Please visit the tools page for more information on how I use my monthly meal plan and recipes.
I hope you enjoy these meal planners. If you have any suggestions, comments or ideas to share, please let me know. You can either leave a comment or use the ‘contact me‘ page.
Thanks for reading!
During the month of December I always expect to be running around lots preparing for Christmas, however our extensive running around has dwindled into January.
Normally the most that the kids & I are away from home (running around – in town) is 3 days a week, including Mass on Sundays. However since the beginning of December we have only been home ab0ut 2 days out of the seven! Yikes! December was packed full of Christmas parties and Christmas preparations and January has been packed full of specialist, dentist and speech therapy appointments!
I’m exhausted & the kids are exhausted! Is this ever going to end?!!
Until recently I thought we were doing not too bad of a job with the discipline aspect of parenting. On the most part our kids listened and behaved well. Usually for punishment we take away a privilege but lately the follow through on the punishment has been quite lax. My son just doesn’t seem to care if he loses a privilege, I know it’s because he doesn’t really believe that he’s lost anything (lack of follow through).
Every time I give him a consequence for his actions (losing a privelege) I always think “What privilege can he lose that I am going to follow through with?” Like for example, if he is misbehaving and we have an upcoming event, I could take away the privilege of him attending the event – but is that something I’m going to want to do – not attend the event? Or do I really want to take away his toys or ground him from playing outside etc. I guess my problem is trying to determine which privileges he’ll lose. I guess I just have to start being a little more creative in chosing privileges and consequences.
Do you struggle with your children’s bedtimes? There are many parents that do.
Some of the best advice that I got from my mother-in-law was about bedtimes. She said that her kids always had a bedtime and they didn’t get out of bed again until morning. It didn’t matter if they were asleep or not as long as they were in bed.
My kids go to bed and usually stay there. Sometimes they don’t go to sleep right away, they sometimes chatter away or play with their stuffed animals, but at least they are in bed.
I’ve heard many stories from several different mom’s who constantly struggle with bedtimes. We’ve all heard the stories of moms who have had to use their vehicle and drive around for hours to put the child(ren) to sleep. For some, it takes hours to get the child to go to sleep, with the child getting up out of bed every five minutes needing something (water, toilet etc.) I know I would get very frustrated with that. There are some that have different bedtimes for their children – for example child ‘a’ will get up at 6 am and go to bed at 8 pm and child ‘b’ will get up at 8 am and go to bed at 10 pm. In this case the mom is parenting from 6 am until 10 pm at night. And granted the job of parenting never ceases, we all need a break from the action of parenting – this mom would never get that break. Maybe this works for these moms and their families, I know it doesn’t work for me.
Like I said, my mother-in-law said that her kids were always in bed at a certain time. Looking back, I know that my mom had a set bedtime for us kids as well. I’ve implemented that with my kids too. Kids being kids will occasionally test the boundaries. When this happens they lose a privilege the next day. I try to keep the privilege associated with sleep time. Such as, they lose the privilege of getting a story and a song before naps/bedtime the next day.
My kids all have a bedtime routine and they do not like a change in the bedtime routine at all (which is why they don’t risk losing it very often!).
Bedtime is the one thing that I’m pretty firm on. Not only do children need sleep to grow, heal and stay healthy but I’m exhausted by the time their bed time rolls around as well and I need my parenting break. Not to mention that I still have hours of work to do!
**Please do not take offence if you are using any of the bedtime situations I mentioned. If it works for you and your family – great! I only mentioned them because I know of some moms who were struggling with those particular situations.
Busy Moms
All moms are busy. It doesn’t matter if you have one child, four, eight or fifteen. It doesn’t matter if you’re a stay at home mom, a work at home mom or a working mom. It doesn’t matter if your children are babies, teenagers, adults or grandchildren. All moms are busy. So give yourself a pat on the back and tell yourself that you are doing a GREAT job!
Because we are all so busy I’ve decided to add some tools to this site. You may find some of them useful, you may not. Also if you have any ideas for tools you may need, drop me a comment!
So watch for an upcoming ‘Tools’ section on the website!