The "Potentially" Sane Mother's Guide to Raising Children

About two or three years ago, my husband and I ordered a bunch of books from the Deseret Book Shop, to give as gifts to family and friends. While doing this, I ordered a couple of books for myself that looked like they might be good reads for me. One of them was a book called The Potentially Sane Mother's Guide to Raising Children. I think I read the preface, and then it go put into storage with the rest of our belongings for a while, shifted around and stored again before finally ending up in our shed, before we finally got a bookshelf. Out came all the books we thought we needed, and it sat on the bookshelf for another year before I rediscovered it a couple of weeks ago. 

This time, I began to read it properly. It is wonderful! It's written very clearly and normally, without any professional jargon, and she uses great experiences from her own life to illustrate the concepts in the book. It has some really good activities in it that you can use as family home evening lessons that help to emphasize the concepts. And it's taught me a lot about myself as a mother. While it's geared towards LDS families and younger children, the ideas are definitely adaptable to families of all faiths or non-faith, and can be adjusted to suit older children as well. 

While it would be impossible for me to implement every change in the book straight away, I've picked out a couple of things that I want to work on. I love things that motivate me to try harder and be more aware as a mother, even if I don't succeed at first. I also love that all the concepts in the book are ideas that I can easily see being implemented in our family. I have read a lot of books about raising children and families that have made me wonder where on earth they are getting their information from? This book is realistic, and breaks the changes down into small pieces that make it seem simple. I'm excited to begin trying out more of the ideas in this book in time.

Kids Say The Darndest Things...

I love the funny little things my kids say and do. So here's a few of the things that have made me laugh recently...

I was making the kids ham and cheese toasties the other night, and Cumoram was helping me by buttering the bread. Then, he started licking all the butter off the knife! I told him off and said, "Don't do that! That will make you fat and sick!"

"But mum," he said, "You got that by having a baby."

Brook had taken the kids to his basketball game one night to give me a bit of a break. While he was playing the game, Kembry wandered over to the canteen and said to the lady behind the counter, "Hello. Can I please have some chippies, and lollies, a power drink, and a chocolate."

The lady said to her, "I'm sorry sweet heart, you'll have to go back to mummy and daddy and get some money first."

So Kembry ran all the way back to where Brook had stashed his gear, rummaged around til she found his wallet, went back to the lady and presented Brook's credit card, hoping to complete her purchase!

 When my tummy started to get big, we sat the kids down to talk about the baby coming and we explained to them that my tummy was getting big because the baby was growing in there.
Cumoram said, "Oh! And Aunty Candice is having a baby too, and so is Aunty Paige!" (Yes, they really are having babies.)
Then Kembry pipes up, "So when is Uncle Paul having his bubba then?"

When Brook came to pick me up from work the other night, he had his 2 year old niece and Kembry in the car. As soon as she saw me, his niece yelled at the top of her lungs, "Hahaha! Look at Aunty Mesha, got big big fat tummy!"

Kembry turned around and said indignantly, "No, my mummy has a baby in her tummy!"

Kembry spread a blanket on the lounge room floor, arranged her play food on it then asked all her friends (every teddy and doll in the house) if they would like to come to her picnic. She came out with an armful of toys and announced that some of them had said no, so they were staying in the room. Then she put each toy on the blanket, handed each one a plate and a fork (colour coordinated), and gave each toy some play food to eat, then stood up and said, "Hello friends! Welcome to my picnic!" 
I heard her say, "No, you can't have any cake because you haven't eaten your salad!"

Cumoram: "Why do only mummies have babies and not daddies?"

I was reading The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base to Kembry one night and asked her if she could count from one to eleven.


"Yes I can," She said. "One... to eleven."

I walked into the lounge room one night after checking my emails and facebook, to find that Cumoram had fallen asleep on the couch and Kembry had drawn all over his face in green felt-tipped pen. She looked up at me and said, "Paper now, please." As if she'd just used his face for a practice run! (Picture to come)

Brook and I woke up to this one Saturday morning. The kids had woken up early, decided they wanted breakfast and helped themselves to a whole jar of nutella!

Father's Day 2010

I am a very lucky girl. I was blessed with a wonderful dad, and my husband is both a great husband and a fantastic father. And by fantastic, I mean I have never had to get up with any of our children during the night. Ever. He's forever playing games with them, reading to them, helping them with their talking (our son has a stutter and has speech therapy exercises to do every day), taking them to footy or basketball or even just to the park for a bit to give me some time out. Like I said, I am blessed.

My beautiful little family

My hubby doesn't like presents. He doesn't like the fact that people feel compelled to buy presents because it's Christmas or Father's Day, or whatever. He would rather people were just nice all year long. And that's a very good point (I would like to have my cake and eat it too. I love presents, and love having an excuse to give presents).

So instead of buying him presents, the last couple of years I've been trying to find cute, fun, meaningful and inexpensive (because I know he'd rather I didn't spend a lot of money) ways to show our appreciation for him. Besides, Hubby is a professional photographer, and all the stuff he'd like for presents would be impossible for me to get without his help! I wouldn't have a clue how to pick out equipment for him, and the thought of trying just scares me to death. Plus, I'm sure he'd have a clue when he noticed a fat chunk missing from our bank account!

Last year, we did a "Heart Attack". It was a favourite service project in my church's youth group when I was growing up. Basically you make a whole bunch of hearts from paper, write on each one something nice about the person you are giving the "Attack" to, then secretly stick them to their front door. We used to also leave a plate of cookies.

On Father's Day last year, I'd planned to get up early and set up our surprise. But my hubby had other ideas, and he got up extra early and drove to his dad's house to surprise him by cooking him pancakes for breakfast. Isn't that sweet? Well, I did it for him while he was gone. You'll have to forgive the crappy pictures, the only ones I got were on my phone! 

I did circles, because it was easier (lazy of me!) and after consulting with the kids, I wrote on each circle something that we love about daddy. Then I plastered them across the wall. He loved it so much he wouldn't let me take it down! It was around March this year that I finally took them down (while he was out) because the kids kept ripping and pulling them off.

 This year, I came across this cute little idea, Rainbow of Love on Love, Actually I LOVE this blog! (I couldn't find the actual post, but once I do I will come back and put the link up for that) I thought it was insanely cute, and easy to do. Unfortunately, the lollies and chocolates didn't last long enough for a photo, so there's an empty bowl in the picture (and of course, hers was better!) but you get the idea!

The message says, "To Our Dearest Daddy, thankyou for being the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow". Then there's a rainbow (but actually it turned out to be only a quarter of a rainbow) of hearts and at the bottom of the rainbow a "pot" that was filled with lollies and then on top gold-wrapped chocolates (like Ferrero Rochers, Rolo's, chocolate coins or any other candy with a gold wrapper) to make our Pot of Gold.

My helpful little boy got up early with me and together we set up daddy's little surprise. He could hardly contain his excitement when we went to wake Brook up for church, and he blurted out "Wait til you see your surprise dad!". And yes, I think it went down well :)