For about a week now I've had an unbelievable amount of productivity! As you may have noticed by my last post, I was looking around online for ways to be more productive at home, and less like a chicken with its head cut off! For months I've been trying to figure out how other people do it... do anything! I couldn't seem to keep the cleaning done well, or dinner on the table, or get my baby to sleep the way other babies do. But somehow, it all finally clicked for me. I think it was a combination of people telling me a few things all around the same time.
The first person was my neighbor Jessica who has 4 children (4 beautiful wonderful sweet children). I told her about a baby that I babysat that just laid down and went to sleep the moment I put him in his crib. It was actually super strange to me, but he was just 10 days younger than mine so I was really getting into the comparison game. Jessica told me: "Stop." And something to the affect of, you can't compare kids, they're all different and you just do what you need to do with yours. I've heard that before but I think just spending a couple hours with her and processing some of the things I'd been thinking out loud really helped.
Then, again talking about sleep stuff... by the way, why is it that our culture is so wrapped up about getting babies to sleep on a schedule? Personally, I've never been that good at sleeping when I don't want to, and my husband is worse than me... he said he read that if you can't fall asleep in a certain amount of time (was it 20 min?) you should get up and do something for a while and try again later... so why not babies? And what's up with this early to bed early to rise stuff with babies?
Well a couple weeks ago I was getting really wrapped up in that culture too and getting very frustrated. Finally my husband talked with me about it and helped me realize that I do things my own way usually and that works out pretty well for me and baby. That night I relaxed on the getting her to sleep BY EIGHT O'CLOCK OR ELSE (okay there wasn't really an "or else") and as it turned out she went to sleep pretty much 30 minutes later; most likely because I was finally relaxing so she could too. And per my husband's suggestion I've been just going with my gut when it comes to helping her get a good night sleep. I'm not doing it one way or the other any more but just the way God's geared me to do it naturally. It's been awesome. I've also realized that sure, she goes to bed later than most kiddo's but she also wakes up late... not many mom's of babies can sleep in till 8:30! So it kinda evens out right?
A third person to help me out was a surprise to me: a Fashion Consultant! At MOPS a woman came in to talk to the mom's about fashion, something I simply am not interested in at the moment. But as she spoke she spoke about the advantages of just getting ready in the morning. It can really make you feel better about your day and when someone calls you up to do something last minute, you aren't still in your PJ's at 4pm smelling pretty bad, but rather put together and ready to go. So I've been taking the initiative to get up at a certain time in the morning BEFORE the baby even gets up (that's hard for me as she has been my only alarm clock for the past year). So I've been getting up, getting ready, drinking coffee, eating breakfast, having some reading time, and feeling great! Even with a little less sleep it makes me feel so much more alive all day long! I've even had a better temper with my family and been like I said, more productive!
A fourth person.. or group of people rather, is a group of ladies I meet with from church. We were talking about spiritual disciplines and I realized that not only am I not very spiritually disciplined but I'm just not disciplined in many areas at all... in other words I can be pretty lazy. Even when I don't want to be lazy, it just kinda happens- I get discouraged when I can't do something the right way and throw in the towel... lazy. So I asked them to pray for me to be more disciplined to wake up before the family and get my day started right. I'm going to assume they were disciplined in praying for me as God has really been daily nudging me to do it.
I tend to follow what other people do because I don't think I'm very good at creating structure, but pretty good at following it. So for a long time I've been using Google to help me find what other mom's do to keep a nice household and cook and spend time with their kids. But I just wasn't finding anything that worked. So I again thought of what my husband said about how I am good at doing my own thing so I decided to create my own system of house hold work! I have a check list of things to do every day that I print out and put on the fridge. It is not completely detailed when it comes to cleaning because there are some days I want to get out of the house because someone called me up out of the blue to hang out, or I found out about a good story time, or I need to run to the grocery store... so many things keep me from having routine, but I love those things! While all the blogs I found suggested "bathroom on Tuesday, bedroom Wednesday..." I realized that wouldn't work for me.
So I printed out checklists of how to clean each room in the house. Why checklists? Well they work for NASA and they work for me. I like just going down a list and doing what it tells me to do without skipping steps. I laminated the check list sheets and put them in a folder. As I find time (usually Baby's nap time) I go to the folder and take the sheet in front, complete the list and put it in the back. If I have time I'll do a second sheet. But this keeps the rooms continuously cleaned throughout the week while giving me the flexibility to just take a break for a day without messing up my whole week. Another bonus is that if my husband wants to help out on a day off, he can just grab the next sheet and complete it quickly- making me feel happy and (hopefully) he feels like he's really helped out- because he did! If we keep it up, maybe even the kid(s) will get to grab a sheet and help out around the house too.
So that's my method that has made me super happy this week! I hope it sticks. If you want to see pictures of what I'm talking about, let me know and I'll post them. BUT why don't you invent a system of your own that makes you feel great too? :)
My biggest take away from this is fellowship. Without people to talk things through with and give me feed back, I don't think that I could grow at all. Sometimes growth hurts, but really today I'm feeling some of the pain is worth it! Oh wait... I didn't tell you about the pain part! Well, that's for another blog I guess :)
The first person was my neighbor Jessica who has 4 children (4 beautiful wonderful sweet children). I told her about a baby that I babysat that just laid down and went to sleep the moment I put him in his crib. It was actually super strange to me, but he was just 10 days younger than mine so I was really getting into the comparison game. Jessica told me: "Stop." And something to the affect of, you can't compare kids, they're all different and you just do what you need to do with yours. I've heard that before but I think just spending a couple hours with her and processing some of the things I'd been thinking out loud really helped.
Then, again talking about sleep stuff... by the way, why is it that our culture is so wrapped up about getting babies to sleep on a schedule? Personally, I've never been that good at sleeping when I don't want to, and my husband is worse than me... he said he read that if you can't fall asleep in a certain amount of time (was it 20 min?) you should get up and do something for a while and try again later... so why not babies? And what's up with this early to bed early to rise stuff with babies?
Well a couple weeks ago I was getting really wrapped up in that culture too and getting very frustrated. Finally my husband talked with me about it and helped me realize that I do things my own way usually and that works out pretty well for me and baby. That night I relaxed on the getting her to sleep BY EIGHT O'CLOCK OR ELSE (okay there wasn't really an "or else") and as it turned out she went to sleep pretty much 30 minutes later; most likely because I was finally relaxing so she could too. And per my husband's suggestion I've been just going with my gut when it comes to helping her get a good night sleep. I'm not doing it one way or the other any more but just the way God's geared me to do it naturally. It's been awesome. I've also realized that sure, she goes to bed later than most kiddo's but she also wakes up late... not many mom's of babies can sleep in till 8:30! So it kinda evens out right?
A third person to help me out was a surprise to me: a Fashion Consultant! At MOPS a woman came in to talk to the mom's about fashion, something I simply am not interested in at the moment. But as she spoke she spoke about the advantages of just getting ready in the morning. It can really make you feel better about your day and when someone calls you up to do something last minute, you aren't still in your PJ's at 4pm smelling pretty bad, but rather put together and ready to go. So I've been taking the initiative to get up at a certain time in the morning BEFORE the baby even gets up (that's hard for me as she has been my only alarm clock for the past year). So I've been getting up, getting ready, drinking coffee, eating breakfast, having some reading time, and feeling great! Even with a little less sleep it makes me feel so much more alive all day long! I've even had a better temper with my family and been like I said, more productive!
A fourth person.. or group of people rather, is a group of ladies I meet with from church. We were talking about spiritual disciplines and I realized that not only am I not very spiritually disciplined but I'm just not disciplined in many areas at all... in other words I can be pretty lazy. Even when I don't want to be lazy, it just kinda happens- I get discouraged when I can't do something the right way and throw in the towel... lazy. So I asked them to pray for me to be more disciplined to wake up before the family and get my day started right. I'm going to assume they were disciplined in praying for me as God has really been daily nudging me to do it.
I tend to follow what other people do because I don't think I'm very good at creating structure, but pretty good at following it. So for a long time I've been using Google to help me find what other mom's do to keep a nice household and cook and spend time with their kids. But I just wasn't finding anything that worked. So I again thought of what my husband said about how I am good at doing my own thing so I decided to create my own system of house hold work! I have a check list of things to do every day that I print out and put on the fridge. It is not completely detailed when it comes to cleaning because there are some days I want to get out of the house because someone called me up out of the blue to hang out, or I found out about a good story time, or I need to run to the grocery store... so many things keep me from having routine, but I love those things! While all the blogs I found suggested "bathroom on Tuesday, bedroom Wednesday..." I realized that wouldn't work for me.
So I printed out checklists of how to clean each room in the house. Why checklists? Well they work for NASA and they work for me. I like just going down a list and doing what it tells me to do without skipping steps. I laminated the check list sheets and put them in a folder. As I find time (usually Baby's nap time) I go to the folder and take the sheet in front, complete the list and put it in the back. If I have time I'll do a second sheet. But this keeps the rooms continuously cleaned throughout the week while giving me the flexibility to just take a break for a day without messing up my whole week. Another bonus is that if my husband wants to help out on a day off, he can just grab the next sheet and complete it quickly- making me feel happy and (hopefully) he feels like he's really helped out- because he did! If we keep it up, maybe even the kid(s) will get to grab a sheet and help out around the house too.
So that's my method that has made me super happy this week! I hope it sticks. If you want to see pictures of what I'm talking about, let me know and I'll post them. BUT why don't you invent a system of your own that makes you feel great too? :)
My biggest take away from this is fellowship. Without people to talk things through with and give me feed back, I don't think that I could grow at all. Sometimes growth hurts, but really today I'm feeling some of the pain is worth it! Oh wait... I didn't tell you about the pain part! Well, that's for another blog I guess :)
