Give Yourself the Gift of Productivity

Christmas is coming! You know what that means. No matter what phase of life you are in, there will be some extra length of time away from your normal schedule. Dare I suggest it, but this could be a time to create a new norm rather than let everything fall to pieces. Because, unless you are leaving your house in perfect order before going out of town, chances are you still have to function in your house over the holidays. There is also the possibility of extended house guests! In the best of holiday circumstances it can still be hard to retain your sanity, specifically as a homemaker (this is my realm and -probably- that of my audience).

I only recently stumbled upon Fun, Cheap, or Free by Jordan Page thanks to the video that popped in my YouTube feed this morning when I went looking for an aerobic workout. I was inspired and thought it was worth a share.

The video is of Jordan's "Block Schedule". I've already been trying to loosely base my day on hour-long segments. Jordan suggests breaking your day into 3 hour blocks. Watching the video, I realized that my day is already broken into very similar blocks to the ones she describes in her day. The "ah ha" for me was the consistency of putting corresponding activities in the same parts of the day throughout the week.

I took notes on her set up, which was good, because, although her site provides a printable, it is a fill-in-yourself page (located at the bottom of the page). So here is my reproduction of Jordan's schedule which I will follow with my slightly shifted version.

(Pardon the small font.)  Jordan has school-age kids, so their activities are a big part of her day. Mine are still under school-age, which lightens my load up... for now. I must say, nap time is my favorite time. It's Me time. I'm writing during nap time right now. 

Edits aside, I'm happy to keep those couple of cleaning sessions in my schedule. This has not been my strong suit. I'm a minimal house keeper. A couple of speed cleaning sessions, when planned on, will be a great way to up my cleaning game. It's amazing what you can get done in less than a half hour. I'm going to run an experiment. I'm pretty sure if I push myself, I think I could vacuum my whole house in under 30 minutes... Stay tuned for that. I have to wait for my boys to wake up on their own first.

....

Success! Three levels, seven rooms, and two poopy post-nap diapers changed, all in less than 25 minutes! Minus stairs and switching plugs, the actual vacuuming took only 15 minutes. This is the power of the focused use of timers and simple FOCUS. This is something we're trying to teach our boys: tasks take a lot less time if you just DO them without extra wandering and playing around.

Another thing I'm happy Mrs. Page emphasized is the importance of blocking in your sleep. Even she admits to being a "night owl", which is what I naturally lean towards as well. The fact is that being a night owl doesn't mean you actually need less sleep. For me, at least, it just means that the sleep is shifted so I get the same amount. If I get to bed late, I wake up late... especially when pregnant. Fortunately, during my last pregnancy my boys sweetly let me sleep. They played quietly until I got up to feed them. If screaming happened... well, that was an effective alarm clock. So, in the last year I've tried very hard to get to bed earlier on a consistent basis, weekends exempted (Charles does breakfast those days). I've even made (small) steps toward getting up earlier to get through my opening routines before the "hangry" screaming kicks in now.

These blocks are a great way to plan your day. It ticks all the boxes while allowing plenty of individuality. The idea of using focused chunks of time instead of micromanaged hours is very freeing. Adding in some alarms is very useful for keeping on-task without wasting time watching a clock. Jordan suggests setting additional alarms for 15 minutes before the end of a block. This is great for facilitating transitions. An additional thought I had with those last 15 minutes is that if you get everything done before that timer, then those in-between minutes could be "phone check" times. Jordan makes a point of being "unplugged" for the bulk of the day. I'm fine with that, but I think using those optional couple of minutes kind of as a reward for getting things done. Delayed gratification can be a wonderful thing.

Now for the Holiday Bonus Round. Jordan showed an alternate example schedule of a working mom in her video. I feel that the following tip should be very handy for holiday prep in general. For office work, Jordan suggested using the morning working hours for the more brain-engaged tasks and the afternoon for moving/physical tasks. I'll let you decide which holiday tasks are brain vs. body oriented. The point is to use the fresh morning energy for your alert brain and then be moving in the afternoon to get through any post-lunch slump you experience.

I'd encourage you to watch the full video to gain your own insights and then use that printable to your advantage. Happy Holiday Blocking!

Don't You Wish You Were My Neighbor? Garden Report 2018

Welcome to winter! Do you miss things being green? Hopefully dreaming of my summer will help scratch that itch.

I'm not sure what the science behind this thought is, but I'm pretty sure every human enjoys seeing Before and After images. Good things you're a human (unless you're actually a robot) because here comes a whole bunch with limited commentary. Give your brain a rest and let your eye feast!

We shall begin with my inmost circle of influence of my own garden starting with my new veggie garden.

We had been talking about about some raised beds for me, but hadn't decided on a location. Once we figured out that there was a good spot along the fence, I just started digging! Maybe we'll add some brickwork and more dirt in the future, but I was happy to have my "bit of earth". And I must say it really is very nice dirt once you dig all the weeds out. My planting scheme was loosely based on "square-foot gardening". I had raspberry starts which gave me a couple of berries this year, and then I planted peppers, onions, leeks, radishes, tomatoes, and basil. The basil was on accident; I meant to plant spinach instead but must've grabbed the wrong seed packet. I forgot to take any pics when it was in full production mode, but it looks quite lovely after the fall clean-up where I moved the berry bushes from the one end to along the back edge. I'm hoping the leeks and onions to over-winter ok.

Now for the front beds.

It's fun planning somewhat symmetrical plantings for the sides of my front steps. The goal is to take out more of the irises (let me know if you want some next fall), but this year I was happy to rearrange my other perennials. I forgot to take a true Before pic before the pre-digging pruning session. The geraniums were trying to eat everything. That is why they are in time-out in the big pots now. I'm happy my roses survived another year and I was able to split the mini rose along the left side. I was also excited to receive my first peonies from a family friend. I look forward to splitting those in the future to spread them around in place of the irises. Those irises have been very happy. I inherited them with the house when they were in one huge clump that had clearly never been split up after its initial planting. My have they grown since I spread them out three years ago-ish.

The boys sure enjoyed the part of this process when they had free reign over one side after I had harvested my "walking onions" (not pictured). (I need to improve on the timing of my Before shots.)

Step with me to the other side of the fence, for this year I gained my own Secret Garden.

I never met my neighbor, but he has abandoned his house and the yard that he obviously had no care for. It had been hard watching become more and more overgrown, but with the hedge along the fence growing through to our side, we decided enough was enough. Charles had a friend come with a chainsaw to cut it all down. Then it was my job to chop it into manageable bits to cart away to the dump. We worked together to load the other miscellaneous trash, like the tire and garbage cans that you can see in the pictures above.

I also tamed their front beds, gifting some of my geraniums and irises to create a planting. The pavers are actually metal plates of some sort that I found back by the shed. The mulch came from the rotted bits of the wood that was found within the hedge and the wood pile in the back.

Stacking all of that wood was another job of mine.

I'm so glad Charles bought me a wheelbarrow before I did this part of the project. A full cord of wood and a bunch of free mulch for my payment.

I did not take my own After pictures of the Secret Garden because Charles made a video to brag about his amazing wife's gardening prowess. Highlights are that we moved almost 2 tons of refuse in the course of the summer.

Bonus round: I was invited to help another neighbor with their front beds.

This was extra gratifying because it was a service I had offered to them before during a previous summer. I wanted to liberate their peonies from under the tree on the left side as well as some light pruning. It took any extra year of letting the grass grow on the wrong side of the border for them to invite me to step in, which I happily did. 

This is one way I help create a more beautiful world: one garden at a time. I'm happy to employ my landscaping skills in behalf of those who either don't think they need it or don't have the skills/time themselves to make it happen.

Here's my After-After photos to help us segue back to snow....For Now We Wait For Spring.

Personal Endowments: What did the Fairies Give YOU?

   

Fall is just around the corner! And now that the transition back to school has calmed down, I have an opportunity to continue sharing my thoughts with the world. 

Before I wrote my 7 Habits post, I was reading the 7 Habits book and a theme that kept coming up for me was that to fully achieve success with those tools you needed to know what your personal gifts were so you could plan accordingly to put them into play effectively. This goes hand in hand with Energy Profiling for me because knowing what your gifts/talents are is part of knowing your own personality inside and out. This circles back to Covey's work of adding an 8th Habit: Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs. Strangely, this isn't found on the main Habit website, but it does have its own book which is on my reading list so we will probably discuss it more in the future. 

This post goes with the first part of finding my own voice. Pulling from Energy Profiling and knowing that I am a dominant Type 4 with a secondary Type 2 I have a good base knowledge of what makes me tick, but to boil it down to what my cores gifts are, I connected with my childhood. 

So, apparently I am a member of the "Millennial" group. Being born in 1991, I am on the cusp between Gen Y and Gen Z. I prefer to think on my "generation" as the Disney Generation because we grew up with all the classics... on VHS mostly.

One of my favorites was Sleeping Beauty. (Team Blue!) Gotta love those fairies. They are the true stars of the show, at least in my opinion. I've always been fascinated by the gifts they give baby Aurora. I think all of us budding Disney Princesses want the gifts of Beauty and Song; we all love to dress up and sing along.

My burning question has always been, "What was Merryweather's original gift going to be?" We will never know.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has wondered what gifts I would've received in Aurora's place. Being LDS I didn't think I'd have to wonder about that after I received my Patriarchal Blessing. This is a special Priesthood blessing you can receive as a youth and I got mine as soon as I could. I was very eager to have this road map to my life that was supposed to tell me more about myself.

In reading through it again, I'm actually surprised how many times the word "gift" is used. But the part that has stuck in my mind since I received this blessing at age 14 is, "There are many gifts and talents which you may not have yet discovered." I was told to seek out and develop these other talents in order to fulfill my potential.

It's been a solid twelve years since I first heard those words. So what have I discovered about my talents? I have found some of them have a parallel to the three Good Fairies and the gifts they gave Aurora.

Flora is the leader of the group and gave the gift of Beauty. Fauna is the glue and gave the gift of Song. Merryweather is the go-getter/problem solver and gave the formula for breaking Maleficent's curse. This is the original order of the gifts but my parallel is in a slightly different order of priority.

For me Fauna comes first. The gift of Song matches my overarching gift of Harmony. My favorite definition of Harmony is, "the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole". Harmony is my watchword, what I look for in every aspect of my life. It is also what I try to create in various forms. Harmony is my vision of life in one word. I expanded upon that in my Mission Statement post last month.

Merryweather was able to think on her feet and come up with a plan to break the curse. Planning is my next gift. Planning is how I work to create Harmony. Planning can also be thought of as Organizing which I am really good at. I like to think that my house seems clean (Harmonious) because it is Organized as far as things are within their correct boundaries. I'm not super OCD. My sense of Harmony allows for my house to feel "lived in" (slightly messy because i have three small kids) thing as long as things are generally in the right area.

Flora gave the gift of Beauty. I make things beautiful (Harmonious) by being able to effectively implement my Organization (Planning) with Authority. Mmm... Authority. As a T4, Authority is a big thing in my world. I prefer to either have the Authority or be able to respect others who have it over me. Mostly I just like having it. Being a more "mature" personality, Authority comes quite easily to me. I'm able to stand in front of a group of people and take charge. Prime example: I may be the youngest Cubmaster ever... maybe. (Do the math, I gave you my birth year already.) It was actually a relief to be officially called because I had felt like an impostor being the acting Cubmaster for about a month and not feeling like I really had the Authority I was trying to wield in keeping our Cub Scout Pack running.

It's fun seeing how my three gifts interact in almost every aspect of my life. I could go on and on giving you examples, but I think maybe you can just go read more of my posts and you'll be able to see them for yourself.

I'll just close with a visual metaphor of how I see my gifts make up a the best parts of me. I found that an umbrella made a good match for what I had in mind. I labelled it, but here's a walk-through. Harmony is the canopy that does the actual job of the umbrella of keeping you covered and safe from the elements. It's also the part that you see as a possible fashion statement. But the canopy can't function without the underpinnings of the shaft and ribs. That structure is my Planning portion. Now, the traditional umbrella is one you have to manually push up, but the one I have has a button in the handle that does the popping for you. The pop is the action that moves the structure to accomplish the task of the umbrella. Just so, my Authority moves the Planning into fruition to create Harmony.

Now for the second half of the Habit. I hope I have inspired you to think about your gifts. Yours may not coalesce into an umbrella metaphor, but that's kind of the point; we can't all be umbrellas and we're not supposed to be all the same.

I'd love it if you'd share your gifted metaphors once you have them figured out.

Habit 2 in Action: My Personal Mission Statement

Last month I shared my review of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits. In the course of writing/thinking about the second Habit, I ended up "walking the walk" as well as "talking the talk" and wrote out my own Mission Statement. So here it is, in outline form, with some light editing. Enjoy and be inspired!

Core Foundation:

Principles: Charity, Harmony, Structure/Boundaries, Improvement

Roles: Wife, Mother, Homemaker, Disciple of Christ

Goals: Fulfill roles to the best of my ability using my unique set of gifts and talents

Applications/Interactions:

Charity-Wife: Love husband, show love to husband using his love language (Physical). Be understanding of husband’s needs (Energy Profiling) and help him to understand my needs in a loving way.

Charity-Mother: Love children with all love languages (time, words, touch, service). Make sure their needs are taken care of (physical, emotional, social, developmental).

Charity-Homemaker: Show love for my family by maintaining our living space to be a peaceful haven from the outside world. Be grateful for physical blessings by being a good steward of what we have.

Charity-Disciple of Christ: Put charity into action by using my gifts to serve others. Energy Profiling helps me be charitable to others because I can decode enough of their behaviors to understand their motivations and thinking processes and in turn be able to interact with them in a loving way.

Harmony-Wife: Be in harmony with husband through effective communication about goals, plans, and parenting concerns.

Harmony-Mother: Create a harmonious environment for my children to grow up in so they feel safe and secure in themselves and peaceful in their interactions with each other so that they can grow to be decent human beings.

Harmony-Homemaker: Use my design skills to make a harmonious home. I release the belief that my house needs to always be spotlessly clean to accomplish harmony in my home. I create functional spaces with an eye for efficiency as well as beauty whenever possible.

Harmony-Disciple of Christ: I strive to be a peacemaker and harmony-sharer in my interactions with all of my fellow men.

Structure/Boundaries-WIfe: This part is personal and I put a boundary here in not sharing it with others.

Structure/Boundaries-Mother: I discipline my children using boundaries. We are still in the phase of discovering rules as needed, but they do understand the importance of following the rules they already know. They know what “no” means and that Momma doesn’t really put up with sh*t. I balance that with love (D+C 121:43). I use structure through routines to create a consistent environment so they know what to expect, which is supportive for their growth and peace of mind.

Structure/Boundaries-Homemaker: I’m less good about keeping to a consistent housekeeping structure, but I do have boundaries concerning how bad I let things get. When I do clean, I’m consistent in the structure of how I go about accomplishing those tasks (i.e.: I always do the dishes in the same pattern, vacuuming has a certain order of rooms, etc.). I do like to keep things generally tidy, just not germophobically clean.

Structure/Boundaries-Disciple of Christ: I can use what I’ve learned of ethics to keep my interactions with others at a certain level of appropriateness while still being friendly.

Improvement-Wife: As a couple we are always learning about each other and growing closer together to improve the quality of our connection.

Improvement-Mother: I am willing to be vulnerable with my children when I make a parenting mistake. This gives us opportunities to learn together how to be better people.

Improvement-Homemaker: I know there are areas in which I need to improve my performance in this area. Mostly it boils down to better time management in order to make space to get maintenance tasks done throughout my routine to achieve consistency.

Improvement-Disciple of Christ: I am grateful for the gift of the Atonement which empowers me in my efforts to improve in all areas of life.

7 Habits for a Highly Effective Summer

Hello Summer!

And also hello and no school! Which means kids are home and routines are going out the window. (As a T4 who loves routines and structure, this is breaking my brain.)  I have the added element of being married to a teacher, so he is home as well and is wanting to be in relaxing mode the whole time, which makes it harder for me to be doing my job as mommy and homemaker.

Fortunately I took the Home and Family Management class at BYU-I where Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for Highly Effective People was our textbook. It has been five years since then, so I have been feeling ready for a review anyway, and this ts the perfect time to share as we take on this season.

We'll start with the image that represents the 7 Habits and how they flow together, below.

I love how the goal of the Habits is to raise us to a higher level of living through personal and interpersonal growth. It's fun to then apply this format to different realms within our circles of influence. I've already worked on putting a Cub Scout spin on it (that may be September's post), but right now I'm needing to put this into practice in my home. That would be the point of learning this whole process in the Home and Family Management class to begin with.

With the Habits being split as Private and Public, I find it easy to replace those labels with Mommy and Family. This works because as a Mommy (or leader of any kind) you'll want to get yourself in order first so you can operate from a place of confidence and order, which is what the first three Habits focus on.

The First Habit is "Be Proactive". To paraphrase what is on the website, being proactive is taking responsibility for our own choices including our responses to life, to be "response-able" if you will. For me, this means pulling on my Big Girl Pants and actually being ready to be The Mom. 

The opposite of proactive is reactive. As a mom, I'd rather be ahead of the game and running things rather than have things running me. In daily life this looks like taking care of things before they become problems you have to react to, usually in an emotional way. An example of this can be as simple as making sure everyone is fed before anyone has the chance to get "hangry" which leads to everyone yelling at everybody else.

So, the first step here is getting into the mindset of "I can do this!" In other words, we are using faith in ourselves that things will work out if we put forth the initial effort to get on top of things. The next part is identifying our Circles of Influence, meaning the things we can actually take care of and affect. This saves us from using our energy to worry about things outside of our control. For me a great example of this is that I don't worry about politics at all. That is what Charles is for ;) 

My other notes under being proactive are: keep commitments, don't judge (those other people are outside of your Circle of Concern so don't be worrying about them), be a model, and be part of the solution.

The Second Habit is "Begin with the End in Mind". This is something that I'm pretty good at. For me, I can see the big picture, or at least solid glimpses of it, and some of the steps in how to get the results I am wanting. That is the beginning of this habit. You have to know where you are headed in order to plan out the steps of how to get there. Here we start the process of creating our lives. Mr. Covey suggests creating a personal Mission Statement at this point to help give yourself direction before moving ahead.

To create your own Mission Statement there are a few things to keep in mind: What are your principles that you base your life around? What are your roles? And what are your goals?

In exploring those topics, I just wrote my own mission statement out. So that will be my next post,

which saves me space here.

The Third Habit is "Put First Things First". Here is where action comes into play. After the first two

Habits we should be feeling empowered (#1) with a road map (#2) at least in a general sense. Now

we use that power to move forward in the direction of our mission. The quest has begun! (Sorry, I

married a nerd and it's had almost seven years to be rubbing off on me.)

The important thing about this forward movement is to make sure it is in a forward direction, hence

"first things first". It may seem redundant on paper, but think about how easily we distract ourselves

from actually being as productive as we know we can be? I know I have fallen into this trap. That is

the reason I'm revisiting this whole program is to get myself out of such a rut of diverted stagnation.

Habit 3's war cry is "PRIORITIZE!!!!!" And they provided a spectrum format to help us with that,

below.

The intention behind this is that we should spend the majority of our time in Quadrant 2 where things

are important but not urgent. This is where proactivity lives. Quadrant 1 is Reaction Zone. I tend to

avoid Quadrant 3 which is why my email inbox drives Charles crazy. None of the emails I get need

any sort of immediate action, so I only take enough time to mark them as read just to make the

notifications go away. Quadrant 4 has been my vice, but I am getting better at managing that. I'm

writing instead of playing Minecraft, enough said.

The application of this system of spending more of our time in Quadrant 2 is to use those planning

skills from Habit 2 to schedule things out. Remembering to connect to our Mission Statement, you

identify the "big rocks" you need to focus on to accomplish the important goals and plot them out

first. Everything else, all the "little things", then can be organized around what time is left. That is the

step I want to work more on for myself. (Structure=Good)

That wraps up the Private/Mommy/Leader half of the Habits. Onto the Public/Family/Organization

Habits.

Habit 4 is "Think Win/Win". This is where the rubber meets the road. It's great to be doing all the

private deep thinking of setting goals and making plans, but then you have to set all those wonderful

designs into motion... with other people involved.

I know at school, most of us probably preferred to do "Group Projects" alone. We can't do that in the

real world.

To explain this win-win mindset, I'm going to pull a quote from the Covey website:

"Win-win sees life as a cooperative arena, not a competitive one. Win-win is a frame of mind and

heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win-win means agreements

or solutions are mutually beneficial and satisfying. We both get to eat the pie, and it tastes pretty

darn good! "

To illustrate this with a relevant biographical example, I'll put this in the terms that I used for my Cub Scout group. The boys come to Scouts with their "win" of having fun and (hopefully) learning something. As a leader, I come with the "win" of being able to present the material I have prepared to teach and guide these prepubescent males.

To make this a cooperative win-win situation, I have to put forth effort to make my material "fun" (not my strong suit, but I can default to being dramatic at least) and the boys have to reign in their energy enough to respectfully listen to and participate appropriately to the instructions/discussion/activity. If that goes smoothly we can have a positive experience where they aren't bored and I'm not wasting time and getting frustrated with ... shepherding their exuberant interruptions (read: telling them to "shut up!" every ten seconds).

I can happily report that I have seen success with this arrangement with this group of boys, which is beneficial for my sanity seeing how I teach this same bunch of boys' Sunday School class.

How did I achieve this success? I imposed Habit 5 on them: "Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood". I made sure they understood my expectations of our interactions. (I recently introduced them to the metaphor of the carrot and the stick...)

If Habit 4 is about cooperation, then Habit 5 is about communication. The actual emphasis is on empathetic listening. This is a surprisingly useful skill, even when parenting toddlers (assuming they have sufficient language skills or you can interpret their intentions).

My biggest application of this, particularly when issues are arising and my children entering fussy territory. Instead of just listening to what they are complaining about on the surface with their actual words, I try to be in tune enough to intuit what the root problem they are dealing with. I try to understand what is going on inside of them, probably better than they do in the moment. Depending on the circumstances, I either "suggest" they leave the situation to get out of that energetic space and we can talk about it later (time out) or I bring them into a hug right then before addressing the surface concerns. Sometimes my little boy just needs to get some "sads" out, then we can rescript the situation so we don't have that current problem again.

Once cooperation and communication are established, then we can begin to "Synergize", which is Habit 6. The innovation that can come from the healthy background that all the other Habits have set up can be mind-blowing. This is truly a situation of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I think the secret behind this is the humility and confidence that have grown out of the other steps of this process. We have confidence in our own abilities and ideas but are still humble enough to work together to combine ideas to make something new that can work for everyone (win-win).

In the parenting format I can imagine an example of this being involving our kids when planning out routines or schedules or codes of conduct. When the kids are engaged in these processes they are more likely to respect them. Don't be afraid of this step; they may have ideas that will surprise you. Of course, this is more applicable with older children, but even little ones can at least make the planning stage more... entertaining with their input. (At 10:00 we slay the dragons!)

Our last Habit is "Sharpen the Saw". This is my second favorite Habit because I am a big fan of self-care. I have a firm testimony that I am not the best Momma I can be if I don't have the pieces of my inner puzzle all in the right order. A consistent pattern of this is when I don't get "enough" sleep then I turn into a "Mombie" and I don't use caffeine to combat the effects, so watch out!

Those "puzzle pieces" that need tending to, and ways to maintain performance in those areas, are:

•  Physical: Beneficial eating, exercising, and resting
• Social/Emotional: Making social and meaningful connections with others
• Mental: Learning, reading, writing, and teaching
• Spiritual: Spending time in nature, expanding spiritual self through meditation, music, art, prayer, or service

I know I am still working on finding a good balance of all of these myself. The great part is that this

Habit is taken into consideration back in Habit 3. These activities are contained within Quadrant 2.

And that wraps up my rather long summary of the 7 Habits. I'd encourage you to follow the links to

the Covey website to learn more. I'll end with a little infographic that has a much more concise

review with added applications and affirmations. I'm feeling inspired. I hope you are too.

May we all have the best summer ever!

How to Wear White with Confidence...When You Have Babies

Wearing white has seemed to be the anathema of mommy-hood. Let's face it, white is not the #1 neutral that anyone with kids of any age gravitates toward when considering their everyday wardrobe. 

Such is not the case for me.

I'm wearing my favorite white skinny jeans as I write this and I love it! So, in Fat Amy style, I want to rub some of my confidence onto you so you too can rock it in your type of white*.

(*Quick refresher on Types of white: T1= Winter White; T2= Eggshell; T3= Wheat; T4= Stark White, as pictured below. Tip or darken your screen to see the undertones or lack thereof.)

This post was inspired by a recent conversation with a friend who was despairing at the possibility of not being able to keep whites clean with small children around and all that entails. I offered her 3 solutions to this problem that I will pass onto to you, dear reader, as well as 3 bonus ideas I didn't think of at the time (you know how that goes).

Wash Your Babies

I know the image that haunts you. You are loving your white and then your adorable child approaches for an embrace... with hands and/or face and/or...everything covered in (insert substance of choice). The white is now ruined!

Simple solution: watch your babies, know when they are dirty, wash them immediately when messy project/meal is complete, then continue with the hugs. 

Alternative solution: Avoid the mess to begin with. Be the Nazi mom who doesn't let your kids get messy in the first place, i.e. don't serve your spaghetti with sauce, etc.

Feed Babies at Arm's Length

The second obstacle my friend offered was the fact that she is feeding a small one with a tendency towards projectile spit-up. We do play dates on a weekly basis which end after lunch, so I've watched her feed the baby in question, usually on her lap.

Solution: Use a high chair to get some distance from the source of spit-up. If your child has great skills as to distance projection, wear an apron and if your white is in the form of a second layer (we're not just talking about jeans here) then remove that layer during feeding. 

Cook with an Apron

I too live part of my life in the kitchen and I can't boast of being an especially clean cook. I'm not a total mess, but I still take preventative measures. Yes, I wear an apron even (sometimes) if all I'm making is mac 'n' cheese. I wear it anytime I'm cooking, not just when I'm having a white day. It helps if you have a cute apron that you love. My current model is in shades of blue with tiered ruffles.

Bonus Solution #1

Pants/Clothes DO NOT =Napkin. I know my husband is not completely house broken in this area, but he is not the one wearing white. It's one thing to blame your kids for a mess, but another to create the stains yourself. Avoid this by using good manners. Simple as that.

Bonus Solution #2

I also have a healthy, breastfed baby that poops. This means we have experience with blow-outs. These have been less frequent of late because we finally figured out that she was ready for the next size of diapers. That aside, when a blow-out has occurred you often don't realize it until you have the baby in your lap and by then it is too late. You may also have poop on your pants now.

Solution: Use preventative measures, again. On my white days, I don't pick up my angel, poopy or otherwise, without first having those buns wrapped in the all-purpose blanket that is always at hand. (We are a blankie family.) My theory is that she is poopy until proven otherwise.

Bonus Solution #3

All other solutions and precautionary stratagems in play, life still happens and life sometimes =stains. When this happens my OxyClean stick is my best friend. (Note: I am not affiliated with OxyClean. I just love it.)

I would keep this miracle wand in my travel bag when we were having more periodic blow-outs. Of course, I forgot it on our most recent weekend away, but the beautiful thing is that it works when pre-washing dried out stains as well. And that has been my experience with all the different patterns, with or without white, of our baby clothes. I think she's pooped in every outfit so far and they all come out clean. 

If you don't have OxyClean yet, go get some. (I use the sticks because I feel I have more control with it than the spray offers. Plus our laundry detergent has it too.) Or use bleach as that is what is used on whites historically speaking. 

And those are my solutions to help you bring white into your life. Now you should have (less) excuses for avoiding expanding your color palette with this excellent neutral. I've brought it into my current capsule wardrobe to welcome in the spring season...whenever that truly happens in southern Idaho. 

Opening and Adding to My Virtual Time Capsule

Happy (belated) New Year! Many apologies for not adding much to the blog-verse in 2017. My excuse: I was too bus adding some adorable-ness to the world at large = I made a baby girl instead of writing. Basically I was either too nauseous, too tired, or too busy taking care of my boys with the little oomph I had to spare for most of the year. Julianna was born in October and then it was the holiday season; not a great time to try picking up blogging again.

But now we are a month into 2018 and I'm ready to get back at it.

In getting the juices flowing, I've redesigned the look and direction of the blog (hope you like it) and read some of my old posts to remember what my voice sounds like (when I'm saying more than, "Share with your brother," or "Please let the baby sleep!)

Looking back at my post last year to ring in the new year I saw that I had been proud of completing a mini bucket list to prepare for my 25th birthday. The idea behind that was that 25 is my favorite number and I wanted it to be a banner year. I'd say I succeeded; 2017 was a pretty good year. In my brain it is divided into Pregnant or Not Pregnant and Nauseous or Not Nauseous.

In January I was Not Yet Pregnant and I experienced my first foot zoning session. (It's so nice being a massage therapist and being able to exchange. I'm also open to bartering.) It was quite validating to be told that my energies were generally good and that I was clearing some generational patterns.

I found out I was Pregnant in February and had a brief Not Nauseous period to enjoy getting excited and start hoping it was a girl this time.

Then the Nauseous time began. Instead of being just a first trimester thing, it was more of a first half sort of thing. And it was worse this time than it was with my two boys. That was my first clue that it was either a girl or twins. My cousin gave birth to twins at the beginning of the year, so that really did feel like a possibility. It was quite a relief to see only one Jelly Bean in the first ultrasound.

Despite being Nauseous, I managed to get my little massage business set up again and continue practicing. Massage actually proved a decent distraction. This is also my second pregnancy where I ended up doing some serious singing. With Jon it was being in the back-up choir for a production of The Pirates of Penzance with the University Choir at BYU-I. This time it was a community choir Easter production of Handel's Messiah. The performance was towards the end of the overall Nauseous stretch, but I did finally cave in and ask for a Zofran prescription because I wasn't taking any chances of having to miss the performance, and my last minute solo. It worked so we will remember to get that at the beginning in future rounds.

The highlight of the Not Nauseous term was our summer trip. It wasn't as involved as our month-long road trip in 2016, which was nice. We took a train over to Denver to see Charles' brother and a train museum that was featuring Thomas the Tank Engine. Plus there was small petting zoo. Overall, it was a win-win. The boys had fun (trains... enough said) and they were pretty well-behaved the whole time. The train was a great idea. We didn't have to keep the boys in car seats so they were able to wiggle a bit and stretch out better for sleeping purposes. I'd highly recommend it as a mode of log-distance travel. We need more trains.

And then October came to end the Pregnant round and Julianna was born! Yeah for having a little girl. I was hoping she'd come while I was still 25. She cut it close. Her birthday is 10/10 and mine is 10/19.

I've joked with the nurses at her appointments that maybe I should have named her Mary Poppins because I think she is Practically Perfect in Every Way :) She does everything she is supposed to although I'm starting to create a theory that each new baby grows faster than the last. She will be 4 months in about a week and I just had to switch her clothes to the 6-9 months size. But she has a smile to match. My little angel.

To end this reminiscing, I'd like to just mention that my only official "resolution" for 2017 was to read more. Period. I listen to plenty of audio books, but I desired a return to the written page. I'll say that I succeeded in reading more than I have in a while. I finished a series (although it took most of the year).

This year I am expanding on that decision and have tasked myself with a reading list of some of the Classics. I took a Facebook quiz last year that revealed how many "classics" I had read. I felt I needed to add the stories that have been made into movies I've seen to get a decent score. That was humbling. So to give myself a bit of an ego boost I sifted through our shelves to find some of the titles that I have missed. I managed to fill an entire shelf.

So far I have finished The Picture of Dorian Gray which I had started back when I was weaning David. I felt I had to start there because I am a self-proclaimed Finisher. Now I am reading The Iliad. I recently watched the Myths and Monsters series on Netflix which referenced several stories from Homer. They were already on my list, but watching the show bumped them up in my time line. I think I'll kind go at this list in a chronological-ish order.

Hopefully 2018 will be filled with both reading and writing (but not necessarily great amounts of 'rithmetic).