Week 2 - January 8 - 14, 2012 {#Mamatography}

Well, I can't believe I've made it to the second week! I seem to always have good intentions when I start this type of thing. Unfortunately, when I miss a day or two, I seem to give up. I know there are other "take a picture a day for a year" memes out there, but I chose this one for a couple of reasons: 1) I love reading Diary of a First Child. 2) The guidelines of Mamatography are very laid back, making it feel less of an obligation and more of a fun experiment. The one thing that really hooked me was this from the Mamatography info post:

"If things happen and you can’t participate for a while, that’s fine – just start up again when you can."

Yay For Clean Dishes!

Day 8 (1/8/12)

Yeah, I was lazy. The only thing I did that was productive all day. Well, I made dinner, too, but it shouldn't count. I just opened a jar of spaghetti sauce, then added a few herbs and the leftover meatloaf from the night before. Oh, and cooked some pasta.

I Wear My Sunglasses at Night

Day 9 (1/9/12)

I saw the moon and just had to take a picture! I love how the clouds give a smoky, mysterious feel to the photo. And the corona is so bright! It was easier to see the line between the moon and the corona circling it with the naked eye than through the lens on my camera. One of these days I'll learn how to take photos that look the same as how I see them.

Mustache Man!

 Day 10 (1/10/12)

When my oldest was little, he called these beans. Well, actually, he still does (and so do I!) Little Guy, who seems to have a different way of looking at everything, has decided that they are not beans. They are most definitely mustaches, instead. Just after this picture was taken, my oldest came up and asked Little Guy what he was doing with the "bean". He got an earful and I don't think he'll be calling them anything but "mustaches" around Little Guy again!!

Zzzz...

Day 11 (1/11/12)

This hasn't happened... ever! He said, "Mama, please be quiet. I need a rest. I'm in a grumpy mood." Once I got over my shock, I began to wonder if he might be getting sick. Nope. Wouldn't it be cool if he was just learning to recognize his  need for sleep AND deciding to follow it?!

"Snot's On!"

Day 12 (1/12/12)

I've taken it upon myself to develop a recipe for a cotton play dough. I want something that is pliable like dough, but fuzzy like cotton balls. This was my first (failed) attempt. I wound up with a pot full of snotty cotton. ICK!

I added a bunch of flour until it was dough-ish, and let the kids have their fun with it.

Day 13 (1/13/12)

Yeah. Completely forgot to take the camera out all day.

Uh-Oh!

Day 14 (1/14/12)

We finally got some snow! This was Little Guy's first snowball fight. As you can see, the mittens are way too big for for him (the site I got them from said they fit ages 2-5. Those things are just a little too small for me to wear!) Anyway, my oldest showed him how to take his hands and push the snow together to pack it into a snowball-like formation. Pretty cool big brother, huh?











So, what did your week look like? If you'd like to join me on this endeavor, just click on the Mamatography button at the top of this post to learn more. I'll be linking this post at Diary of a First Child's Week 2 Mamatography Linky when it's posted on Wednesday (1/18), so if you'd like to see more photos you should head over!

Mindful Parenting Collaboration - Topic 1: Inner Work {#MindParColl}

First, if you’re reading this, you might have the feeling that you want to change some of your parenting practices or, perhaps, you're curious about “mindful parenting” and what it could be. Well, congratulations for taking a moment from your day to click on the link. Erin of it’s OK and I are going to be working together over the next 40 weeks (!) on a journey toward more mindful parenting and would love to have you join us. To learn how we envision The Mindful Parenting Collaboration working, please read the introductory post HERE. 

This week, we will be working on ourselves. What? I thought this was supposed to be about how I interact with my kids! Yes, it is about our parenting, but we need to figure out just who we are and where we’d like to be before we can consider our parenting practices. Just jumping in to change how we parent would be akin to working a customer service job – all fake smiles and a cheery façade without truly showing how we feel. Kids aren’t easily fooled by this – they know when words and actions come from the heart and when they seem to be scripted. Moreover, that customer service job only lasts so many hours a day. You have downtime from it. You can call in sick. Heck – you can even quit. Not so with parenting! Therefore, it is important to start with ourselves in this search to figure out what kind of parents we want to be.

The first step is to lay the groundwork for mindful parenting by doing some personal inner work. There are many way one can go about this. There are so many possibilities here. You could try meditating, yoga, and/or working on your spirituality. Maybe even get out a giant imaginary eraser and start at square one by considering the blame you place on yourself and others and then begin forgiving. You want to be calm and at peace with yourself and others before you try to be a calm and peaceful parent.

One of the more straightforward tasks you may want to consider is creating a Personal Mission Statement. Head over to The Parenting Passageway’s first post for a very good list of questions to get you going. Don’t view this as “homework”, but more as a way to get in touch with you. I can tell you that it has been years since I really knew who "I" was and what kind of person I want to be. Periodically taking time to rediscover myself has seemed like a selfish venture when there were so many more important duties on my plate as a wife and mother. But, when we are confused in or unhappy with our own lives, how can we care for our loved ones? Now, creating your own mission statement is something that you should plan to take a little time doing. Check out this article by Stephen Covey about writing mission statements (I know it says “Business” at the top, but keep reading – I promise it gets personal fairly quickly!)

You may also want to check out Hybrid Rasta Mama’s first post to the Mindful Mothering Challenge to explore how she planned to go about this topic of inner work. Whatever you choose to do, you should make a commitment to work on it every day for a pre-determined amount of time - even 10 minutes per day can be enough to get the wheels turning in your head!

MY PLAN:

I need to make time to explore myself, first off. I think that since lying with little guy when he goes to bed and down for a nap are kind of black holes in my days. Yeah, we do some talking, but then he rolls over and listens to his John Lennon or Yellow Submarine CD's (for the gazillionth time) and I end up staring at the ceiling. I could be trying a little meditation here. I could be asking myself some of The Parenting Passageway’s questions – one at a time – and really exploring the answers. I get two 30-minute periods a day, on average, to do this. Once he’s asleep and I stealthily sneak away, I could write down some of the thoughts I’ve had in a journal. By the end of the week, I should have a pretty good idea about where I want to go and who I am. My collection of journal writings could easily be transformed into a kind of personal mission statement. I also think this could become a great habit that will allow me to continually reconsider my thoughts and ideas.

My goal is to have a personal mission statement written that I am 100% comfortable with by next Friday!

If you would like to join us in The Mindful Parenting Collaboration, please link up any posts that you may write introducing the concept. If you have done this in the past as the Mindful Mothering Challenge, or any other name, please link up your old post that corresponds with this subject. We’d also appreciate any posts that deal with inner work and creating personal mission statements. We also invite you to grab the linky code by clicking on “Get the InLinkz Code” at the bottom of the post and adding it to your own post.

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Number 1 {Wordless Wednesday... uh, kind of...}

Cheese!

This is Number 1, our cat. He was born in the middle of winter, 4 years ago, under the blankets of y bed - right next to me feet. We had let a poor stray cat into the house that night because it was one of the coldest nights on record and I felt so sorry for her. I didn't know she was pregnant - I never really bothered to look! Anyway, we were NOT going to keep her or the kittens. Our landlord had already kicked two different people out for having pets. That's why we named him Number 1 - he was the firstborn and we didn't want to get attached. We didn't even name the others. Well, everyone found homes quickly except Number 1 - we named him and couldn't get rid of him. He even hides when the landlord is around!

He's been taking naps with Little Guy since he was a newborn. If nap time is late, Number 1 gets very upset and starts pacing back and forth on the bed.

He loves going for walks in the woods with us. He knows that we do not appreciate dead animals as gifts, so he's been bringing us live offerings. They usually spend a night in our bathroom and I let them go in the morning while Number 1 is eating his breakfast. He's recently been banned from coming into the house because he attempted to catch us a skunk. The smell is wearing off... very slowly!