In the Groove

What a nice week it has been so far.

After the craziness and distraction (all good) that December brings it is so nice to just stay home and be home and work in our home.

We seem to have hit on a pretty good routine for school and daily life right now so the days clip along at a pretty good rate and we are covering all of our bases while having a bit of fun.

With the new baby coming in just a short 20 weeks I feel the need to correct some training and disciplining problems that have cropped up and been growing with each of the children. So I have put that at the top of my list for each and everyday.

I have also been impressed to use this time in training the daily habit of picking up the house. Alissa, Thomas, Emily and Wesley are each assigned a room to take care of for a duration of 12 weeks. They have 4 chores that must be accomplished in their "room" each morning without fail. I have been spending this week making sure that they are completing these chores properly and weaning them off of my help during their 30-minute clean time.
I also use these as commission chores for which they do get paid a small amount for each chore accomplished.

I have also been trying to catch up in the kitchen after being down for the count for several days due to a bad cold. Normally I would dump my kids in front of some movies so that I could get this done, but we are on a bit of a media fast at the moment so I have asked them to help me out by adding an extra 15 minutes after meal clean up chores are done. They have blessedly cooperated and after doing this 4 different times I only have a couple of nasty pans to wash and a couple piles of clutter to get cleaned up.

It is such a mistake to think that are children are not only capable of doing many tasks around the house but very detrimental not to train and include them in on these things. The kids and I do have a good time working together and have become quite the cleaning team:) Hopefully by the time the baby comes these habits will be instilled as well as cheerful working attitudes so that the transition will be a bit less bumpy.