Vision: Do It

Yesterday morning I had to get my focus if I was going to make a positive contribution to the family.  The good and bad of it:

Good: I typed up my blog post here (which helped me)
  Bad: ...instead of wake up the kids.
Good: they woke up on their own.
  Bad: ...about 15 minute before the bus was coming.
Good: I kept up my typing therapy to clear my head.
  Bad:... instead of making their lunches.
Good: Mel made the lunches.
  Bad: but they missed the bus
Good: I finished my post and then drove them to school.  Luckily we didn't have any of the ice rain up here.

So, it ended on with more goods, so we're good.  After getting the kids off, Sophi woke up, and 8:30 is a little early for her, it's a little early for all of us cause as I said yesterday, I'm not good at managing things and we stay up way too late trying to get things done, cause it takes us so long to get everyone to stop playing toys or their saxophone and go brush and floss and everyone sit down, listen, shh!  So this morning we were all tired, Sophia was so cranky, she cried whenever I set her down, she just wanted to be held.  So I didn't do jack during the morning, but I did try to read to Sophi (drop of awesome) but she wasn't interested.  She finally fell asleep around noon.  She usually sleeps for maybe two hours.  I decided instead of attacking the house I'd figure out a master plan.  Looking over my parenting books pile, A House United spoke the loudest saying "Choose me!" so I did and proceeded to read for the next 4 1/2 hours as Sophia took the longest nap ever and my therapy was complete.  A House United totally hit the spot - Mrs. Peck's going to show me how to get a system of family government going here, Self Government, which I know still includes us leading out as parents, but if we can properly manage ourselves as parents and help the kids learn to manage themselves, boy, things are gonna be good! 

I had read parts of this book before, but I was too impatient to get to her solutions and I skipped over quite a bit.  This time I'm forcing myself to read it completely through so I don't miss any of her insights or tips or how to properly implement them.  The author and her family were on a British Reality show called "The World's Strictest Parents" which we saw and heard about in 2009 which is when I bought this book.  Here are the clips from their episode if you want to watch:

part 1:
 
part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6
(we've watched quite a few of those with the kids which has been fun, opens up lots of great discussion topics!)

Nicholeen had a really good analogy that I liked, about a time she was swimming in a murky lake for a race - she had to keep clearing her foggy goggles and then looking up to keep her focus on the shore's finish line, she was able to find her rhythm when she was alone, but if other swimmers passed her she'd get hit or splashed around too much and lose her rhythm and have to focus again to find it, and I feel like that's what I'm searching for right now, trying to find my rhythm when life is tossing me on it's waves and splashing me a bit more than I'd like.


I'm anxious again to get on to how I put a plan in place to find my rhythm, but going to keep reading through it page by page.  I liked chapter 5 which I don't think I read last time - "It Starts With You" - which made me think of this great post I read "Forget About Time Management, Let's Talk About Self Management" and also she mentions finding your mission or dream in life and says "People who live their dreams, or missions, are infections.  Soon others feel that they have something special to give to the world too... If we live our missions, our children will better understand what it looks like to have a family mission and to live by that mission." (pg. 40)

Which statement reminded me of a book my friend recommended and shared with me called "Dare, Dream, Do" by Whitney Johnson, so going to start with myself.  So much to read and learn and then most importantly DO, I need to start really doing and taking life by the horns.  I took Mel to Hobby Lobby for a 1 on 1 date, we got lots of ideas for knock off projects we want to do, she said "We always talk about stuff and we have lots of stuff (like the sketch pads and canvas boards that were in our cart) so we can do stuff, but we never do it."  Mel and I resolved "This year, this is the year that we stop just having ideas, we're gonna start doing."  This is our year to do.