2/7/14

Reader Questions + Goal Review + Facebook Break

I posted here about our massive toy overhaul, and L commented: I am curious as to what toys made the cut and got to stay out in your house.

Here's a list of what stayed:
Legos
1 basket matchbox cars
3 stuffed animals
2 baby dolls
3 - 4 tractors
magna doodle
train table and trains

play kitchen
1 set toy sandwiches
1 pot
1 spoon
1 knife
1 tea kettle

a few bath toys
box of art and craft supplies that contains construction paper, scissors, glue sticks, crayons, & water colors
2 boxes dress up clothes (boys and girls)
outside toys (bike, tricycle, scooter, cozy coupe)

As you can see there are still plenty of  toys to play with. But to give you an idea of how much I put away, I have 4 large boxes of toys packed and stored to rotate later.

The neatest thing I have observed since packing up so many of the toys is how hard they play with what they have. Stephen (age 4) has fallen in love all over again with his alligator, Shaun (formerly known as Jean Bordeaux). We take Shaun to the park, to speech therapy, to the store. We put Shaun in a seat belt. He gets a snack, an occasional bath, and he has been known to dress him up as Super Shaun a time or two, sporting a cape. His imagination has run wild with Shaun. I believe there is a direct correlation between the toy overhaul and his new found friendship with Shaun. Quality over quantity.


My daughter (age 3) loves her Melissa and Doug sandwiches and often they double as "pancakes." She flips them with her one toy knife.

Less is truly more. And it does not take me a long time to clean up. In fact, it is such a reasonable amount of  mess, I actually get them to clean up. And they do it!

(making coffee)

....................................

I posted here about how I make a bunch of sandwiches for the week and L asked the question:
Ok, I've got a question and it is going to sound so snobby and it is NOT meant that way! Promise. :) Making sandwiches in bulk. Um...is that not gross? Do that hold up? I honestly would never fathom doing that so I haven't tried it but for some reason it seems really gross to me?! Ha.  

Short answer: No.

Sure, the mayonnaise, mustard, pickle combo is very married by the time its been in the fridge all week. But not much more than it would be sitting in your lunch box all morning. I can see how this would bother some people, but we are totally okay with the situation and it saves me so much work and effort to make a bunch of sandwiches at once. I even make peanut butter and jelly for the week. To keep those from getting soggy, I coat both sides of the bread with a thin layer of peanut butter and put the jelly in the middle.

.........

Goals 2014

Bible reading and prayer life
read 1-2 Kings before March 1st
prayer journal - write one page a day
memorize one Proverb a month

Fitness/Wellness:
Pure Barre 3X week
Plan afternoon snack and enjoy it (I always eat badly in the late afternoon).
Sleep. If tired from waking up early, try to coordinate children's rest times and take a nap. Sleep late one day week.

Children and Reading:
Read 2-4 books at breakfast
20 minutes in the afternoon
20 minutes at night
(less TV, more outdoors)

Blog
2X week
 (more if possible)

I'm loving my goals. I'm making progress and sticking to them. A couple tricks I've picked up to keep me in line is I write them down everyday. When I'm writing in my prayer journal, I just flip the page over and write down all my goals. Yes, almost every single day! This keeps them on the forefront of my mind. I have also altered them to be more specific and changed them a little as I find what is working and what is not.

*I picked up the writing your goals down everyday tip from this podcast by Kat Lee @ Inspired to Action.

For example: reading to the kids for 20 minutes in the afternoon was not working. It was like herding cats. They fought over the book and my lap. Chaos. So I've tried to lengthen our reading time at breakfast. Instead of just one book, I try to do 2 - 4.

My proverb to memorize this month is

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come to you like a robber and want like an armed man.  Proverbs 6:10-11

.........

Lastly, I have to share a book recommendation with y'all. I've mentioned it before but its too good to not share again. Say Goodbye to Survival Mode by Crystal Paine. Moms of young ones, read it. While reading this week about time management, I was inspired to log off of facebook. I did not delete my account. I just decided to log off for the week when I added up how much time I spent on there and how much stuff was left undone each day.

It was such a huge distraction for me. I'd get on the computer to look up a recipe and then I'd end up on face book. I'd get on to do some online banking and then get sucked in to facebook. I'd try to write a blog post and then facebook would call my name every other minute. The pull was too much. So I logged off and I don't know my password. It's like I've been given hours of my day back. 

Just call me or e-mail me if you need me. sbspooner@gmail.com

I'm thinking I will make facebook a weekend thing.

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Forgive me if there are typos I don't have time to edit this post.

Happy weekend!

4 comments:

  1. Shaun is cracking me up! I read the paragraph about him twice. Hilarious.

    I love your goals. So practical, and they reap many rewards. I kinda have a love/hate with Facebook. It's so enslaving. A total time-waster for me, for sure, but it's become such a huge source of communication, so I'm hesitant to totally delete. Our church posts announcements, folks message me about pics, Sam's teacher has a classroom group, etc. I'm like, let's ALL agree to get off FB so I don't miss anything. Haha! I do love your idea of just checking it on the weekends.

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  2. Thanks for addressing my question! ;)

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  3. Sarah, I've been following your blogs for a few years now thanks to an introduction from your cousin, Beth. Thank you for this great post! You've inspired me to do a major toy overhaul for my 19-month-old and cut down my Facebook time. I feel better already!

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  4. I so desperately want fewer toys in my house! I know I just need to bite the bullet and do it, but my main hang up is that I've started hosting a small group for moms and they bring their little ones (all three and under, mostly in the 12-18 month range) and I feel like I need to have plenty of options out for them. Now that I'm typing this, I realize I could have an easily-accessed box just for Thursday mornings, but any other advice?

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