The list

I've been a mama for 11.5 years. That's a while. The past few months I've really felt my "experience". I'm finally settling in to this role. On some days I actually think I might know what I'm doing. But on many days the same old challenges keep popping up. I've tried chore charts. I've tried point systems. I've tried demerits.  I've tried all kinda of systems, but honestly I'm just not a systems kind of gal. If consequences are not immediately obvious then I loose focus. I'm not surprised my kids are the same. So when I was blog hopping a couple of weeks ago and came across a blog (I can not find it again, if you know it tell us all in the comments!!)  that talked about "the list," my first instinct was to click on through. I thought about it though and the simplicity of creating a short, manageable core list with a singular goal at completion started to sound doable. Basically, the kids have a list of chores. Simple, expected items like their homework and reading time. The have to spend 30 minutes being creative (Legos totally count) and they have to complete one "moms choice" chore after ten minutes of general tidying up. For my guys- they are earning unlimited screen time. Yup I said that. IF they complete everything on their list they can veg out and watch tv or play the Wii to their little hearts content. But I'm finding that creative time goes from 30 mins to over an hour .. And the house is actually fairly tidy. (When it is no longer 100+ outside they will probably get some outside time on the list too. But y'all it's Texas and they've had two hours of active time at school so I feel no guilt. At all. Judge me on that later). Everyone has chores associated with specific events like dinner so those are not on the list, and we have family reading time every night before bed. Between all the extras that screen time is an hour or less. Unless the Quest is on. That they love and we watch together, a rare find on tv these days. (I fast forward the commercials though :/).   All of this is to encourage you that even a dozen years from now you might find new tricks to keep the sanity. Cheers on awesome bloggers even when you forget their names... Just don't forget mine;). 

Curtains

Today was a much better day. Woke up before 7 with the littles in my bed. Made them waffles, which they did not eat, and then the boys and I came up with some chores they can help with. It seems like a work in progress but the general idea is they earn screen time by doing jobs written on cloths pins I have clipped to a jar. When they do a job they drop their pin in. Ayden wants to trade screen time for money. We will see... After that we ran errands and found a park where we played in the shade and DID NOT get sweaty. It was a minor miracle. Hooray for low(er) humidity. This afternoon I made curtains out of table cloths. Easy peasy. Cut them in half and then seal the raw edge with a heat-n-bond strip to make a hem. They come the same length as window panels so thats not an issue. Then just hang with curtain clips. It still took all afternoon but it's done and the room feels more complete. Thanks for the encouragement yesterday :) it helped.