Early to Rise Challenge Etc

I've officially given up the Early to Rise Challenge and life his been less stressful for me. I just really don't think that me getting up before my kids would helpful to me. I can see how it would benefit a lot of people, but things are working fine for me the way that we've been doing them.

I actually got up today at 7:05 without an alarm clock set, so maybe all I needed was the stress of the alarm gone to get up earlier.

I would eventually like to get up earlier for the sole purpose of getting exercise in before I take the kids to school, but I'm not going to force it.  I'm going to keep working on waking up without an alarm and see if I start to wake up earlier.

Even though I've been ignoring this blog, I have still been thinking about my "trying to yell less" challenge for myself.  I even went downstairs to talk to one of my kids yesterday instead of just yelling from the top of the stairs.  Which for me is huge. I am constantly just yelling at them from upstairs to do things or to get ready to go somewhere. I am trying to change this. I want to make sure and always been in the same room as my kids when I'm talking to them.

Our new after school schedule is still working marvelously.  The kids choose to get their chores done most of the time so that they can get a little video game time in. There has only been a few days where they played instead and didn't get them done.  And I just let it happen. I didn't yell or get upset when chores weren't finished. I just explained that there would be no video games because they had chosen to not get their chores done.  It was glorious.

Now, I still need to find a way to get mornings running more smoothly.

Early to Rise Challenge Day 9

I actually got up at 7:00 today even though I could have slept in because I don't have anything to get to this morning!  I feel like I shouldn't be so excited about getting up at 7:00, but since I've been struggling so much I do feel excited.

If I keep up with 7:00 for the rest of the week I think we'll try and move on to 6:45 next week.

Early to Rise Day 8

I keep wondering if I should give up on this Early to Rise challenge because I am just not doing very well, but I'm going to keep trying until the month is up. Maybe by the end of the month I'll be doing better.

I woke up just before my 7:00 am alarm and turned it off and went back to bed until 7:38. I shouldn't be tired because I feel like I'm going to bed at a decent time (always before 11:00) but I just feel like I need more sleep whenever it comes time to get out of bed. I'm going to keep trying to get up at 7:00 until it becomes easy. Perhaps my challenge is going to last longer than a month.

This Week's Menu Plan

I love when people post their weekly menu on their blog because I like getting new ideas for our dinner, so I thought I'd start sharing mine every Monday.

Breakfast at our house is never planned but will consist of either pancakes, cereal or eggs of some sort.

Lunch is also never planned, but is mostly sandwiches with some macaroni and cheese thrown in here or there.

Dinner plans for this week include:

Fish Tacos with Cilantro Rice (recipe adapted from Alton Brown's)
Orange Chicken Stir Fry (found on pinterest, this will be our first time trying it)
Chicken Noodle Casserole
Clean out the Freezer Night
Crock Pot Beef Tacos
Leftovers
Eat Out

I usually try to plan 4-5 things to eat each week depending on how many leftovers I think we'll have. I also do plan which specific days I'm going to cook things depending on what is going on each night and how much time I'll have to prepare dinner. Things of course don't always work out as planned and sometimes we end up with sandwiches for dinner, but for the most part, I've gotten good at keeping to my plan. It's taken years to perfect it though.

Our Weekend

I started this blog so that I could vent somewhere about how terrible I feel when I spend all day long yelling at my kids, or at least it feels like that is all I do.

But whenever I sit down to write about one of our days, I can't recall the same type of yelling that occurred before I started the blog and it's only been just over a week. Perhaps just starting the blog and feeling like I'm going to be more accountable has helped, though I'm certainly not thinking about it throughout my day. "I better not yell right now because then I'd have to write about it on my blog" is not what ever goes through my mind, but either way I'm happy that there is already less yelling.

We had a fun, relaxing Saturday with the whole family, which really doesn't happen that often.  We spent our morning doing chores, which the kids are still getting used to. It wasn't really going well and was taking way too long so I did have to get upset and start the timer for our boys to finish up. If they can't finish before the timer, there are no video games that day. I didn't really yell, but I wasn't that calm when I let them know that I was turning the timer on. After that, they started working their little bottoms off and were able to get done just in time to be able to play some video games. Except that we had some errands to run before they could play.

I was in the mood to spend money instead of sitting at home all day so we went to the mall because I had some clothes money burning a hole in my pocket.  The boys picked out a few T shirts because that is all they needed right now and then they were real troopers as me and Emily shopped for her and spent forever trying on clothes. We also went to Toys R Us and let the kids spend their allowance and birthday money. Last stop was Home Depot to pick up a few things so that we could spend some of Sunday finishing up trim and painting to get ready for our carpet that will be installed in the next month at some point.

Kids were well enough behaved through all this that we never yelled at them, which was strange.  And then when we came home and spent the rest of the day/evening just hanging out doing our own things, there also was no yelling. I don't know what is going on in our house! 

Sunday was spent going to church and then working on painting the trim in our bedroom. The kids played well together while we were at home and again,  no yelling. I think this weekend was a freak accident or something. Or maybe with me yelling less, the kids behave better? We'll just have to keep seeing how things go.  Our new afternoon schedule for school days is still working beautifully, which seems to really make the rest of our day go better.

Here is to another week of less yelling in our home.

Early to Rise Challenge Day 7

Can I blame not getting up on time on Daylight Savings time even though I've gotten just as much sleep over the past 2 days as I normally would have anyway?

My alarm went off at 7:00 this morning and I thought I'd have no problem getting up, but I just could not get out of bed. I spent the next 45 minutes just hanging out with the hubby in bed. I think I might have dozed off...

I still plan on trying this challenge for the rest of this month, but at this point I'm not seeing myself sticking with it after that. I enjoy my sleep and have no reason to get up early. I'm sticking with it though to see if maybe I would enjoy getting up early.

Early to Rise Challenge Day 6

I like my idea of easing into waking up early. I should have thought about that before I began the challenge. By now I know that for myself to be successful in new things I need to ease my way into them instead of just jumping head first and hoping it works out.

My goal for today was to get up at 7:00 and I ended up getting at 6:55 when I heard my daughter turn on the bathtub downstairs, which is good because after I got up and was going to turn my alarm off I realized that I'd set it for 7:00, but forgot to actually turn it on. Oops.  But having been successful at waking up at my goal time, I'm feeling great this morning and ready to start my day and get things done.  I'm excited again about this challenge!

Early to Rise Challenge Day 5

Man, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I'm only trying to get up 45 minutes earlier than I normally do and it is just not happening.  I think I might have to try a new approach and try getting good at 15 minutes early and then 30 minutes early until I can get to the time I want to wake up.  I don't want to completely give up on the challenge just yet, but I'm just not enjoying it like I thought I would.

Tomorrow I will try 7:00 instead of 7:15. It won't give me much time to do anything, but at least I'll feel like I've accomplished something instead of completely failing.

Day 2 of our new afternoon schedule went well.  Owen got in trouble for throwing things during their cleaning time though and had to sit in a time out, so he wasn't able to get all his chores done in the allotted time. I'm pretty sure dad let him play video games while I was at work anyway. I'm really enjoying my afternoons being more peaceful. Now if I could only get them to get ready for school without the hassle...

New After School Schedule

I forgot to post this yesterday...

I thought about what to do for our new after school schedule so the kids would try and do a better job at their chores and so that there would be less yelling and nagging on my part.

This is what I've come up with:

10 minutes for snack, putting away coats, backpacks and lunch boxes

15 minutes to watch TV and rest from walking home and school

25 minutes to get chores done

So, once the kids get home from school, I set our stove timer for 10 minutes and they can eat their snack and get their stuff all put away. When everyone is done, they will come back in the kitchen and we'll head downstairs to start the timer I have down there for 15 minutes.  They understand that when that timer goes off, the TV gets turned off and it's time to start chores.

I will then reset that timer for 25 minutes and it's time to get chores done, no complaining, no whining.  If chores are done when the 25 minutes is up, video games are allowed to be played that day. If they aren't done with their chores, then there are no video games for the day.

As much as I love chores being done, I think I've decided that if chores aren't finished in time, then the only consequence is no video games. I'm not going to start nagging for them to finish their chores. If they decide that video games aren't important for that day, then I'm okay with their chores not getting finished because I don't want to nag. The whole point of trying out this new schedule is to get rid of the nagging and yelling.

Yesterday was our first day of trying this out and I would say, it went very well. Ten minutes was the perfect amount of time to get their snack eaten and everything put away.  They were super excited to be able to watch some TV before chores had to get done and readily agreed that this was a great idea. As soon as their 15 minutes of TV/resting was up, they turned off the TV and started on their chores. They even did them as fast as they could without a single complaint. It was heaven. I'm sure we'll still have days where they won't want to do their chores and some fighting, but after day 1 of our new after school schedule, I'm super excited to continue it and bring some more peace to our home. Anything that gets me to stop yelling and nagging makes me a happy camper, and I'm sure the kids like not being nagged as well.

Early To Rise Challenge Day 4

I bombed again today. I can't get myself to stop waking up constantly wondering how close it is to 6:30. I'm not dreading getting up that much, I promise.  So, at 6:20 today when I still felt really exhausted, I turned off my 6:30 alarm and went back to bed. I then was out until my husband's 7:15 alarm went off.  If I could get my body to stop waking up constantly wondering if it's almost time to get up, this challenge would be a lot easier.

At the same time, I don't know if I really need to bother getting up early. The only reason I'm doing it is to get some exercise in. I don't feel the need to have any peace and quiet before my kids get up. I'm going to keep trying all month long anyway and see if it gets easier because I do like getting some exercise.

The one thing I was hoping would get easier from being up earlier would be that I'm up to encourage my kids to get ready for school without screwing around. So far me being up at the same time as them hasn't really helped at all with our morning routine. I don't want to be following them around the whole time telling them to get ready, so we are still rushing at the last minute to get to school on time.  They have plenty of time to get ready for school, they  just choose to use that time to play instead of getting ready. I'm not going to sit in our basement watching them all morning, I wouldn't get anything accomplished.  This is another thing I'm going to have to work on.

I did come up with an afternoon schedule idea and I'll be posting about that and how our first day with it went later today.

Let's try to slowly reduce the amount of yelling until we get to no yelling Challenge

Thinking of titles for my posts is the worst part of blogging.

I decided I want to keep my posts about the Early Rise Challenge separate from anything else that I blog about.  So this post is about how I am doing with my "no yelling" challenge.

First off, I should probably call it the "Let's try to slowly reduce the amount of yelling until we get to no yelling" challenge since going cold turkey isn't going to happen and I'll feel like a failure if I call it that and then yell once. So we'll go with the really long title instead.

Apparently my short term memory is awful. I'm trying to recall how yesterday went and I'm not getting much.  There was no yelling while 2 of my 3 kids were at school from 8:30 to 3:00, that I'm sure of.

I'm trying to come up with a better routine for chores to get done after school, but so far I'm sticking with what we were doing until I think of one.  My kids get out of school at 2:45 and then walk home and depending on the day, get here anywhere between 3:00 and 3:20.  First thing when they get home is snack time and then they are supposed to get their chores and homework done before any playing starts.  I hadn't thought about it until I read someone else's blog recently but it makes sense that they wouldn't want to do chores first thing after getting home because they just spent their whole day at school working hard and then they spend about 20 minutes walking home; I imagine they need a rest before having to get to chores.  It just seems that around our house, if they don't get done first thing, then they don't get done at all.  This is why I haven't come up with a better plan that will probably result in less whining about doing chores. I'm trying to decide on what to let them do to rest before chores get done and for how long to let them rest before I let them know that it's chore time.  Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know that there was really any yelling yesterday, but there was plenty of nagging to get chores done and to stop playing until they were finished. Nagging is the worst and I hate doing it, but I don't know what else to do to get chores done in a timely manner.  They do have time limit, if chores aren't done by a certain time then there are no video games that day and as much as they love video games, this rule really doesn't seem to help that much.  I've thought about also taking away whatever doesn't get put away by this time limit, but I don't know what I would do to have them earn this stuff back...so, like most things, I just keep doing it the same way and don't bother finding a better solution.

Wow, this post has ended up a lot longer than I thought it would.

Goal for today: Finally decide on a better after school routine and put it into action. I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes.

Early to Rise Challenge-Day 3

I made it up at 6:30 again this morning but didn't really accomplish much. I sat back down on the couch in the living room after getting up for about 10 minutes and decided to do some easier exercises than I had planned.  I started with some sit ups and started to feel extremely nauseous. I did a little bit of stretching and breathing, but eventually ended up back on the couch until the cat and dog decided they needed back in the house.

I'm feeling okay now, but I'm still taking it easy. I don't think I'm actually sick, but I'm not sure why I'm feeling so lousy. At least I can say that I still woke up early this morning. Maybe a big glass of water would help...

Early to Rise Challenge Day 2

Day 2 was much better than day 1! I successfully woke up at 6:30 am, but not sure I really got a great night's sleep. I went to bed at 10:00, which was good, but about 2:00 am again I kept waking up over and over again wondering how close it was to 6:30. We'll see how I feel later today.

I spent 6:30 to 7:00 exercising and then took a shower to start getting ready for my day. I still didn't have time to make the kids breakfast though, so they ate cereal again. Time to get some pancakes and muffins in the freezer.  I guess I could get up before 6:30, but I think I'll get good at getting up at 6:30 before I try and get up any earlier. I'm all for baby steps when doing new things instead of trying too much, because I fail every time I try to do too much at once.

I'm thinking back about our day yesterday and I can't recall any yelling, though that doesn't mean there wasn't any, I could just not be remembering. Even though it was Sunday I had our kids do a few chores because there bedrooms and our basement were destroyed and I didn't want to start the week with everything so messy. But, instead of constantly yelling at them to "hurry up and get it done" and "quit screwing around," etc, I went downstairs with them and helped with the cleaning. I made sure to not do a ton so that they could just lay back and do nothing, but I helped and I think it made things go much smoother. Chores were done fairly quickly and there wasn't as much whining as usual.

I think I'm more self conscious of what I say and how I act knowing that I plan on writing it all down for the world to see. Hopefully I'll eventually get to the point where I'm just a good mom because and not because I don't want to have to share what terrible things I've done.  Either way, I'm sure my kids will be happier when I get really good at yelling less and become a more positive mom.

Saturday!

I'm not even bothering trying to wake up early on weekends. I see no point. Maybe if I see a huge improvement from waking up early during the week, I'll eventually try weekends, but not in the foreseeable future.

Anyway, yesterday we spent some time up at our property with a bunch of friends eating a turkey and letting the kids play in the snow.  It was such a great day and exactly what I needed.  The weather was near 50 and sunny, but there was still plenty of snow so the kids weren't playing in the mud.

Two of our friends are in the process of building cabins nearby, all within walking distance of each other, so when we go up to our property we can just let them roam and play all day. Everyone loves it. It was relaxing to me because I don't think I yelled at the kids once during the day. Which made a huge difference to my entire day. I wasn't grumpy or annoyed. I was happy and they were happy. I even noticed a difference in the way we all treated each other when we got home and had a few hours of hanging out before bedtime. It really gave me some great motivation to work harder to stop the yelling in our house.

Of course, I also feel bad for letting them get such strange sunburns. I was prepared with sunscreen, but didn't do a great job of applying it. I have one of those sticks of sunscreen for their faces that looks like a large thing of Chapstick. When we first got there I rubbed some on their noses and cheeks and their foreheads. After that, I forgot about it the rest of the day because when it's only 50 degrees outside and there is still 2 feet of snow on the ground, sunscreen isn't something I think about.

It shows the best on Emily, but all of them look similar.  The little sections that I did remember to put the sunscreen on are fine, but the rest of their faces are fried. They look completely ridiculous and Emily is not looking forward to going to school tomorrow and I don't blame her. They do look pretty frightening.  I look similar, but I had sunglasses on all the day so my eyes don't look like theirs. But I do have some strange lines on my face as well.  My husband guesses that the sun reflecting off the snow had something to do with it because when they get sunburned in the summer they don't ever get burned around their eyes like that. (Not that they are getting sunburned on a regular basis.)

Here's to doing a better job with the sunscreen as we start getting into warmer weather and also to working on having less yelling in our home.

Day 1--Failure

I let the thought of it being Friday creep in to my mind and totally failed the first day of the Early To Rise Challenge.

I started to watch a television show last night that I didn't know was going to be so long and stayed up too late. When I went to bed around 10:45, I still had every intention of getting up at 6:30 to exercise a bit and be ready for when the kids came upstairs for breakfast around 7:20 or so.  Around 3 am I woke up and had a hard time going back to sleep because I was thinking about how soon it was until it was time to get up and really started to dread it.  So I decided to wait until Monday to start the challenge and reset my alarm for 7:15, which I then proceeded to ignore and didn't get out of bed until 7:30.  So my first day of the challenge was a complete failure.

I'm going to spend the weekend getting excited for this challenge again and see how I can do on Monday with getting up at 6:30.  I think the hardest part for me is going to be getting to bed earlier. I used to get to bed at 10:00, no problem. The last few years though my husband and I have slowly pushed our bedtime closer to 11:00.  I prefer going to bed at 10:00, but I also prefer going to bed at the same time as my husband.

Here's to hoping we start next week off better.