Author: admin

FLYlady on Yelling

If you are having a problem with yelling at your babies, then read
this. (I found this on my Flylady email today, maybe it will help us!)
Behavior Modification for yelling and being short with your babies.

1. Keep a journal, each time you yell or say something harsh.
even if it becomes a thick book.

2. Look at what is going on when you yell. Are your under time
pressure? Is the guilt of a messy home making you lash out?

3. Practice using a whisper to talk to your children. It is very hard
to yell in a quiet voice.

4. Put that SMILE on your face. It is really hard to be mad with your
have that big grin.

5. When you catch yourself filling with rage, then take a deep breath
and look at those sweet faces of your babies.

6. Don’t forget, the children need to be trained how to handle
cleaning chores too.

7. Your babies are only little once. They will be grown before you
know it. I know mine is 28 years old.

8. Another thing to do when you are mad is leave the room. Go
outside.

9. Say a little prayer and ask God for patience.

10.Remember my 3 Life lessons:

A) What doesn’t matter, Doesn’t matter.
(Who is going to remember the spilled milk 15 years from now)

B) Laugh every day, even if it is at yourself.
(all s, have a funny side, if you will find them and embrace
the moment with laughter)

C) Love like there is no tomorrow.
(This one will get your right where it hurts most. Do you want your
childs last memory of you to be one of yelling and anger.)

It is up to you to change this behavior.

I feel that it has to do with the fact that you still have put time
pressure on yourself.

Make your plan(routines) and work the plan as fast as you can. This
way you will have the time to spend teaching and loving your babies
through their little ups and downs. It is up to you to show them how
to handle their anger. Were you ever taught? Now is the time to
change. When you know better you will do better. No excuses.

Enjoy the gift you are given.

All ’bout Mom

Why God made moms answers given by elementary school age children to the following questions:

1. Why did god make mothers?
She’s the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
Mostly to clean the house.
To help us out of there when we were getting born.

2.How did God make mothers?
He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
God made my Mom just the same like he made me. He just used bigger parts.

3. What ingredients are mothers made of?
God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.
They had to get their start from men’s bones. Then they mostly used string, I think.

4. Why did God give you your mother and not some other Mom?
We’re related.
God knew she likes me a lot more than other people’s moms like me.

5. What kind of little was your Mom?
My Mom has always been my Mom and none of that other stuff.
I don’t know because I wasn’t there, but my guess would be pretty busy.
They say she used to be nice.

6. What did Mom need to know about dad before she married him?
His last name.
She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?
Does he make at least $800 a year? Did he say NO to and YES to chores?

7. Why did you Mom marry your dad?
My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. Any my Mom eats a lot.
She got too old to do anything else with him.
My grandma says that Mom didn’t have her thinking cap on.

8. Who’s the boss at your house?
Mom doesn’t want to be boss, but she has to because dad’s such a goof ball.
Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.

9. What’s the difference between moms and dads?
Moms work at work and work at home, dads just go to work to work.
Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
Dads are taller and stronger, but moms have all the real power ’cause that’s who you go to go ask if you want to sleep over at your friend’s. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.

10. What does your Mom do in her spare time?
Mother’s don’t have spare time.
To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

11.What would it take to make your Mom perfect?
On the inside she’s already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
Diet. You know, her hair. I’d diet, maybe blue.

12. If you could change one thing about your Mom, what would it be?
She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I’d get rid of that.
I’d make my Mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it and not me.
I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on her back.

Oh boy! Way behnd!

I have spent the last two weeks virtually ignoring my house so that I could get Precious Prayer up and running and it shows. Boy does it show!

The floor is a mess, the laundry is backed up, and I am afraid to even tell you about the kitchen! I have two big boxes of *stuff* that I have been collecting off the floor that “nobody” and “not me” left laying all over the place during the week. I haven’t decided how to deal with those. In the meantime – daily goals:

Monday is supposed to be my UPSTAIRS day, but I think I need to do the downstairs today, it just needs it too badly.

  • deposit check
  • pick up potty chairs at BRU
  • gather, wash, fold laundry (As if that was just ONE item on the list!!! Ha ha!!)
  • Clean the kitchen, thaw chicken
  • Plan meals, Grocery store
  • sweep downstairs
  • pick up clutter, put away stuff in boxes
  • Print out Pope’s statement for Sr. What-her-face at church
  • Pick up kids (have all that stuff done by 2:30pm)
  • Attain a miracle of patience and grace to be a nice girl while doing all the above.

Piece of cake!

This is *SO* cool!

This weekend our parish had a ministry fair. Both Jay and I worked our different ministries and had a great time hanging around and getting to know a few people better.

At one point, Jay was talking to a couple that we are barely acquainted with who were working at the NFP booth. It turns out that they are instructors. So Jay asked, “I didn’t know you were instructors! How long have you been doing that?”

The husband replied with, “Ever since we heard you tell your story at the Theology of the Body class.”

Whoa!

About 4 years ago, we were asked to tell out our vasectomy reversal story during one session of a 4 week Theology of the Body class at our parish. We were totally unprepared; we just got up and told it off the cuff. But it turns out that this couple left that class and went home, threw out their birth control pills, and decided to try NFP!

When they contacted the local NFP chapter in our diocese, they were told that the next class was two months away. So they abstained during that entire two months while waiting for the class, and eventually decided to become instructors!

This has just made my year. To know that something *WE* said brought someone closer to the Church and impacted their lives like that – it’s just very humbling and exciting!

Tessa’s Aspirations

A conversation Jay had with Tessa:

Tessa: I wish I could just die.

Jay: Why, Tessa?

T: So I can go to heaven of course, don’t you want to go to heaven?

J: Yes, I want to go to heaven, but I want to do what God had planned for me here first. Plus if you die you can’t do things like grow up and be a mommy.

T: Yeah. I think I want to be an [ant].

J: You could be an aunt in a few years when paisley has kids, you will be their aunt.

T: No dad, I want to be an ant, a BUG.

A Little Sleep Update

When Jay put Max down on the floor, he just meant to let him fuss for a moment and show him we-do-not-kick-daddy. I was too sleep deprived to understand that at 3am.

Max is doing better. A little. He is waking one to three times a night and taking a regular nap. I just need to figure out how to lengthen his naps and periods of night time sleep. Oh and I need to move that mountain while I am at it.

Deperate for Sleep!

…so desperate that I will give up sleep for a few days to see if I can improve on things around here.

Max has been going to sleep pretty well. We have the bedtime routine down pat. Teeth, Book, Nurse, Bed. Then I sit by the Pack and Play while he goes to sleep. If he gets up or goofs off, I leave the room and he gets all mad, but when I come back after a couple minutes, he is ready to lay down and go to sleep. It usually takes very little time, and I can sit by the door and read by the light of the hallway lamp. It even works at naptime!

But staying asleep is another story. UGH!!! Once he wakes up from the first stretch of sleep, anytime between 11pm and 1am, he will nurse, kick, toss, turn, and generally make it impossible for anyone to sleep besides him. And his sleep isn’t all that restful. I am so done.

So last night he went to bed like a dream. He stayed asleep until about the time I was dozing off at 11:20pm (yes, I stayed up too late, shame on me – but Good Eats was on.) and then he woke up.

I nursed him in the rocking chair, then put him back in bed. He was not appreciative.

So I started the bedtime thing. If he was laying down, I stayed right by the bed, when he got up, I went out and let him fuss. Sometime around 12:45, I began to get really tired of this.

Thankfully Ben was sleeping in the girls’ room, so I crawled into Ben’s bed and Max fussed on and off with my trying to get him to lay down, occasionally getting up to pat his back, get his pacifier when he threw it, etc. He began to doze on and off around 1:30 (!!!!) but didn’t get fully to sleep until about 2. (Yawn.) So I crashed in Ben’s bed. Finally. Sleep.

Max woke up, sincerely unhappy that he was still in his bed at 4:44am. Oh good grief. I was so delirious with sleep deprivation by this time, I just took him into our bed and tried to lay down and get back to sleep while nursing him. Max had a quick snack and decided he would much rather wrestle, which resulted in my getting the head-butt-of-love directly to the mouth. Grrr… now I was getting grouchy. I have had precisely 164 minutes of sleep so far and now I am injured as well. Talk about adding injury to insult.

I roll Max over to Jay’s side of the bed, in hopes that, in his sleep, he has somehow known about my hellish night and can pin Max down and get him to sleep. Nope. Max kicks Jay. Jay puts Max down on the floor and rolls over to go back to sleep.

Should I let my crabby one year old wander the house unsupervised at night? Nah, didn’t think so. So I get up and start the whole bedtime thing again. Only now it is 5am and the sun is starting to come up. We may have room darkening shades, but any dummy can see around the edges. My chances are slim. Max lays down, I lay down in Ben’s bed. Can I grab a few more minutes of sleep? No. Max freaks out since he can’t see me. (Even though I am whispering calming things to him the whole time, things like, “Mommy’s right here,” “Hush, it’s okay,” and “Go to sleep or I will throw you out the window.”) So I move the pillow and blanket and lay down right next to the pack and play on the floor. Max is still freaking out unless I hold my arm in a really awkward possition to that my hand is on the mesh and he can put his hand on it.

His hand slowly droops down. Dare I hope he is asleep? I take a peek.

He is sitting up playing. Sigh. Yawn.

I guess that 164 minutes was it for me. Max is up for the day. He should be ready to take a nap around 9am, just about the time my day has plunged into full-speed-ahead mode.

I’m going to bed at 7 tonight.

Today

Clean kitcen
Make dinner
do laundry
tidy up the huge mess of books in the upstairs hallway (Thank you, Max)
sign up for swim lessons
pay bills, including going to the bank
make Dr appts for kids

Oh an keep kids busy while doing this. Uh huh.

So far ths morning Max has:
emptied the DVD cabinet
dumped a bag of trail mix (costco sized one)
drawn all over his legs with marker
cleaned off the bulletin board in the kitchen (onto the floor, complete with tacks!)
asked to nurse 102,348 times
eaten breakfast twice
salted the kitchen counter

And I wonder where I left my brain… I bet Max threw it out with his new shoes.

Sanity, that is all I ask of today. To get through the day without ripping someones hair out.

Oh and Paisley just came and informed me, yes she did not ask, she TOLD, that she is going to take the bus half way across the city so that I don’t have to drive her. And isn’t that considerate of her.

So I told her to do her chores and then try ASKING if she could go. At which point she had the gall to tell me all the work he does around this house and how no one else (namely, James) ever does anything.

Just some random musings on my day. Now back to your regularly scheduled whatevers.