother's chores for the year is making our breakfast oatmeal.  I love that he's using the time it takes for the water to boil to do his personal scripture reading.

Lots of puzzles this week!!

Brother's main activity was making his own set of piano note flashcards.

Little Princess is so good at teaching small assistants how to help in the kitchen.

Notice the upper left corner.  🙂 Ladybug won a fabulous game of hide-and-seek!

The six tweens/teens went to a swim party on Wednesday night.

Little Princess studied for her CAP Mitchell award exam all week.

She led some PT drills at her CAP weekly meeting while the other five tweens/teens attended youth activities at church.

Nature Angel and Little Princess had a friend over for what their friend calls Yin and Yang.  This means they had great snacks while watching a bad movie. 🤣🤣🤣

Sir Walter Scott took the kids to a park for some "baseball."  (The quotation marks are because it is a baseball derivative that they invented themselves.)

We had our first American Rhythm rehearsal.


It went extremely well!!

I have great hope for this year. 

Sir Walter Scott and I celebrated our 26th anniversary.  


The kids banded together to give us a gift of enough cash for dinner and a treat.  (I'm still dying over their sweet gesture.)  We picked up our food, took it to a park and interviewed each other.  

It was quite fun!  We didn't need to fall in love again, but the prompts got us thinking and talking in ways we'd lost over the years because our day-to-day routine is to talk about kids, finances, work, and church service.  We made plans for the rapidly approaching years ahead when we won't be deep in hands-on child-rearing (even though we will probably be actively helping several of our children in their adulting).

But that's for later.

Starting on Tuesday, I'm going to have my hands very full helping kids with school this year!

Comments

  1. MarilynSeptember 2, 2024 at 6:43 AM

    (Wow! The computer is letting me comment for once! I have tried so many times, only to have something in my settings thwart me😡) Anyway, I totally feel this too. The constant tug between doing things FOR my family and doing things WITH my family. I think I too often fall too much on the side of doing things FOR them, and I miss out, like you said, on all those good things--eye contact, listening, encouraging. This post makes me want to recommit to more of that.

    ReplyDelete

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