The Family

The Family

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Day #27: banned from the gym

    My husband has banned me from the gym for the next two weeks. This is the equivalent of a time-out for my one- year old, or not letting Savannah have fruit snacks for the day (holy cow that is about the worst punishment around here!), or taking away her t.v privileges. This. is. BIG. The reason being, my sweet Luke now has Strep throat! In efforts to get him well and keep him well, all contact with other children has been banned, which includes, but is not limited to, the gym. I must say, I agree too. The boy has had a double ear infection, pink eye, two seizures, Hand Foot and Mouth, and now Strep- all in a 2 month period. Each time he gets better, we return to our normal schedule of the gym, playdates, etc. Not this time though! We are going to try to get him 200% better and healthy! To add to all the fun of staying home, Savannah had her last day of school on Friday, so I now have both of my children home all day with me and nothing.on.the.calendar.nothing. This calls for some big time creativity on my part.
    I just ordered How to Teach your child to Read in twenty Easy Lessons. Yeah right like it's going to be easy. And I can just about swear on my life it will be longer than twenty lessons. Call me crazy. I figure it will give her a leg up before going into real preschool this Fall. So that should occupy a total of 20 minutes every day..... I do have big plans, I just don't know how realistic they are. I tend to get preoccupied with my to-do lists. Laundry, gym, grocery store. Although I stay at home with the kids, I feel like I sometimes don't give them the attention and time they deserve. So the next two weeks I am really going to make an effort to put them first, rather than fitting them in at the end of the day when my energy is dwindling and my patience is low. I mean, I am literally going to put activities on the calendar to do with them everyday. Along with reading, Savannah loves to help me cook. So I think I will have her help me cook dinner every night and master setting the table. These are life skills that she is old enough to accomplish. She also enjoys painting but I rarely let her do it because it is just so dang messy. But heck, I apparently now have all the time in the world, so I'm going to get a cheap shower curtain liner to cover the table and let her have at it.
   As the second child, Luke does not get as much of my time as Savannah did at his age. He has about three hundred books (no I'm not kidding! Thank you grandma for being a book lover!) so I'm thinking this is the week to start sitting down and reading with him daily. He is also starting "preschool" in the Fall, so this is a good opportunity to start working on sitting still and listening to instruction. ha. Like I said, I have BIG plans for my little people! He can start working on his colors too. He loves balls and food, so I'm thinking if we can round up all the balls in this house, we will have every color, and then throw in a bag of Skittles...I'm confident we will have our colors down in no time!
  As for me, I have a few plans for myself too. I want to branch out and try some new recipes, which I rarely do because it takes extra time and effort, both of which I sometimes always lack.  Also, Tyson has been wanting me to get into bike riding (not like the biker shorts, shave my body, crazy kind- just regular get- on- a -bike- and -ride -it kind) an activity the whole family can do together. He has been working on my bike lately and I'm thinking I will get over my bike issues (so, when I was fifteen my parents for some reason thought it would be fun for our whole family to ride bikes in Colorado. in the summer. for 30 miles. And FYI, there are mountains there. Now I know its been 12 years, but the emotional scars left behind are vast), find a bike trailer on Craigslist for the kids, and maybe hit up a bike path this weekend!
   I will have to update my blog to let you know what actually gets accomplished. It might just be that I read to Luke, Savannah paints, and we do some bike riding. But I'll aim high and hope for the best!