Week 2

This was a week of sliding back into my old routines and trying to pull myself out. I did, as I noted before, get more engaged, but, the house suffered. Now I need to clarify that I am far from a neat freak, I can get stressed by visual clutter and it sends me into a PMS like tirade through the house wreaking stories of throwing toys away and letting the puppy eat hubby's shoes, mittens, books, clothes etc. that oh so quickly accumulate on the floor. So I need to add to my list, how to make tidy up fun for the whole family! Probably a tougher challenge than 52 new out of the house activities!
Miss J had a day where she was "off" and wanted to sit on the couch and watch TV all afternoon. I really struggled with this, but I eventually caved. She really wasn't herself and none of her usual favorites could entice her to get up and do something else. I felt really guilty, and bad, but after a quick friend sanity call, I realized that these days are going to happen, I'm not a bad mother and that choosing what the kids watch, favoring educational programming, that they may just learn something.

So for the get out of the house this week, we went to our local gardens with some friends. The gardens are free and a lot of fun to run around in, even in winter. The kids enjoyed pushing sticks through the ring of ice that had formed around the edge of the fountain, though their mittens quickly got wet and frozen which led us to the neighboring coffee shop for hot chocolate. I'll call this one a draw, since the intention wasn't going to the coffee shop, however necessity of warming up frozen fingers overruled any rules....let's face it maybe I should have called the rules, guidelines.

Our no TV for babysitting activities this week were:

• crafty bags. My oh so brilliant friend gave out crafty bag goodie bags at her son's birthday party and filled with all sorts of cool things like pom poms, silly putty, ribbon, tissue paper, scissors, glue, sticks and many other little things, my kids were entertained for hours. Miss J with the crafty stuff and little dude with the silly putty.
• play dough
• water play in the bathroom sink. Little dude has become quite obsessed with bathtubs but he suffers from eczema so frequent bathing is not good for him. We filled up the sink and let him go wild with his toys and plenty of towels.