Encyclopedia of Me

This poster actually hangs in my office above my desk. You can click on it to enlarge it, but first I'll apologize profusely for the image quality. Sorry, and sorry, it's late at night and it's dark and I'm too excited to post this to wait until daylight for proper lighting. Moving on.

I bought it before I ever had children on one of many antique shopping days with my mom. I just love it. It's bunnykins-esque and authentically old. Anyway, I saw it and fell in love with it one day and determined it would hang in my children's nursery. But it didn't match the theme, and so loving it so much, I hung it in my office.

Kitty has a kettle. John has a jar of Jam. It makes me happy - even if they did mispell John, and used Kitty, Ann and Edward instead of some much more appealing K, A & E names - perhaps I'm biased!

So given my love for this ABC poster, I thought this idea I ran across recently sounded fun. And I think some of you will like it too!

I've seen several blogger's doing a series called "Encyclopedia of Me". As far as I can tell it started over at Bella Dia in 2007, before she became The Crafty Crow. And it's made another appearance recently.

The idea is to come up with an A-Z of you. Your daily life with your children, what makes you you, something from day to day life, it's really very open ended. Some letters might have more than one entry, some not. The original idea was to post one blog entry with the corresponding alphabetical letter each day for a month.

You know this is right up my alley! Not only would this be great for those of you who blog, but it would also work for scrapbooks for you and/or your kids; an A-Z of their school year, or just an A-Z of their personality or your family. What a great anthology!!

It's the beginning of the month, so this seemed like a good time to start. Are you with me? Let me know if this sparked some ideas of your own, or how you plan to do your own Encyclopedia of Me.

Guest Speaker Summary

If you missed GUM yesterday, you missed a great time! Careth T. came and spoke to us about parenting and discipline and a whole lot rolled into one.

I personally came away refreshed and with a new sense of purpose for my parenting. Here's the things that stuck out to me:

Be a Parenting Unit!
You and your spouse are in this together. Get on the same page. Whether it takes one discussion or a whole parenting weekend - take the time, and figure out where your coming from and where your going. What do you want your children's character to look like when they are teenagers and adults?

Build a Discipline Toolbox!
Our boxes might look different, but there should be a few different consequences used for discipline. Natural consequences is one that's been in my toolbox, but I forget to use. So I'll be working on honing that skill - or I'll be calling Tim or Christy (Careth's husband and sister - Natural Consequence Thinkers Supreme!) every couple days!

Be consistent! If you say it, enforce it. Period.
Do not undermine your spouse's authority by intervening during discipline.

Evaluate each child! and discipline accordingly.

Pick your battles, based on what's really important for building charachter. Fighting over shoes or mis-matched clothes at two is likely not the battle to choose. Uh-oh. I'm sorry you all had to hear that one too, I'm pretty sure it was meant just for me. Maybe not, but I certainly heard it loud and clear.

Careth also pointed us towards Dr. Kevin Lehman in conjunction with Focus on the Family, here's some things I've been looking at following this morning.

Successfully Handle Behavior Problems This series is a review of Dr. Kevin Lehman's work by Shauna Schutte and includes 4 follow up articles on Behavior and Strategies for different age groups. (Extra: more potty training tips in the follow-up articles!!)

Focus on the Family: Effective Biblical Discipline This page is a wealth of knowledge. Creative Disciplining Ideas, Approaches to Discipline, the Strong-Willed Child and more. If you need me, I'll be camped out here for the next week or so!

Parenting Adult Children And not to leave you mentor moms out - here's some articles for parents of adult children - Lord, help me make it here one day!!

We hope to have Careth back for some follow-up Q&A time soon!

A recipe

Today was cold! So cold that I had to bump my heat up. And turn on the oven. And then I wanted to bake something. You know, so I could use the oven to heat the house AND eat something yummy. But I was at a loss for something to bake. I bake a lot and I didn't want to make french bread or muffins or brownies or cake. Those things just seemed blah to me today (for shame, I know!). I need something that would last a while, and warm my heart.

Anyway, so I pulled out a couple of my cookbooks to look for recipes. I ended up reading my entire (yes, ENTIRE) 298 page, Flavors from the Foothills, Church of the Open Door Women's Ministry cookbook, circa 1992. There are some really fabulous recipes in there!! What was super fun, was I knew a lot of the women who contributed the recipes, like mentor mom emeritus Patti A.!

I didn't find the recipe my tummy might have been longing for. But the following recipe caught my heart and spurred the urge to write this post (before I head to my bed to snuggle down under the covers and watch a movie). It was exactly what I needed and I hope it warms your heart too!












RECIPE FOR RAISING CHILDREN
pg 233, Anonymous

Start with one child. (In case of twins, double recipe. For triplets, triple recipe.)
Gather equal parts of Love and Security.
Have on hand Discipline, Understanding, Patience and Togetherness.

Note: This recipe takes many years to complete.

Blend together Love and Security and apply it directly to the child. As the mixture is being raised, sprinkle on Understanding and Patience. As needed, fold in Discipline, but make sure the mixture is consistent. Too little may make the mixture thin and weak - too much may make it thick and stubborn. Continually roll the mixture in Togetherness. This keeps it from sticking to bad influences.

When this is completed, there will be no need to bake it. It will be ready to serve.
[italic's editors note]

Valentine Projects

Valentine's Day is approaching, and though I don't particularly like made up holidays, I do love love themed crafts! I've compiled a bunch of ideas from things I've already come across, and I hope you have fun doing some of these with your kids. Don't forget to tell them how much you and God loves them today!

The Crafty Crow - lots of glitter in these Valentine crafts! And tons of other posts with treats and all sorts of craft ideas - again, Crafty Crow is my favorite craft blog!!

Heart Cutting from Chasing Cheerios - for the younger crowd just learning to cut.
And some other heart themed activites from Chasing can be found here.

Need a cute idea for those class valentines? Here's one from A Very Country Christmas, "I dig You!"

Or this one from Saltwater Kids: We Make a Great Pair.

Also check out FamilyFun for some sweet treats, valentine printables and more.

Our first project here at home was Stained-Glass Heart Garland! It's a mish-mash of several projects I saw here and there. Here's how we did it:

Yesterday I laid out some wax paper for the girls and they shaved some old crayons on to it. Then I layered another piece of wax paper and then put it between two layers of paper bags or cardstock. Then I ironed lightly. (Recommendation...don't squish the crayon shavings too close together, spread it out if you really want that stained glass effect.)

Then we cut heart shapes, whole punched and strung them on ribbon. Here's the finished works of art. We had tons of fun doing this, and they're light enough to hang on my window blinds!
















What projects do you have planned?

Welcome Gwenyth & Nehemiah!

I'll let Lindsay make the announcement in her own words:

It has been a few days & life is a little nutty, but AMAZING. Gwenyth Hope & Nehemiah Jackson were born on January 28th (their 36th week out of 40). Gweynth was born at 9:43pm weighing in at 5lbs. 11oz. 19in long and her brother Nehemiah followed at 9:58pm weighing 6lbs. 12 ozs. 18in long. They are both doing really well and are at home with us. We are all doing really well too. The girls love to help do all the mommy things and Titus is learning to play with his tools and footballs away from the babies :) He's adjusting wonderfully! Thank you for your prayers and your excitement we look forward to introducing them to all the wonderful people in their lives very soon!
Love, The Willmers