Discipline around the house

First of all, I just want to thank my mother for teaching me HOW to clean a house.  I admit, when I do clean the house, deep down nitty gritty kind of clean, I can do it right.

Growing up, there was a joke about cleaning for mom (might have been my own mom's joke about cleaning for her mom?  or her mother-in-law?  I don't remember), and I'll tell you that it's kind of true.  I know that she raised me right, so when I know she's coming, I like for my house to reflect that.  On the other hand, when it's someone else coming over, they might not get the full sparkle effect.  AND when my sister shows up for a planned visit and brings my mother as a surprise (yes, that was four years ago now, and I still haven't  forgotten that sheer terror at the realization), well, you can imagine.

So, I'm here, and I've been tasked to raise the two children I have now.  And it's getting to the point where these two sweet-faced, sometimes-sassy tots need to know how to keep a house.  I'm realizing that this has to start young, otherwise it's an uphill battle.  I know that I have slacked off, both in my own housekeeping and in teaching my children standards, but now I know that now is the time, and it's about to be too late.

Heretofore, we have only made a big event of cleaning/straightening/tidying our house when people are coming over.  This usually occurred on Wednesday nights before small group at our house.  This has led to confusion by the 4-year-old when we try to make it happen at other times.

Elsie:  "Why are we cleaning up?  Are our friends coming over?"

I knew there was a problem brewing when my friend Meredith had the kids stay over at her house one Friday night while I was at cheer camp and Eli was at drill.  The report was that when Elsie was asked to help pick up toys before bedtime so that they could make room on the floor of W's room for E & O's sleeping bags, Elsie's reply was, "My mother doesn't make us clean up our toys before we go to bed."  And that got me to thinking that she was right, but she should have been wrong,

I had a Pampered Chef party at my house a week and a half ago.  It made me have to clean up the kitchen, dining and living areas.  Essentially all of downstairs.  I have been very good in the last week and a half about returning things to that level of clean.  And I've even mopped twice.  You have no idea what a feat that is, since I HATE sweeping and mopping with a passion.  Just to give you an idea, it took me almost ten years of marriage to use up one medium-sized container of PineSol.  Yeah.  I know.  Just seems like every time I mop, someone seems to spill something, have a potty accident, throw up, etc.  The rest of the time that doesn't happen (or at least I've convinced myself of this).

So, one night this week, I tell Elsie and Oscar that they need to pick up their toys downstairs before they go to bed.

Elsie (screaming at me):  "WE DON'T PICK UP OUR TOYS HERE!  WE ONLY PICK THEM UP AT MISS KAY'S HOUSE!  WE DON'T DO THAT HERE!!!!"

And I tell her that we are going to start doing that, and she starts to bargain.  "Just downstairs.  Not upstairs. Right?"  For now, I told her.  Then, on Monday of this week, they cleaned up their room and put their toys away in the correct places, and now they have to clean up upstairs, too.  This morning, I taught Elsie how to make her bed.  Tomorrow, who knows?

I have been itching to start a commission program with them (a la Financial Peace Jr. or Fisher-Kids), where they work for money to spend/save/give, but the big realization for me is that I have to set the example before I can expect them to do what I want them to do to the level I want them to do it (age appropriate, of course).  So...

I spent the afternoon deep-cleaning my bathroom for the first time since the summer of 2011, when Eli came home from Virginia (to be clear, it has been cleaned, but not DEEP cleaned).  Again, this particular project was spurned on by Elsie's commentary.  She wanted to use our toilet.  No, I told her.  Our toilet is dirty--use your toilet.  "Only adults use dirty toilets?"  Sigh.  That moved to the top of my list.

Anyway, I'll let you know how the rest goes.  The upstairs is a year-long project of its own...

Cheers.

July 2013 Debt Update

Well, it's July. We didn't have any "extra" money from the end of June paychecks, so we're just trucking along little by little. Third 10K Chunk, started 1/1/13

Fundraising Thermometer

We have three thousand, eight-hundred something dollars and some change left to kill this debt thermometer. I think it will happen soon enough, though this will have been the longest it took us to pay off 10,000 (losing focus here and there is the culprit). We have scheduled extra money coming from the various and sundry activities of the summer time in July and August and maybe September paychecks: cheer camp, week of boring teacher training, writing and strategy games camps, NEH Landmarks seminar, and math booster class for me; Army National Guard Drug Taskforce and Annual Training for Eli. We are sooooooooooo close to paying off the high-interest loan that Eli has. I just want to see it DIE. Just sayin'. Cheers.

Follow-up on Potty Training with the O-Man

I thought it might be helpful to follow-up on the potty-training trials with the little man.

Yes, he was pee trained in 3 days.  The poop thing took a little longer.

In the meantime, we decided it would be a great idea to take a quick trip to Texas for my nephew's graduation.  So, I took both kids by myself, and drove to Texas.  15 hours.  I put pull-ups on them in the car because I know there are stretches of Hwy 80 and I-20 that do not have exits or have exits lacking clean restrooms.  And you know, when you travel with two small children, every bathroom stop is an ordeal:  a parade into the restroom and a party in the handicap stall.  As mothers will find out, it is wise to let the children go potty first so that the sound of someone else peeing doesn't cause them to pee themselves.  And by the time it was my turn to go, the children were ready to go and would try to open the stall door.  Depending on the size of the stall, sometimes I could stop them, and sometimes I could not.  Yikes!

Anyway, 15 hours later we made it to Texas (no potty accidents!), and O-man had to use the potty before bed.  For the first time, he just climbed up on the potty before we had time to get out the potty seat, and he went.  And then he pooped.  That was the end of it.  We didn't even get the potty seat out for the rest of the week.  It clicked for him, and now the boy is a pooping machine. We'll be on to standing while peeing in no time.

On the night-training front, Oscar is batting .500.  Some nights dry, some nights wet.  Still trying to narrow down the causes.  Unlike Elsie, who would wake up screaming in the night when she peed, Oscar is content to roll over to a dry spot and continue sleeping.  This possibly has to do with the fact that Elsie was trained in December, and Oscar in May, and the fact that being cold in the winter is less desirable.  Or maybe Oscar is more of an easy-going problem solver.  Wet spot over here?  No problem.  Cover with pillow and move over to dry spot.

I'm sure that by the end of the summer, the boy will be standing and peeing, and staying dry all night.  We'll see, though.

Cheers.

Traveling with the Little Beavers

So, we just returned from a week-long trip to Texas.  By "we", I mean the kids and I.  Ordinarily, we work out our summer travels so that Eli can come with us, but this time we worked around a certain date:  my nephew's graduation.  Eli really couldn't get away for the week, so we packed up the car and headed to Texas.

I've traveled solo with two kids before.  It has been a while, though--not since we took a "short" 8-hour drive to see Eli when he was up in Virginia for six months at the JAG school.  I've learned a few things about traveling with little people.

1.  I have two amazing little people to travel with.  They entertain each other and themselves in the car--no problems.  See, we have a compact car.  No fancy technology.  We make long drives without the aid of DVDs.  Just the company of each other.

2.  Plan ahead for food (my kids love to eat), and all will go well.  I stock the front seat with a cooler of kid-friendly drinks (sport top bottles, etc.) and water; I also have a basket of snacks, equal part salty and sweet. I also bring empty cups:  cups with lids to give water, and cups without lids to hold loose snacks.  When necessary, stop for meals.

3.  Plan for in-car diversions, and but don't give it to them all at once.  I made that mistake last summer, haha.  They each have a backpack, and I go to the dollar store and spend about $20 on junk for them (stickers, toys, coloring books, etc) and put part of it in the backpack, the other part in the trunk for the return trip.  Last summer, I learned that crayons were a no-go after having to remove melted crayon from O's car seat.  This summer, I learned that if you give markers, you have to be willing to deal with the consequences, which I'm okay with, so we went into Chick-Fil-A with one green kid and one red kid because the best canvas is a blank one, you know?  They also each had a good time with a Slinky.  Oscar more than most.

Look, mama!  My Slinky!

I do also plan ahead and get audio books from the library.  This time I hit the gold mine in a CD that had six Arthur books on it, plus songs to go along with it.  I also brought my least-annoying toddler tunes.  And an audio book or two for me.  When one of my discs would end, we would listen to one Arthur story.  And on the return trip, I managed to get the kids to listen to the Wicked soundtrack.

If we had been plugged into electronics, we would have missed Oscar raising his markers to the sky, saying, "By the Power of Gray Skull!  I am He-Man!"  or every time he saw some, yelling excitedly in the way only an almost-three-year-old can, "More cows!!!"  We would not have had the back seat sing-along, or the random questions from Elsie because she was actually thinking:  "Mama, do Chick-Fil-A have beer?"

4.  You have to take time for little people to get out of the car to run around, so go ahead and plan for it.  But, make it a productive stop.  Combine restroom, stretching, food, and gas wherever possible.  Rest stops and welcome centers are better for running around than other places, but do what you can.

Mississippi River overlook in Vicksburg

That's a mighty big river!

Welcome to Texas.  Almost there.  But not quite

5.  It's okay to let kids be kids.  Like, when they decided to serenade the ladies' room at the Texas welcome center because there was already a stage and great acoustics.

Yeah, like that. Times twenty.

6.  There's no great way to do potty stops.  We all go in.  We all go.  We all come back out.  Somewhere in there someone opens a stall door before it's time and we flash the other ladies that may be in the restroom. People I'll never see again, thankfully.  But sometimes, just sometimes, you may get a free concert.

Cheers.

June 2013 Debt Update

One of the best things that has happened to us since finding Dave Ramsey and his financial advice is that now we can handle financial hits without freaking out.  First, do you know about Dave's Baby Steps?  If not, here's the basic steps.  You can go to his website, www.daveramsey.com, for further information.

We have completed Baby Step 1 ($1000 emergency fund), we are working on Baby Step 2 (paying off all debt using debt snowball), and we are less than two years away from moving on to Step 3 (3-6 months living expenses in an emergency fund).  We have been budgeting and setting funds aside for recurring expenses in sinking funds.  We have more saved up now than we have in our entire marriage (all earmarked funds, of course), we have less debt than we've ever had, not including the house.  Because of this peace, financial setbacks are small problems instead of terrible tragedies.

Take for instance the day sometime in late March that we deemed it was too warm to live without turning on the A/C.  So, we turned it on.  Air was blowing.  It was warm.  Something was not right.  Well, we knew that repair would be expensive, so we stuck it out, waiting for tax refunds and another paycheck.  We ran ceiling fans and slept with the windows open.  It was not really a problem because we are really only home in the coolest part of the day--we got our air conditioning fix elsewhere.  However, when school ended and the kids and I were here during the day, it was unbearable.  So, we got it fixed.  When the man quoted the price, we didn't even bat an eye.  We were able to write a check for it right then.  Because we have an emergency fund for times such as this.  And now we have A/C.

On top of that, we were still able to make a major loan payment this month with all the extra hauling butt we have been doing.  So, here's the debt thermometer for the end of May/beginning of June:

Third 10K Chunk, started 1/1/13

Fundraising Thermometer

We are halfway through this thermometer!  Maybe we can knock this one out by the end of the summer (August!).  We have just less than $28k to pay off (remember we started with $105k, and started the debt thermometers when we had it down to $55k)!!  This is exciting, indeed!

Cheers.