peelosophy

I’m pregnant!  And we are SO excited!  And I’m incredibly nauseous all day.  And we can’t wait to meet #4!  And I can barely keep my eyes open all day.

So that’s where I’m at  – somewhere between overjoyed and throwing up in my mouth.  I’m sure that will reflect in my blogging commitments for the next several weeks.

The first items in my binder are my routines.  They are divided up into morning, afternoon, and evening. Each on it’s own page.

I know to some people it sounds silly, but I do refer to these everyday.  Especially as a distracted mom, I can start something and then be interrupted by my sweet boys a gazillion times before I actually get my original task completed.

Or sometimes I am so tired, especially at night, that I can’t even think straight to know what to do next — my routines allow me to function on auto-pilot.

If you want to download my routines and change them for yourself, you can download this file: Jill’s Routines

I have another friend that writes out her daily routines.  She doesn’t separate them into 3 categories but it works great for her – she just has one list for the day.  Another thing I love about hers is that she puts in reminders to take time to do something sweet for her husband or spend some quality time with her kiddos.  I think this is so important because sometimes I am so busy “managing” that I forget about the most important things.

I believe routines are what you make of them.  The trick is to follow them.  I would suggest starting small, maybe just start with three things.  Also, they don’t have to be in a binder like mine, they could be posted in your kitchen or anywhere you can see them on a regular basis.  The final suggestion, is if you break them up into three times of day like I did, just work on one routine at a time.  For example,  just focus on your evening routine for a month, then move on to include your morning routine too.

I hope this makes sense!

Here’s a sample of FlyLady’s routines here.

We had a fun week and had a couple of field trips including Simon’s birthday party at the Magic House and a trip to the Rocket Park.

We only did tray time 2x this week, mostly because of my lack of motivation.  The days we do tray time, it engages the kiddos and makes our day go so much smoother.  (more on my tiredness and lack of motivation in another post)  This week I am going to try and be more diligent about it.

We worked on our B pages of our ABC Book, inspired by Totally Tots,  that we are slowly compiling.  And over the weekend, the boys helped Daddy with the retaining wall around the playground and helped me plant flowers.

Here are our pictures…

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I have to admit I didn’t think spring would come and actually stay this year.  But I think we have arrived.  Finally.

Welcome to the season of dirty knees!  We are glad to be here.

I have decided to do a series of posts on my Binder. Some friends have inquired about it and wondered how to make one of their own.  First of all, I have to give credit to FlyLady whose modeling and inspiration is where this idea comes from originally. Although mine may not look exactly like FlyLady’s Control Journal, it is essentially the same thing.

History….I’ve had my binder for 6 years now and it is a living thing that changes when our needs as a family change.  I started it when I started following the Flylady group when I first got married.  I had a Binder at home and a smaller one at work that helped me be much more productive at work.  Now, as a stay at home mom, it has changed with each new kid and gets tweaked by me (or on nudging by John) when needed.

My issues…FlyLady calls hers a “Control Journal.”  I used to call mine the same, but then I realized that my to-do list, routines, and my false sense of control was becoming a “god” to me.  Let me explain.  At the end of the day, I found myself judging if I had a good day by how much I got done.   By if the kids were doing what I said.   If I got dinner on the table. If my “systems” worked on my behalf.  It was a whole myriad of little things that dictated if I had a good day and ultimately, if I had control over my day.  When I realized this, it was a sick feeling.  I was getting my affirmation from my own evaluations and my systems, instead of from God.  So the long of the short of it, is that I don’t call it my Control Journal, because for me, I have a control problem – so it’s just my Binder.

My Binder sits open on my kitchen counter 24/7.  Friends come over, look at it, question it and show interest in it and I become bashful.  I don’t really know why I am like this about my Binder.  It might be because some of the items on my routines are so trite, it’s embarrassing that there are some days I need to look at it.  For example, brush my teeth or eat lunch.  It might be because it seems to me, such a nerdy thing to have.  Why would I have all this stuff in an adult “trapper keeper” on my kitchen counter? Or it might be because that managing my home, seems like such a “natural thing” for women to just know how to do and for me it is not.  Or a little bit of all these things.

So, for me, I am baring all in this series of posts in hopes that it may help or encourage someone else.  I’ll go through page by page of what is in my Binder,  link to the pages that you can download and make your own.  More to come….

Conversation between me and Kim…

Kim was talking about how she was going to homeschool Tyler for preschool.

Me: “Oh, I could never homeschool, I’d go crazy , I’m not organized enough, etc”

Kim: “Jill, you DO home school your boys.”

Me: “Oh, I guess I do.”

I never think of it as homeschooling.

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We get so much of “all your boys look so much alike” – I never see it.

I have never had their pictures taken professionally.  The main reasons are because I don’t  want to go to Sears or the like, the photographers that I would want to take their pictures are more than I want to spend – especially because I would want them photographed once a year at least.  So I’m not doing it for now, but we do take a ton of pictures at home, and those are the ones that I love from my albums growing up – just the simple snapshots.

One of the consistent pictures I have taken off all of them is each in the duck robe at 3 months old.  Can you guess who’s who…scroll over the picture with your mouse to get the answer.

I’ve tried  journaling before and it just doesn’t work for me.  Maybe it’s perfectionism, maybe it’s the fact that when you write something down somehow it’s more permanent or maybe it’s that I don’t feel the need to look back on my past.  Another thing,  is the idea of a journal to me is a commitment that I may not keep be able to keep up with on a regular basis.  So my solution no journal =  no guilt.  I known I’m warped.

On the other other hand, I am “in my head” a lot and like to chew on ideas but I have a bad memory – so I need to write things down.  Long story short, this is where my little books come in.  I was originally given one of these books from one of my long-time mentors, Sue, her idea was to use it as a prayer journal b/c it’s small enough to keep with you and you can pull it out whenever.  I did use it for this purpose in the beginning, but then it evolved into hold scripture, quotes, ideas, reflection questions – basically anything I wanted to remember and take more time to digest.

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Easter yesterday started with crazy but overall was a ton of fun.  I try to keep pretty low expectations for holidays mainly for my sanity.  I’ve found if I have no expectations of how the boys behave or how smoothly everything thing will go b/c of my “perfect planning” – things will go okay.

This year, I did have expectations – well one really – that the boys wear the ties that I made them for the day.  All week, I talked up the ties, they picked out their own fabric for their own tie…I thought I was on easy street.

John worked sound for church Sunday morning so he was out the door at 8am.  No biggie, I was prepared to get them ready myself and had John tie the ties so I just had to put them over their heads and tighten them.  Henry and George were easy…JJ threw the biggest fit about wearing a button-up shirt and a tie.  I NEVER make him wear stuff, he always gets to pick out his own clothes, so I didn’t understand why this one day he couldn’t do this “for me”.  I was ticked, at one point I actually said, “You are going to wear this friggin’ tie and it’s going to be cute!” Not one of most admirable mom-moments.  He got in the van with his Trans Am t-shirt, I was over it.

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I love that we have been doing different traditions with each of the grandparents.  For example, for Christmas it’s making cookies with Grandma (Peel) and going to see the lights at Our Lady of the Snows with Gramie and Pops (Csengody)  At Easter, egg dying is done at Grandmas and today was the day.  Even George and Allison got in on the action!  Check it out…I love the pudgy fingers in the egg dye.