Thankful in 2017 - Day 2

I love spending each November taking the time to be thankful for my life. This year, I decided to do a blog version instead of just posting my thoughts on Facebook.

Day 2 - My Sons

Sometimes frustrating, always loving, my boys are my world. They are opposite from each other, and in some ways opposite from me! But it works in some mystical, magical way.

The older one is my quiet, thoughtful guy... except when he chooses to be LOUD! He is officially a tween-ager this year and is keeping me on my toes. I never know where our conversations will end up, and I am often left wondering if I answered his questions appropriately and adequately. Some days, real life is too real and I wonder how I can possibly guide him through these teenage, chaotic years while protecting the caring, sweet boy he is. So far, we have a wonderful relationship and I hope that survives the next few years.

The younger one is my artistic, talkative kid who tests my patience with how many times I can hear "...and also, Mom..." in one day! He dreams big and has even bigger emotions, which is wonderful and challenging in many different ways. He is always doing something creative and wears his heart on his sleeve. I love listening to him sing in the shower... it's a free show multiple times a week!

Although there are days where I just want ONE HOUR of peace, I would not want my days to look any different than they do.

Are the Days of Sleeping in Really Over?!?

It is quick lesson learned that once a woman becomes pregnant, "sleeping in" becomes part of a history lesson. At some point during pregnancy (not until the third trimester, if you are lucky!), multiple trips to the bathroom and being too uncomfortable to sleep any more forces a woman out of bed way earlier than we desire to be. Then comes the newborn who gives us the sleep pattern causing insanity and then the toddler whose internal alarm is predictably early.

Now that my boys are getting older (7 and almost 4), they are mostly trained to leave us alone on weekend mornings. But their definition of leaving us alone is quite interesting.

Around 6:00am, we hear them arise... and argue about who gets to be the first person out the bedroom door. They head for the snack drawer, which may buy me 15-30 minutes before they want something they can't make themselves, like a waffle. So I make the waffle and wander back to bed. All is good until the arguing, yelling, and tattling commences in waves: 10 minutes of peace, then 2-3 of loudness, 15 minutes of peace, 5 minutes of loudness, etc.

Either my husband or I finally give up and get up around 7:00am, leaving the other to attempt another hour of sleep.

I just spend 2 nights at a hotel since I attended a conference 2-hours away. You may think this would be an opportunity to sleep in. Sadly, no. The boys have me so well-trained that I still wake up by 6:00 and can only catnap from then until I need to physically get out of bed. Grrrr.

Does this mean when my children are teenagers and sleep until noon that I will STILL be waking up at 6:00?!? Curses!!!!

The Big P: Patience

Patience.

The ability to wait.

Shakespeare: “How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?"

Benjamin Franklin: “He that can have patience, can have what he will.”

Most days, I find myself to be a very patient person. I interact with hundreds of people a day: my husband, my 2 children (7 & 3.5), my 2 dogs (9 & 6 months), my students (90 per day on average, ages 11-14), and my colleagues. However there are moments that my impulses prevail and I react before I think or breathe. I honestly think there is a set amount of patience per day, and when that runs low I no longer have the ability to be proactive.

My go-to method for Patience is BREATHE. Simply take a breath before responding. Easy to do, but challenging to remember at times. Sometimes I add COUNTING in some way to the breathing. Count to 5. Breathe in and out 5 times. Count to 10.

Something I need to do is to figure out my TRIGGERS. When I do lose my patience, is there a pattern to the situations? Is it what is being said? Is it what is being done? Is it a time of day?

Two tips that I will start using to help with Patience: HUMOR and FORGIVENESS. When I feel impatient, I can use humor to defuse the feeling. Laughter can truly be the best medicine. And I should remember to forgive myself for being impatient. It will be impossible to be patient 100% of my life, so I need to take it easy on myself.

It will be interesting if I remember to use these tips this week and I find myself a little short on Patience.



Resources:
http://www.tinatessina.com/practicing_patience.html
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Patient
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43383729/ns/today-today_health/t/type-hurry-learn-patience-heres-how/#.UPLPxUQZwnU
http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2010/09/16/patience/
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTCS_78.htm

Granola Bars

Thanks to Pinterest, I have more recipes I want to try than I have time to actually try them. But it was time for the granola bars recipe. Yet another snack that my boys (including the big boy) inhale faster than I can purchase them. 30 bars gone in a week.

So yet again I used on online recipe to make some bars; no tweaking required... yay!! Well, a little tweaking, but only in the process, not in the ingredients. And it takes slightly longer than 3 minutes... maybe 5, but definitely less than 10.

First tweak, I line my pan with parchment paper. My best baking friend is parchment paper. Whenever you want to be able to lift your item out of the pan to easily slice, use parchment. Oh, yeah. When I tried to "push" the mixture into the pan (by the way, the pictures involved a doubled recipe in my big jelly roll pan), the mixture stuck to the spoon and my fingers. So another sheet of parchment paper, my best baking friend. Now it was super easy to push the mixture really well into the pan.

The hardest part of the recipe: allowing the batch to rest on the counter for 2 hours WITHOUT my boys eating it.

When they are set, I just lift out using the parchment paper and slice. If I had been a little more exact with my sizing, I could have sliced this batch into 36 bars (3 x 12) but instead I only got 3 x 11 with the bars all the way to the left a bit wider than the rest. I place them in a plastic container, using the parchment (hurray for reuse!) to layer between levels, and leave them in the snack drawer to be devoured.

The flavor is reminiscent of rice krispie treats, but so much better since there is no marshmallow; I am not a rice krispie treat fan.

*If you need an invite to Pinterest, let me know :) I will need your email address to send the invite through Pinterest. But be prepared: IT IS AN ADDICTION!! Therapy may be needed in the future.

Gummies

I started a quest a few weeks ago to find a recipe for Gummy Fruit Snacks. My boys LOVE gummies and my budget can not afford to keep up with how quickly they eat through them. So I found this recipe online and began the experiment.

I followed the recipe exactly and used my mini-muffin pan, since I do not have any ice cube trays.

They were... decent. Not nearly enough flavor for me and my boys, but the texture was good. My next thought was to find a good balance of flavored gelatin with unflavored gelatin to get the additional flavor but keep the texture. I went through various experimental versions over the next two weeks.

Some were too jello-y and we needed a spoon to eat them.

Some had the consistency of a bouncy ball and we could not even bite them. No, we did not experiment with how high they could bounce since I did not want to encourage the boys to play with their food.

I'm now very close to what I want.

I use 3 ounces of concentrated juice (thawed), 5 teaspoons of flavored gelatin, and 4 teaspoons of unflavored gelatin. I am able to buy the gelatins in bulk, so that helps lower the cost of production: it comes out to 62 cents per batch! :) I purchased ice cube trays in different shapes to see what will happen; my boys love pirates! What is pictured below is actually three batches based on the 3:5:4 ratio. I placed them in the refrigerator for a while to help them set.

They are still too sticky for my likes, however the boys love them. The fruit and pirate trays worked really well, since they are silicone and I can bend them to get the gummies out. The white tray... not so good. I had to use my fingers to dig our the circles and hearts, and I am not able to get the stars out at all. I think I will just use them make ice cubes and purchase additional silicone trays. The boys really want gummies in super hero shapes :)

If you have any tips for helping them not to stick to the trays and/or for making the gummies a bit less sticky, I would love your suggestions.

Disney Makes Me Rated R

I would love to be a fly on the wall during a Disney movie brain-storming session, especially one in which they are discussing naming the characters. Can you imagine the amount of laughter involved with some of the suggestions?

Let's take "Toy Story." Rewind to the character naming session over 12 years ago.

"Let's name the cowboy 'Woody'."

<Everyone at the session imagines every parent in the world having to discuss their child's obsession with Woody... and proceeds to laugh hysterically until they pee themselves>

Fast forward to present day. These are the characters that my 3-year-old is obsessed with:

"No, I haven't seen your Woody."

"Are you looking for your big Woody or little Woody?"

"Do you have a Buzz?"

"Do you have a Woody in your lap?"

"Has anyone seen his Woody?"

"Which Buzz do you want?"

<begin sarcasm> Thanks, Disney. You're the best. <end sarcasm>

Chore Charts

CT has hit the wonderful age of 6... and he is constantly asking for things. Squinkies... Nerf guns... Legos... video games... a basketball. Enough, already!

I did some research on ideas for allowance based on the ages of my boys. I know CT can handle many different tasks and IG, who is 3, will have a shorter list of tasks. I want them to learn the lesson of earning money and prioritizing how to use that money, however I do not want them to expect payment for every little task they do. Somehow I'd like to find the right balance.

Here's the plan:

I created a Chore Chart for each boy. On the left are the tasks they should be doing every day; these tasks earn the weekly "allowance." CT will be paid $6 per week and IG will be paid $3 per week as long as they are being a functioning member of the family and doing these tasks (put clothes in basket, straighten bed, put away toys, etc.). On the right are additional tasks that can be completed for additional pay; a quarter per task for CT and a dime per task for IG.

I created the charts using PowerPoint, printed them on regular paper, and put them in frames from the dollar store. Now I can use them as "wipe off" charts. At the bottom are spaces that I can keep track of their day to day progress: if they completed the allowance tasks and how many extra tasks they completed. Pay day will be Saturday morning of each week.

While at the dollar store, I also lucked out and found Piggy Banks (!) so I bought four of them, 2 for each boy.

The plan is for one piggy to hold "Savings" and for the other piggy to hold "Spending." CT will be required to put at least $2 of his allowance in the savings piggy each week, while IG is required to put at least $1 in the savings piggy. At the end of each month, we will go to the bank and put the contents of the piggies in to their savings accounts. The other piggy is for their spending money. CT already has ideas for what he wants to buy. Once he picks his first item, I will research it's price and create a chart so he knows when he has enough money to buy the item.



This Saturday will be our first pay day. I have no clue whether this will work they way I would like it to or not. Somehow there has got to be a way to teach children about the importance of working hard to afford what they want without creating monsters that expect payment for everything they are asked to do. I see both of those types of children every day: the ones that expect handouts and the ones that ask "what do I get?"

I'll let you know how it goes...