It's working!

Sometimes with parenthood it feels like NOTHING is working:

• nothing has worked to potty train Amber yet.
• nothing has worked to get the kids to play outside more.
• nothing has worked to keep bits of cereal from land mining the kitchen floor every single day.
• nothing has worked to keep the kids' toothpaste from turning into a clumpy oozing blue goo of death seeping over all bathroom surfaces.

{Amber snacked on my beautiful fresh bread!}

You get the idea. Sometimes successes feel few and far between. But tonight I had back-to-back successes, so I had to write them down. Jeff had parent teacher conferences tonight. That means he gets home after the kids' bedtime. Normally during parent teacher conferences, I default to survival mode and barely make it to bedtime with a faint wisp of sanity remaining, but tonight was different. 

Success Part I: family home evening game night! I can count at least three influences on this one:

1. At cub scouts last week, we had a video game night (the boys begged for it and I delivered). During the activity, I was chatting with my partner-leader and she told me how in her house they didn't have any video games--they play all kinds of board and creative games instead. It made me miss hands-on games. Every time I suggest a family game, my family outvotes me and we play video games together instead of board games. I have made several attempts at family games over the past few years, but Jeff and I always concluded that our kids weren't quite old enough for it to count as enjoyable. 
2. Last night Jeff and I had a card triathlon (best of three games: Quiddler, Loot, and Uno), and it was such quality interactive fun that I wanted to give "real" games another go with the kids--they are older now than they were last time we played games together after all. That's one dependable trait of all kids: they keep on getting older!
3. This morning another friend shared this quote: "True self care is making a choice to build a life you don't regularly need to escape from." Source: an online conference called I Am Mom Summit. This one sentence from it resonated with me so much that I went and tried to find the video it was from so I could at least attribute a name to the words, but it proved too a tricky task since there is no text for these messages and the videos expire after a week! All I know is that this was mentioned in one of over 25 video clip talks at imamomsummit.com.

Sunday night card triathlon: Jeff pulled out a solid victory, best of three, while I peppered him with pirate puns. Then he amused himself by hampering my attempt at a picture. This is what 11 years of marriage looks like.

I am always looking for more ways to spend quality time with my kids. We read stories together most days each week, and we TALK. My kids love to talk and tell me THINGS. I try to give one night each week to each kid, where I go snuggle with them and talk at bedtime. Sometimes I draw/color pictures with Rose. Sometimes I go on walks with Amber. But not regularly or very often. It's so easy to get swamped in non-kid chores and activities as a mom! I decided to give "real" games another shot.

SO: I bucked my past trend and faced the Jeff-less chaos head-on tonight. I mean, I didn't cook dinner or anything, but after dinner (hot dogs) instead of shooing the loud energetic kids off to play repeatedly (they always come back louder), I gathered them up and got out some games--real games--to play together. I always check the games at Goodwill and buy the good ones, so we have a healthy closet of game options. Our first game tonight was I Spy Eagle Eye, which is kind of like Spot It but with a bell to ding every time you spot an object. After a few rounds, the kids were getting restless so we tallied up and Jay won. Rose drooped in defeat. I told her we would play another game if she promised not to get upset even if she lost.

We agreed on a childhood classic: Slamwich, like Slap Jack but with food pictures on bread-shaped cards. We played and played all the way till bedtime, laughing and slapping and stealing cards right and left. The best part was even Amber could play. She was totally in to carefully laying down a card. Every time she played a card, she called out joyfully, "I winnnn!" I found that as long as I said whose turn it was every. single. time, everyone happily played along well. Jay won again--the boy was on a roll tonight. Rose dissolved a little, but I told her that we all lost except Jay, and there can be only one winner. She replied dramatically "but I lost the worst!" (she had the fewest cards left when we ended the game). We all busted up laughing at her drama, and thankfully she joined in. I pried the Slamwich cards out of Amber's unwilling fingers (she sobbed in defeated exhaustion). Then I hustled them through teeth-potty-scripture-prayer, and the house was quiet at last.

Capturing the full chaotic emotional scope of the situation in one quick picture.

It's not always an option to play with the kids. I believe that kids need to be left alone to play as often as possible so they can be KIDS. But the witching hour sans spousal support requires hands-on in-yo-face mama. Our game night was not perfect, and we were all annoyed at one point or another during it, but we bridged the gap between 6 and 7pm with much more manageable chaos than usual. That's as much of a win as any mother could ask for!

Success Part II: Reading Rose. IT'S HAPPENING! Rose is starting to read real chapter books voluntarily and silently!!! She has been chapter-book-ready for a long time, but no book or series tickled her fancy and she wasn't interested enough to want to read. I have been waiting with bated breath in the background for her to decide to read bigger books, and finally gave her a few nudges in that direction: 

1. Before Christmas break, I told Rose that if she could get ready for school independently without tons of reminders and without any meltdowns for an entire week, she would qualify for a later bedtime. Nothing really came of it during December, but Rose must've been mulling the offer over because when January hit, she transformed from a sluggish morning meltdowner to a bright, motivated speedster in the morning. IT IS THE BEST. She gets ready for school on her own without a struggle, and she now gets to stay up an extra half hour (till 7:30pm) reading. 
2. For Christmas, I gave her the Princess in Black series. We had the first book already and we had sat and read it together. She loved it. And bingo, she read the Princess in Black books she got for Christmas all on her own. I was fanning the flames, but we needed more fuel.
3. Last week at the library, I picked out some books that fit most of the criteria Rose gave me for books she liked. Turns out she was hesitant to read chapter books because she is an artist and really likes pictures in books. I also suspect that she wanted something of her own to read that was more "girly," not just Jay's old Magic Treehouse books. So I grabbed a few likely candidates at the library and as luck would have it, I chose well! 

Strong-willed Rose has always needed to make her own decisions. She won't commit to anything until SHE decides to do it and feels like it was HER idea. That requires some creative parenting. I've learned to guide her strong will rather than force it, so YAY, it's working! (shhhh, don't tell Rose about my persuasive parental plotting...)

Tonight, I asked Rose a question two separate times while she was reading, and she completely didn't hear me. It was awesome--the only kind of ignoring that I am ok with!