My relief society president called yesterday asking if I could take a meal to a sister who had just had a baby. I said sure and hung the phone up. I would think about it later. Then I stopped myself and said, no, I’ll think about it now. I sat down and called the woman to get directions to her home and ask if there was anything her family couldn’t eat. Then I made a meal plan and a grocery list to take to the store today. I just made the entire event 100 times easier because I planned ahead instead of putting it off like my natural instinct told me to do. I am going to get organized yet!

No Food Fights

Lovely is changing fast. She no longer just uses toys to hold, bang, suck or throw. They are tools to her now. She uses her play dishes to cook in her kitchen. She picks up a comb and combs her hair with it. She grabs utensils away from us and tries to get at the food herself. People have always given me a hard time because I won’t let my babies feed themselves. They need to “practice”, they say. Yes they do, when they are ready to learn then they need to practice. Before that it’s just a useless mess that I have to clean up, teaching bad habits and dragging out the learning process unnecesarily.

People ask me how I taught my kids to read. They teach themselves when they’re ready. How do you know when they are ready? When they figure out that written words are everywhere around them and they want to know what they say. How do you know when a baby is ready to start feeding herself? When she grabs her own plate at dinner time and brings it to you to put food on it. When she starts grabbing the spoon out of your hand and feeding herself with it. It can’t be any clearer than that!

Speaking of waiting until kids are ready to accomplish things, I’ve been having a debate in my head about potty training ever since Lovely was born. I wasn’t into unschooling back when my other two were little. When they turned two, I potty trained them whether they liked it or not. It took a few months but they were both potty trained by 2 1/2 . I really want to do the same thing with Lovely but at the same time I want to sit back and watch her potty train herself. What part of me is going to win this battle? The caring, patient Mother who wants her kids to grow up learning to make their own decisions, or the controlling, manipulative Mother who wants to save hundreds of dollars on diapers? Tune in to find out.

Winning At The Computer Game

I have decided I want to start writing in cursive. I haven’t used it since High School. I was terrible at it then and apparently I still am. Instead of blogging on the computer this morning I wrote in a notebook, in cursive. The first paragraph was painful but it got easier after that even though the writing didn’t get any neater. I’m going to buy a practice book and see if that helps.

Winner is getting so grown up! I need to start treating him more like a grownup but then half the time he still acts like such a little kid. I just remembered yesterday why Winner and I didn’t used to have the computer problems that we have now. In our old house the computer was down stairs, out of sight, out of mind. Now that it’s in our central living space it’s all he can think about. I keep talking with him about managing his time on it. But it doesn’t sink in. I have let him decide how much time he should play on it every day but he has no desire to stick to it. He sneaks more time whenever he can. I talked to the Mothers in my Home school group about it. One of them said she gives her kids 30 minutes a day and that’s it. It’s important to her, she said. Her kids know the rule and they don’t bug her about it. I thought, that must be it, I’m not consistent enough about this issue. One day I’ll let him play all day and another day I won’t let him play at all. I tell him to decide for himself and then I decide for him.

I was pondering this yesterday when a thought came into my head. “Don’t give him more responsibility than he can handle.” Don’t you just love it when the Spirit speaks directly to your brain, giving you the answers you need to life’s problems? Winner is just not ready to manage his own time on the computer and I’m not willing to baby sit him by making time limits, setting the timer and making sure he gets off of it. My only option now is to take it away completely. Don’t nag me. I feel good about this decision for now. Unschooling is not all about letting kids do whatever they want whenever they want to do it. It’s about letting them learn at their own pace. Apparently we were getting ahead of ourselves with the computer so now we’re backing off. I told Winner we will re-evaluate the situation when he is nine. I reminded him of what I did for Persistence when she couldn’t keep her room clean. I took away all her toys and she hardly misses them. She and I are so much happier now that we don’t have to fight about her room. I know Winner and I will be happier to stop fighting over computer games. Maybe he will finally learn to use the computer for other things and ultimately enjoy it even more.

I Want You

I’m looking for people who want to trade for my fabulous Organizing Bags! Any readers who sell Pampered Chef or Mary Kay cosmetics or anything else I might need? It has to be something I would really NEED though. You know, the organizing and all that. You can see that I don’t need any more valuable junk to store in my garage. Well, we were planning on building a barn…

Celebrate With Me!

We are officially out of our last storage unit. Do you want to see how much work I have waiting for me out in the garage? Let’s just say, I’ll be getting ready for a REALLY big garage sale.

A Lot Of Valuable Junk

A Lot More Valuable Junk

It’s been a bad week for exercise. I had company one day, my contractor, electrician and framer were here another day and Chris and I spent one day moving out of our storage unit. I finally went running on Thursday and I went this morning but I still haven’t made it to the gym. Chris is off to work so I’ll be able to go tonight.

The kids have been doing so many things that I haven’t been writing about! We’ve made friends with some goats and their babies down the road. We visit them every time we go running.


Anyone who knows us will be shocked to find out we bought the kids three baby chicks. Yes, we are living on a farm now but we’re easing in the animal thing. The baby chicks alone might just be more than we can handle. The kids were experimenting with the camera and throwing the chicks to their death (luckily they all survived the ordeal). I had to intervene at this point even though they got some really great photos!


Here is evidence of some more chick abuse. I didn’t witness this one but luckily the little criminals documented it with photos. Why do criminals always do that?

We went to an awesome Scout-O-Rama. They had the most amazing activities for the kids. I can’t believe the amount of work those people put in. Anyone who volunteers and works with kids like that must be a Saint. Who knew a 6 year old could row around the lake and back by herself? Oh ya, this is Persistence we’re talking about.