Weekly Update: 11
28 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Children, Christianity, Infant, Toddler, Weekly Update Tags: christianity, cloth diaper, forgiveness, JBF, menu planning, planning, potty training, starting solids, teething, time management
This week Kennedy was teething, starting solids, and having some separation-from-mommy issues, and we stepped up our game on potty training with Kaylynn. From the beginning of this journey, I declared in my heart (and I think on this blog too), that my girls take priority over any lists. They are too precious and time is too short for me to ignore them when they need me, just so I can get another load of laundry done or even save our family a few extra dollars.
It’s a hard balance though. At this point in my journey, I know that I am sacrificing some of the time I wish I could be spending with them so I can break my 27 years of bad habits. But I have to keep things in perspective when I do choose a task on my list over them. Part of My Housekeeping Mission Statement says” I will make strides everyday… to set an example for my children.”
I don’t want my girls to fall into the same sinful life that I have up to this point. And yes, I say sinful because my disorganization stems from being lazy and being a poor steward of my time. It’s a harsh truth but it comes with the reality that only by God’s grace, mercy, and strength will I be able to overcome this sin and live a better life. If I don’t recognize the sin in it, I will try to fix it myself and fail. By recognizing the sin, I can repent and ask my powerful Saviour for his help.
So, as you might have gathered already, the girls required a little extra of my time this last week which is perfectly fine with me. In terms of “things I got checked off my list,” my week wasn’t very good. However, if you look into the hearts and minds of my 2 precious girls, it was a great week! Please keep that in mind as you read what I did/ didn’t get done.
Still Working On…
Daily chores- Dishes and quiet time are about the only things I got done almost everyday. The other items were pretty sporadic and there were a few that I didn’t get done at all.
Weekly chores- I’m not sure that I personally got anything done on this list. But Matt was a huge help this week. I was able to mark several things off my list everyday because of him. He did all that, worked 2 jobs, and found time to be a wonderful daddy. I am so blessed!
Potty training- I’m really not sure what section to put this in, because it’s not actually listed on my week-by-week plan. But its going great! At the beginning of the week I decided to do cloth only. No diapers or pull-ups at home unless she was sleeping. She would tell me every time as she was going and we would make it to the potty in time to get a little in it.
The first day of this I was home alone and needed to feed Kennedy. I was afraid we would make a bigger mess if I wasn’t able to help get her undies off, so I let her go naked from the waist down. Looking back, I’m not sure how that logic works, but the strategy did! She got all her pee in the potty while I was feeding Kennedy.
Since then we have gone naked from the waist down everyday and only had 1 mess (and boy was it a mess!). After a few days we tried undies again, but she peed in them so we went back to being naked from the waist down. When we leave the house she wears pulls-up and will use the potty if I ask her and time it right. But if not, she goes in her pull-ups. I think we will try loose-fitting clothes like shorts tomorrow to get the feel of having something on, then transition to undies.
New Goals…
Tag for JBF- I didn’t get anything new tagged. That means this week I am going to have to really push it. If I want to be able to buy new-to-us stuff at the sale, I need to be able to sell the stuff I have now. It’s a good thing this week is a catch up week.
Plan weekly menus- I created a simple table to fill out every week that has a place for breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, and dessert for each day of the week. I also created a theme for dinner each day of the week. The days are
- Surplus Sunday: aka leftovers
- All-American Monday: this could include meals that scream American like hamburgers and hotdogs, but it will also include regional meals like New Orleans rice and beans, Chicago-style pizza, Philly cheese steak sandwiches, or New England clam chowder.
- Have it your way Tuesday: each week a different family member will choose what to have for dinner on this day. For a while this will only be Matt and I and then we can guess what the girls would say. After each family member has “had it their way,” we will have a meal that each person puts together themselves. We’ll put out a bunch of ingredients and let each individual put in what they like. Examples include make your own pizza bagel, potato bar, salad bar, maybe even a Sunday bar.
- Worldwide Wednesday: foods from across the globe, some will be familiar like spaghetti, but others will be new tastes.
- Crockpot Thursday: easy on the mommy.
- Breakfast for Dinner Friday: breakfast is such a favorite in our house that we are going to have it for dinner every week! But we’ll change up the menu since there are so many breakfast choices.
- Soup, Salad, and/ or Sandwich Saturday: I’m not sure this one needs much explanation.
I’m excited to start using this menu! I really hope that we get creative with it and build some fun family traditions.
Start feeding Kennedy solids- check out these pictures
Plan for April- almost done. I’m going to finish this one up tonight I hope.
Looking Ahead…
Week 12 is a catch up week. If all goes as planned I will probably be spending most of the week tagging for JBF. But I also plan on starting a blogging series either tonight or tomorrow on my cloth diaper reviews. So you can look forward to that!
Appreciating Matt
09 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: appreciate, children, christianity, daddy, family, husband, MattMann, spouse
In my last post, I promised I would let know how I was doing with the task “deliberately appreciate Matt on a weekly basis.” Before I tell you what I have done to accomplish this the past 3 weeks. Let me tell you why he is so very worthy of my love, respect and appreciation.
Matt works several hours a week at 2 jobs so that I can stay home with the girls. He is well-respected at both jobs. After only 4 days working at the Boys and Girls Club, he got promoted and now runs his site. I wish that I could see him in action while he is there, but I get a glimpse of it when we teach children’s church together or when we see one of his B&G club kids at church or out in public.
He does such a great job working with those kids. He can get even the rowdiest ones to behave and kids are always having fun when he’s around. He’s such a goofball with them and I love it. He’ll ask a 5 year old if they have gotten married and had any kids since the last time he saw them. Haha. The look on their faces is priceless.
His other job is youth and outreach pastor at our church. He is so well-respected here too, and not just at our church alone, but all over the state of Missouri. When we took our youth to a state-wide youth conference a few weeks ago, everywhere we went, we heard ”MATT MANN!” One of our youth pointed out that he has an easy name to remember and a fun one too, because it sounds a lot like Batman. He hears the na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na MATTMANN theme song all the time.
But I don’t think that its just his name that makes him known by youth and their leaders throughout the state. If he was a real jerk, people would not want to have a conversation with him no matter what his name was. (A rose by any other name…) People like him and respect him because he is so relational, real and (hmmm… I can’t think of another good ‘R’ word).
Besides being a hard worker and good at his job, he is a wonderful husband. Here’s a story to demonstrate. Before Kennedy was born we had to go to the hospital 2 or 3 times for pre-term labor, and then of course when I was in real labor. Every single time, the nurses commented on how supportive and friendly he was. They told us a few stories about other dads being jerks and how often they see that. But they could not stop complimenting him on how well he was taking care of me. And it wasn’t only one nurse or only one time. Almost every nurse that came in our room gave him a compliment.
He’s also a good daddy: practical, fun, and caring. He has never been afraid to change a poopy diaper. Not even the biggest blow-outs (practical). And he is helpful with the girls in other ways too. For instance, he is watching both girls right now while I type this and I can hear Kaylynn laughing hysterically (fun). And here is one of my favorite stories. One night as he was putting Kaylynn to bed, he asked to hold her hand as they walked up the stairs to her bedroom. From the other room, I heard him whisper “I’m gonna cry the day you get engaged” (caring).
There’s so much more to Matt than what I can write in one sitting. He’s creative, visionary, encouraging, funny, sweet, attractive, wise, good at video games, a spiritual leader, a go-getter, talented, diligent, genuine, and I could go on and on.
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He does so much for our family and for others. That is why I want to make sure he knows just how much he means to me. So each week I plan on doing one thing (beyond the things I do on a daily basis) to show him my respect.
In week 3 my plan was to rub his feet for 45 minutes. This is a pretty big deal in our house because my hands usually get tired after about 5 or 10 minutes and he’s always asking for longer foot rubs. So we turned on a movie and I started rubbing his feet. 20 minutes later he was gone, asleep on the couch. I rubbed for another 5 minutes, but decided to stop because he wasn’t getting to enjoy the full effects anyway.
In week 4 my plan was to learn everything I possibly could about football so he could talk with me about it during the Superbowl on Sunday. I started doing my research and discovered that there is a lot of information about how its played, the rules, and then the actual teams that were going to be playing. The only thing I really picked up is that there is a guy named Troy that plays for the Steelers (I think) and his hair is insured for $1 million by Head and Shoulders. I decided to hold off on this one until I have more time to learn about the game. So instead, I sent him a text message with 3 reasons I’m thankful for him.
In week 5 I wrote a long post on my blog about how wonderful he is so the whole world could know. =)
What do you love about your significant other and how do you plan on letting them know this week?
6 Months to a New Mann
16 Jan 2011 1 Comment
in Weekly Update Tags: budget, children, christianity, clean, family, Goals, home, housekeeping, mommy, mother, motivation, New Year, organize, time management, wife
Ahhh!!! Its been almost a month and a half since my last post. Sorry guys. If all goes as planned, this won’t happen again. I’ve set some goals for the new year and one of them is to write at least one new blog post each week, starting now.
And that leads into the topic of this post… my new year’s goals. If you have been following my blog, you know that I made a list of goals that I wanted to accomplish before Kennedy was born. Kennedy was born, and the goals were not accomplished. I got off track, but now I’m back at it!
The Christmas season is over and life is back to normal, whatever that means. Instead of setting New Year’s Resolutions (which generally come without a plan and thus fail) I made New Year’s Goals. The first week of January was spent writing down my goals and mapping out how I was going to achieve them. When I started, I thought I was going to spend the whole year working on them, but as I mapped it out, I think it can be done in 6 months. Woo-hoo! It won’t be easy by any means, and I hope that I’m not being too ambitious.
Most of these goals are the same ones I had before, but now they are written differently, with more specifics and with the smaller tasks needed to achieve them. Click here (or on the “My Goals” tab up top) to see what I came up with. You can also click here to see how I’m going to reach my goals.
If you are taking this journey with me (as opposed to reading from the sidelines, which is okay too), then my challenge to you is to…
1. Sit down with pen and paper and write out your goals
2. Break your goals down into smaller achievable tasks
3. Make a week by week plan on how you are going to achieve your goals
4. Answer these questions: what will you do if you get behind? get ahead? who will keep you accountable? what’s your plan if you get discouraged?
I’m going to try to add a new post every Saturday, so stay tuned. Topics to be discussed in the coming weeks: my new Household Management Notebook and how you can have one too AND week #2 (this was week #1 by the way).
Women’s Retreat
09 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: christianity, clean, comfort, control, family, goal, God, home, housekeeping, idol, idolatry, wife
Effectiveness of the New Plan
I have been working on my daily chore planner that I mentioned in my last post. While I haven’t managed to get all the tasks for a single day completed in that day, I do feel good about using this strategy. It has given me direction and helped me to break things down into something a little more manageable. As I continue working through the daily to-do’s, it should get easier and less time-consuming.
The Women’s Retreat
This past weekend I went on a women’s retreat with my church. It was a refreshing time of fellowship with God and Godly women. We talked about being intimate with God and the session that spoke to me the most was about idolatry. An idol isn’t necessarily a “golden calf” but anything that comes before your relationship with God.
We talked about 2 types of idols in our lives: surface idols and source idols. Surface idols are more obvious to us and those around us while source idols are the root from which surface idols come from. Here is a link that briefly describes each if you want to read a little more about this. And this link has the chart we used to describe source idols in more detail.
I learned that my source idol is comfort. Which means that I seek freedom and a lack of stress at the cost of productivity. This is why my house is constantly a mess and I tend to procrastinate on everything.
Now here is the part that was intriguing to me and kind of confusing. Because I want to improve certain areas of my life, I see myself allowing the idol of control to replace my idol of comfort. In order to let go of my need for freedom and a lack of stress, I start seeking self-discipline and standards. I fear that I will only have worth if I can get mastery over my life in the area of my home.
While my goals and dreams are worthy and even founded in scripture, I am an idolatrous if I allow them to become more important than the relationship with my heavenly Father. As I discussed this revelation with the speaker at the retreat she affirmed that you have to find balance in life (for instance, between desiring comfort and control) in order to remove the idols that will destroy your intimacy with God. She suggested that I start each day asking God what he wants me to get accomplished with my time. By doing this simple task, I am keeping my focus on God and not my own desires.
I have started adding this prayer into my plan and I already feel more at peace as I go about my day.
Here’s the Weekend Update
10 May 2010 4 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: christianity, clean, confession, family, goal, God, home, housekeeping, mother, organize
Well, I haven’t been doing so great on goal #1 since my last post. I have not had a quiet time 3 out of the past 4 days. I had decided to spend at least 15 minutes every night before bed reading my Bible and praying, but lately I’ve been staying up so late that I’ve been too tired. I’m going to try and go to bed earlier this week, but if I don’t get better at having my quiet times, then I will have to find a new time slot to have them.
As for goal #2, I’ve done alright. Friday was a good day and I got a lot accomplished, but Saturday and Sunday ended up being family days so I didn’t work on the house at all.
Friday, I cleaned all of Kaylynn’s big toys like her Jumperoo and Laugh ‘n Learn Playhouse. I hadn’t let her play in the Jumperoo for probably a month because of the amount of dust that had collected on it. After I cleaned it, she was so happy to play in it again that she stayed in it for an hour. That gave me time to dust and clean our entertainment center.
Two things I learned about Murphy’s Concentrated Oil Soap…
1.) I really love how it smells, but maybe that’s just because I’m pregnant; and
2.) you should always keep the lid on it. It is a concentrated soap and the label says “pure vegetable oil.” These two factors, make it very difficult to clean a large spill off the carpet.
Confession of the week: our insurance company will not insure our home anymore because we do not have central heating and air. An agent from another insurance company was suppose to inspect our house this morning and then give us a quote to be insured by them.
Here is the confession: I had my husband call and say that “something came up” because I couldn’t stand the thought of someone walking through my messy home. Yikes! Please tell me I’m not the only one who has ever done this. This blog is a safe place; let’s hear your confessions.
