Friday, April 13, 2012

Five Minute Friday: Good-bye

The Gypsy Mama gives us a topic and we write for five minutes, unfiltered, no editing, no going back.


Good-bye.

I've been thinking lately about the slow way we say good-bye to our children every day.  As they grow up, needing us in different ways, they start to leave us behind.  And because it is so gradual we never actually stop to say "good-bye."

In fact I'm so busy doing the million other things that need doing, that sometimes I don't even notice until weeks later that something has changed. 

My daughter used to pull a chair over to the sink and stick her little hands in the water everytime I washed the dishes.  It drove me nuts, but part of me loved that she wanted to be right next to me.  She hasn't done this in weeks.

When we moved my three-year old started coming into our room in the middle of the night to snuggle for a few minutes before heading back to his own bed to sleep.  I loved his warm little body curled up next to me.  He's only done it once in the last month, and he climbed into bed on my husband's side. 

My kindergartener...here's where I really see the good-byes coming my way.  I like the quiet of only having two while he's at school, but it's only a couple days a week.  Next year he'll be gone all day, every day.  I will miss him.  So much.  We will have so many fewer opportunities to talk, to play, to hang out. 

I don't like good-byes.  And I'm not good at them.  So maybe it's for the best that so many of these childhood connections pass quietly.  Because as much as I mourn the loss of their baby and toddler days, I know I have so much more to look forward to.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

April's (midmonth?) Goals

When I started writing this post it was the beginning of the month.  But, somehow, I never got around to posting it.  So without further ado, here are the goals I've been working on in April.

The Big Project

April's big project is the garage.  We don't actually park in the garage; I'm not really sure why this is.  What it means though, is that we can just stash stuff out there and then forget about it.  Ben actually got started on this for me earlier in the year so the main area is sort of clear. 

Mostly I need to sort out the junk from the stuff we actually use and want.  There are still a lot of miscellaneous items left from my grandpa and all of the stuff that we moved in with that just sort of got buried.  Some of it will go straight to the garbage, some in the yard sale pile, and whatever Ben says we still need I'll try to find a home for.

One I get the trash separated from the treasure, I actually need to clean the garage.  There are years of cobwebs out there to sweep off the walls.  Sand from the kids' toys needs to be swept out.  I've started by cleaning the door.  It looks much better, and I'm no longer afraid to push it open with my hip when my hands are full. 

The ultimate purpose of all this is so that I can move the ever-expanding pile of garage sale goods out of the basement and start organizing for the actual sale, which will be at the beginning of June.

New Habit to Form:

I considered taking a month off from this to work on maintaining the previous habit-goals I'd set for myself.  I really didn't do very well in March.  Although I continued getting up and showering right away, I bombed on writing in the kids' journals every week, and I wasn't very disciplined in exercising each morning.

But then I glanced over my master plan, which has ideas from which to draw these monthly goals and I realized that if I want these ealier habits to truely stick, it was time to begin working on another one:  Go To Bed On Time.

I'm so very bad at this.  I used to go to bed at ten or just a bit after every night.  But when there is no one here to go to bed with, I tend to find all sorts of little things that need to be taken care of before I head upstairs.  So while I think I'm going to bed at ten or so, by the time I'm actually in bed turning out the light it's after eleven.  Which just isn't enough sleep for me. 

I'm attempting to get my bedtime back to the 10 to 10:30 range.  That should make getting up in the morning easier.  And then instead of just stretching in the morning, I could sneak out of the house for  an early morning walk as the weather gets nicer and the sun rises earlier.

Mid-Month Confession

Since almost half the month has already slipped by, I will admit right now that I'm flat-out failing on the going to bed earlier business.  Last night I turned off the light at 10:50.  But I was up at 6:30 this morning, if that counts for anything.  Here's to improving my discipline over the next couple of weeks.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

My March Goals Results

My big goal for March was to paint Anna's room.  The blue-grey wallboard was not doing it for me when it came to my little girl's room.  So to cheer it up a bit I chose a creamy beige that makes the room feel much warmer and complements all her little pictures and knick knacks.




Thanks to my mother watching the little kids while Nick was in school one day, this was a success.    Everything got one good coat and 3+ walls got a thin second coat.  Unfortuantly, I then ran out of paint.  The blue splotches show through in the area behind the crib and wall hanging, so if I ever rearrange or redecorate I'm going to have to spring for some more paint to do a cover up. 


I was also supposed to be developing the habit of exercising daily.  I started out a little slow, but was into it by the second week.  The time change actually helped me fit it in each day because the boys were sleeping in a little later than they had been previously.  Then we had the most beautiful weather the next week.  It is so much easier to get out of bed when I don't start shivering as soon as I throw the covers back!

But then last week we returned to regular March-like weather and getting out of bed in the morning got a lot harder.  And then my in-laws were visiting for a few days.  And here we are in April. 

So while I wasn't successful at keeping up with this every day, I did learn that I like a little warm-up first thing in the morning.  I actually missed it on the days I didn't do it.  Even though ten minutes seems a little pathetic, it really made a difference in the beginning of my day.  My body felt awake and prepared to get going.  I didn't stand in the shower half asleep.  And since I liked it I don't think it's going to be too hard to get back on track and keep this as a daily routine.