A couple of weeks ago I read this book. I wrote this post about my thoughts on the book. I agree with most everything that she has written. In fact I realized that in a lot of ways I was already doing a lot free-range parenting. I would not classify myself as a helicopter parent in any way. When I take my kids to a park, I take full use of the benches, and I have even been known to bring a book or my computer with me. Why not? Isn’t that what they put the benches in for when they built the playground? At the mall, I allow my son (who is almost 5) to walk without having to be stapled to me. I have even been known to let my 2 year old daughter walk as well when she wants. The kids both play outside in our yard without me. So I was pleasantly surprised when I realized just how “free-range” I was.

I also realized that I could go much further. So I decided to take some baby steps towards being more free-range. Alex has started to recognize that boys shouldn’t go into the women’s rest room when we are out. He has been asking to use the men’s room by himself. (Since I obviously can’t go in with him) So I decided that in select places I would allow him to use the men’s room without me. I still choose to use a family restroom when it is available, and there are still places and times that I make him come in the women’s room with me, but I have been loosening my grip some. And you know what, it has been working. I can see a difference in him, in the way he behaves and acts. Some of his “babyish” behavior has gone, not all of it, but it is getting there. I can tell that he feels much more grown up. He loves his new responsibilities, one of which is to take the recycling out to the bin in the front of the house by himself. I have implemented the same philosophy with my 2 year old daughter (though not to the same extent since she is still only 2) He now loves being the “big boy” instead of trying to act like his younger sister. He is doing better in school this year as well.

Today was my first real test in being Free-Range. Here in lovely NJ it is a balmy 20 – 30 degrees this week. So needless to say we have been inside a lot this week. Not because I won’t let the kids go outside, but because they go out and come back in 10 min. late since it is so windy and cold out. They have been getting a small case of cabin fever. So I decided that we needed to make a trip to the Please Touch Museum. I knew going in that it was going to be pretty crazy there. It is Christmas break and it is freezing cold outside. I knew there were going to be a ton of parents doing the same thing I was doing. Getting the kids out of the house for a few hours.

The differences in Alex and Lizzie has never been more apparent than it was today. Alex races from one exhibit to another and back again like a giant ping pong ball. Lizzie on the other hand, finds one spot and will stay and play for ages. That is just who they are. If I make Alex stay in one spot until Lizzie is done playing, he gets bored and starts to cause trouble. If I drag Lizzie along after Alex, she doesn’t get to actually play and experience the museum. And I can’t be two places at once, it is just physically impossible, I am only one person and they are two. I decided that what I needed to do was to loosen my grip a little. What I ended up doing was giving Alex an area in which he could play. This is actually pretty easy to do at this museum because of the way it is set up. I told him that he could go anywhere in that area he wanted but that he couldn’t leave that area until Lizzie and I were ready to leave. I  also told him that he needed to check in with me every once in a while so that I could lay my eyes on him occasionally. Let me tell you how well this worked out. I was able to stay with Lizzie and allow her to play the way she wanted, and it allowed Alex to ping pong from one exhibit to another. At the beginning of the trip I sat down with both the kids and explained the rules and showed both kids what the people who worked there looked like. I explained that if they got lost to go to an employee and tell them they were lost. We have been there enough times to know where the bathrooms were and how to use them. So I was confident that we wouldn’t have any problems.

It was the most relaxed trip to the museum I have had with the kids yet. I wasn’t stressed about where the kids were and what they were doing. I even got to sit for a few min. on one of those wonderful benches that were put there for the parents. As we were leaving I took a look around at all the other parents who were leaving at the same time we were, and you know what, I was the most relaxed one in the bunch. Nothing happened to the kids, nobody tried to abduct them, nobody got lost, and nobody was hurt in any way and we all had a great day. I can’t wait to go back, although I think I will use my Safety-Tats next time I go so that if Alex did happen to wander away and couldn’t find his way back the employees would know how to get in touch with me.

Have a happy, and safe, and Free-Range New Year

Heather

Well the day has come. The final Gag Weigh in. I must say I am not thrilled, but as my husband keeps reminding me, while I may not have met my ultimate GAG goal, I am still down overall.

My final weight is 258.8

I don’t see much of a difference in my body shots, but here it is.

Heather

to say that no I haven’t fallen off the earth. We were sick this week and now that we are all on the mend it is time to start getting ready to go away on Tuesday. And in between all of that we are ripping up carpet in preparation for our annual Christmas party, but I have a whole post planned for that adventure.

Hope everyone is having a great week.

Heather

So I have been wanting to write a post about this for some time.  I wanted to finish the book first however.  This is a topic that is very important to me. Both my husband and I are very big on natural consequences, and letting kids be kids. A few weeks ago, after I was telling my mom that my neighbor didn’t like that I let my kids play out in the fenced in back yard without me, she bought me this book.  I love it.

In a nutshell, the book is saying that we as a culture have been overprotecting our kids at our kids expense. Kids are no longer allowed to be kids. The author goes on to explain that kids these days are just as safe as we were as kids and are missing out on some pretty valuable experiences. One of the big ones is being able to go outside and just play. I remember as a kid being kicked out of the house and told I had to be home by the time the street lights came on. I wasn’t restricted to the back yard, heck I wasn’t even restricted to the front yard. In my neighborhood growing up there were 4 houses in a row with children all around my age. There were 6 of us who ran all over the neighborhood playing all sorts of games. We played out in the rain, hot scorching sun, and pleasant spring days, and nobody thought any thing of it. Our parents were not worried that we would be abducted. Why, because we lived in a safe neighborhood and most of the neighbors knew us and would make sure our parents knew if we were doing something we shouldn’t.

Basically Lenore Skenazy (the author of the book) gives 14 commandments on having Free Range kids and goes over many of the most common worries that parents face today. I highly recommend the book for anyone who is in contact with children. I think we need to give our kids more freedom, the same freedom that we had as kids. It is good for them. There is also a blog to check out.

Today I am thankful for fellow bloggers who don’t mind when I rant instead of writing an actual post with a point.

Not exactly sure where that phrase comes from, probably the Bible somewhere. But that has been running through my head all weekend and early this week. I mentioned in my last post that Thursday was a pretty stressful day. The reason is because of judging people.

My oldest son Alex has been taking a karate class at the Little Gym. We love it, he is really learning to focus and is doing much better both in and out of school. The class is a late afternoon class, so there is a mixed age range, and a mixed parent group. Stay at home, working, work at home, etc.. There are these two women who are very snobby and you average “I’m better than you because…” type of women. Well I must have a target on my back that says “FREAK” because man are they judgmental, especially towards me, and especially once they found out that I am a homeschooling stay at home mom, who uses cloth diapers. Immediately they assumed that I must not be as good as them because of all those things say to them that I don’t have as much money as they do. (By the way, I am not assuming this, they have pretty much come right out and said this)  Anyway, their boys have been bullying Alex. The first few times I let it go under the premise that boys are boys and they play a little rough. The third time this happened I became upset. I said something to the teacher, and then at the urging of both my awesome husband and the karate teacher I said something to the mother. I got a snotty, irrational response. Basically why should I have to discipline my children because of yours type thing. That may not have been what she was thinking at the time, but that is how it came off to me.

So this happens last Thursday, then today I have been engaging in and following a debate about covering up while breastfeeding in public. And the amount of judging going on over there is outrageous. To think that people assume that you want people to look at you while you are trying to feed your child, or that you are trying to arouse men, is just laughable.

My point is, why does everybody need to judge everybody else. You don’t know their specific situation, and unless you are very close to that person you may never know the whole situation. In the case of the women at the karate class. She had no idea that I grew up in the area that she thinks of as prestigious, and that if I wanted to work or send my kids to school I could, and if  I wanted to use disposable diapers I would.  Basically instead of assuming the best about the people around us we are so busy assuming the worst.  What drives me even more insane is the people who do the most judging get insanely angry when they are judged by others. Has nobody ever heard of “Treat others the way you want to be treated”

Okay, so I guess I didn’t have a specific point to this post, it is more of a rant. I needed to get some things off my chest.

GAG Challenge -

Today I am very thankful that I have a wonderful, awesome husband who is willing to take time from his busy schedule to go to said karate class with me this week to face down the nasty ladies.

So last week on GAG we were asked to give a goal for the week. My goal for the week was to not drink any soda, diet or regular. I have to admit it wasn’t easy, and there was two days last week were I had a soda. Thursday was an extremely stressful day and I caved and had a soda that night. Sunday we went to dinner at my grandparents. My grandfather remembers my college days when I drank a ton of soda. He insists that I have to have a coke every time I go over there. I didn’t have the heart to say no. I am weak I know.  As I said before, I am going to keep working on this, and one day I will be soda free.

Have a great week.

Heather

Okay ladies and gentlemen, I need your help,

As I am sure some of you already know, starting next fall we will be homeschooling. Alex will be starting kindergarten and we decided that what was the best course of action for him was to keep him home with me. I am actually very excited about doing this. Which shows what a long way God has brought me since this time last year. Last year I was terrified and trying to ignore what God was telling me. However how I got from there to here is a story for another time. What I am focusing on today is the beginning of my preparations.

Part of getting ready to turn my dining room into a part time classroom was getting my own computer. A few months ago I switched from using a laptop of my own to sharing a desktop computer with the kids. I did this for several reasons, on of which was because I was spending entirely too much time, just playing on the computer instead of spending that time with my wonderful husband and kids. Let alone getting the household chores done. Those few months off have done me a world of good. I was starting to remember however why I was using the laptop in the first place rather than a desktop. I also knew that once we started school, Alex would be using the computer more and more since I plan to make the computer a part of our curriculum. I knew that I would be needing my own computer again. Well when Jason decided that he wanted to upgrade to a newer computer for himself I took the opportunity to get his old laptop.

Now that I had a computer again I really needed to start getting organized. This is where my problem comes in. I have some ideas, but really no clue as to how to implement them. This is where your help comes in. I am going to show you how the areas I want to work on are now, and explain what I want to do with them. Then I welcome any and all suggestion on how best to accomplish this with minimal expense and effort.

Area 1 – Mom’s Command Center

This is an area in our kitchen. As you can see I don’t use the area to cook or prep. it is in a spot in the kitchen that makes it hard for that. It has become a catch all for everything I don’t know what to do with. I would like to be able to use the counter top and the cabinets as my area. Kinda like my desk, only I can’t sit at it, because I keep my pots and pans in the lower cabinet. The upper cabinets though could be completely cleaned out and everything that is in there can be housed elsewhere in the house. So that leaves a blank slate for all my stuff. The counter top can also be completely cleaned off to make room for my laptop, and anything else I want to keep there, like my pencil and mail holder, which you can see  in the pictures below. I would also love to have something on the wall underneath the cabinet for putting up important papers, and notices, like calendars, etc..

Area 2: The kids desk and work space.

This is the kids desk, and mine at the moment. You can see my pile of stuff that will be moved to the other area in the kitchen. Next to the desk we will be getting a new shelving unit to house all our homeschooling supplies. I will probably put our quiet time toys in that shelving unit as well. (the legos you see in the above pictures along with some things we have in the playroom) We love the Besta shelving units from Ikea. We have several that we use in our living room for our entertainment center (you can see them a little bit in the first picture of the kids space, they are dark brown.)  They hold a ton and you can completely customize them for your individual needs.

That is what I’ve got. Any suggestions would be great.

I am weighing in at 255.7 today. Not bad at all considering I ate lunch out a lot this week, as well as not really having a menu plan this week.

My goal for this week is to not drink any soda, I am going to work on drinking only water or crystal light.

Have a good week.

This question intrigued me. My immediate thought was that I wasn’t go to write a post about this question.  There is not much I wouldn’t do differently. Simply for the fact that everything that I did or didn’t do in the past has brought me to the point where I am today, and God has used those things to shape me into the person I am today. Except for my weight and fitness level, I am very happy with who I am today. So it took me a few days to think about what I would change, if anything. Then I realized that my weight and fitness level, the very things that I am unhappy with, were what I would change. Well at least how I got to the point I am at today. I think the key was the year I stopped swimming.

All through my childhood, and adolescence I was a swimmer. Every summer, and every winter in high school, I swam on a swim team. I was in great shape and had a killer metabolism. I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted (which is where a lot of my bad habits started) and it didn’t matter because whatever my body didn’t burn, I burned in the pool. I was swimming close to 2000 yards a day. I hit my peak my Sophmore and Junior year. Those two years I was swimming every morning and had drama every night. I was out of the house from 4 in the morning till 12 at night. I was very active and probably burned most of what I was eating, even when I ate junk, which is most of what I ate. My grades also suffered that year. They were never bad, just not as good as they could have been. So my parents insisted that I cut back on something. I had to choose, swimming or drama. As much as I loved to swim, I loved drama more, so that is what I chose. I knew that I would never swim competitively in college or beyond, I wasn’t fast enough, so I decided to focus on the drama.

That is what I would change. I would quit the drama not the swimming. I think if I had stayed with it my last year of high school, I would have been more likely to stick with it in college, even if I didn’t swim on a team, I had full access to a pool in college, If I hadn’t taken that year off I would have continued to at least swim on my own time at school. I stopped when I was 17, and except for a few half-hearted attempts I haven’t picked it back up. I do believe that I would in a very different place, weight and fitness wise if I were still swimming.

I do still think about joining a gym with a pool now and then, lately since GAG, it is more often than not. I still worry about putting the kids in the childcare. I am terrified that they are going to be sick constantly. In actuality it would probably be short lived, kinda like the first year they are in a new school. They catch everything that comes down the block, but then they build up immunities and they are fine.  I have actually considered telling people when they ask what I want for Christmas/Birthday, a gym membership, so that I can pick up swimming again. I hesitate though, not really sure why. It seems like an unneeded added expense.

That is one of the questions that Sue from GAG asked us this week. I answered this question first because this is probably the easiest one for me to answer.

SODA

This above anything else is what I struggle with the most. I always have from the time I was in high school. I probably had the most trouble with soda while I was in college. I was never a coffee drinker, so my caffeine intake of choice during college was soda, particularly Coke and Cherry Coke. At one point I was up to a 2 liter bottle a day. And since I can’t stand the taste of diet soda, and believe me I tried, I was unknowingly (at that time anyway) consuming thousands of calories a day, just in soda. All that soda had other side affects as well. I was getting horrendous headaches almost everyday. Of course at that time, I was not connecting the soda drinking with the headaches, and the weight gain. I probably hit my peak, my last semester of school when I was student teaching. Anybody who has student taught, knows that it is exhausting. So to stay awake in the afternoons so that I could get my work done, I was drinking large amounts of soda. Once I got out of college and was working I was able to slow down a little. I was teaching in a preschool class, which is not as demanding of your time in the evenings, so I didn’t feel the need to drink quite so much caffeine.  It was at that point that the headaches went away and I put two and two together. I didn’t start losing weight, but that is for completely different reasons.

It was at this point that I realized that I needed to cut back on my soda drinking. I was living at home again, so it was easier to control how much I drank, mostly because my parents only bought diet soda, and like I said before, I can’t stand diet soda. Since then I have drastically cut back on how much I drink. Even to the point of going for weeks at a time without drinking any. Once I knew that the soda was contributing to my weight gain, I was even more determined to cut it out of my diet. And every time the soda wins. It is almost like a drug at this point. I can go for a few weeks, even up to a month without it, and then I have a hard day and that is what I crave at the end of the day.

At one point I really did think it was the caffeine that I was craving. So I tried drinking tea instead. I have been told that tea has more caffeine than soda anyway. Guess what, it didn’t work, I still craved the soda. I think it is the combination of the sugar and the caffeine. It is something that I still struggle with every day. Some days and weeks are better than others, and I continue to work on it everyday. I am much better now at choosing water or something else that isn’t soda when we are out to eat. I don’t buy any soda, so it isn’t in the house, which often is half the battle.

I will continue to work on it, because I do believe that one day, this will be one habit that I no longer have to worry about breaking.