Stop. Take Note. Make Necessary Changes

With all the craziness spanning the last few months, including, putting our house on the market, cleaning, decluttering, showings, selling our house, new house hunting, packing, moving temp. apartment living and closing on a new house in 2 weeks (just to name a few) I have become a lot more lenient with letting things slide.

Some things have been good for me; I have learned that my friends will still like me despite a messy kitchen...

But when it comes to the kids, there are some things that have to change; time for the ropes to be reigned in...

1. TV- I never in a million years imagined that I would let this one slide, but I have.

I am so ashamed, really. It's not that I let them sit in front of it for hours upon hours every day, but....the once firm limit of one -two 30 minute shows a day, has easily transpired to sometimes 3-4 shows over the last few months...ugh. It's hard to look at it and see the numbers add up to a possible 2 hours of TV in a single day! There is going to be some tough backtracking here, but from today on, TV shows will be back to the limit of 1-2 shows per day, and will be the result of their accomplishing some educational work or household chores.

2. Bedtime- Don't even get me started talking about all of the frustrating years of sleep deprived nights due to the constant arrival of little bodies into our room, begging, pleading to sleep with us-countless times a night. Amazingly, here and there we have actually had periods where we prevailed over this and I have thought, wow, could this be? Could we actually be on a path to healthy and fruitful sleeping habits?! But, no, instead, disruption in our routine and lives has once again prevailed, not all of my hard work. Yet, thankfully, along with our move, also came a one hour time difference, and the amazing gift of sleepy children at 7 pm! Now, we just need to work on keeping them in their OWN beds!

3. Home Learning- Oh, this is a hard one...I really prided myself on my desire and motivation in making this a huge priority in our home. Sure my kids go to preschool a few mornings a week, but I am lucky enough to stay at home with them right now. I am honored to hold the huge responsibility of supplementing their learning process. Over the last few months though, with everything else going on, a portion of this has also fallen to the wayside.

But now that the chaos is lessening, I am taking some time to re-focus, take note, and prioritize. My children are my number one priority and I am making some changes for them around here...