Holiday size list

   I am doing flylady's cruising through the holiday's missions. She has a free holiday control journal you can print from her website. Yesterday's mission was to figure out sizes for everyone in the family in case someone asks you don't have to scramble to figure it out. I didn't see a place for this in my holiday control journal so I really quickly this morning made this up. Feel free to copy and print.

Hubby sizes
top
Pants
Shoes

My sizes
top
Pants
Shoes

Child #1
top
Pants
Shoes

Child #2
top
Pants
Shoes

Child #3
top
Pants
shoes

Have you started getting ready for the holidays yet?

Wrapping Closet

   I've mentioned the cleaning guru Flylady before. Well, she recently started a cruising through the holidays missions thing. I'm obsessed. It is day 7 today. You should definitely jump in.
   One of the missions was to get all your wrapping paper together in one place. I had been planning a wrapping closet for awhile. This was the motivation I needed to just do it. Plus Chase was at my parents' and the twins were napping. Here is the final result:

Let's start at the top and go left to right.The basket in the top left has my scentsy scents in it. Then on the shelf is my big tissue paper. I bought a big pack of white tissue paper a couple years ago at the dollar tree. Middle left is all our wrapping boxes. Middle middle in the bag is bags. Under that is one of those 5 drawer organizers from target. See picture below. Next to that is our wrapping paper in a plastic wrapping paper thing from target. On the bottom is extra flooring the owners left and some blinds. Here is the close up of the 5 drawers:

Top drawer has tags, then some more tissue, bows, some small wrap pieces, and more bags on the bottom. It had been on my to do list to find my big NIV study bible and look what I found!

I've already bought and wrapped presents and it isn't even Halloween yet!!

What's your secret emoji? 🔥

  On a recent wine tasting birthday party that got bachelor party wild, I discovered something. Other people use a secret emoji for, let's call it "alone time". Conversation got silly, because, wine and my friend told me their secret emoji.
   If you are making a confused face at your phone or computer right now because you don't know what I'm talking about, let me explain. Couples develop a secret code when texting somehow and organically an emoji becomes code for "alone time".
   I'm not going to tell you what ours is. I'll tell you it is one of the emojis that you can pick the skin tone. I think my friends were over one night and Hubby was out with some guys from work and we were texting. I was just trying to be funny and I sent him an emoji with the darkest skin tone choice. My friend and I started using it as a joke and then one night I sent it to Hubby and the rest is history.
   So I'm dying to know, what's your emoji. If you are too embarrassed, you can leave an anonymous comment.
   Is it

???

Tell me!

Also, a big shout out to my fellow twin mama blogger irl friend, Cori at Hey, Let's Make Stuff. I ran this idea by her first and messaged emojis to her to take screen shots of. Check her blog out it's super cute!

Parenting by connection

   I wanted to clear up something after my last post, I need flylady because I have a form of perfectionism that paralyzes me from doing anything and also severe laziness. I want my house to look perfect when people come over but a lot of the time it is a disaster. I also have a temper. In my journey to become a calmer and happier mom I found flylady, started waking up before my kids and I found parenting by connection.
   I have been reading and posting parenting by connection, positive parenting or hand in hand parenting articles for about a year now. We don't give our children time outs. We believe our children are good and want to behave. We try not to yell at our kids. When we see them acting up or not listening we know it is time for special time.
   Special time is 5 minutes where the child gets your undivided attention to do whatever they want to do. A lot of times for us its a chasing game, board game, or dodge ball. The idea behind parenting by connection is if your child is well rested, fed, and feeling connected to you they will have good behavior. (Sometimes the tv is the babysitter while I have 5 minutes of special time with a child).

   We allow our kids to have tantrums. We know that everyone sometimes needs to have a tantrum. When I first started learning about parenting by connection, there were articles about children with 45 minutes tantrums. It is called stay listening when you stay with your child and listen while they tantrum. I remember watching the clock thinking ok this could go for 45 minutes. So far we haven't had one that long. They do get shorter as they work through all their issues.
   We do still set limits and have high expectations. We still tell our children they are not allowed to hurt anyone else. Our kids are 4 and 1.5 so learning to control that fight or flight urge is tough. I've recently seen Chase's little fist ball up and see him control his urge to hit.
   Sometimes when you set a limit, for example about tv watching, a tantrum will follow. I swear every single time we turned the tv off when Chase was three he would have a tantrum. It isn't always an issue about the tv. Sometimes they are dealing with something that happened at school and they are now deciding to get that emotion out.
   Chase recently said something rude to me. I told him it hurt my feelings when he said that. I asked him if he meant to hurt my feelings. He said no. We talked about a nicer way he could have talked to me. Then he told me something someone at school had said to him that hurt his feelings.
   We know this is a different parenting method and some will read this and think our children are going to grow up to be adults that have tantrums and hit and bite other people, but this is what we feel is the right choice for our family and we will deal with whatever the future holds. We think our children will learn how to control their anger and find appropriate times and places to release it. We think our children will always feel close to us and their brothers.

My secret for waking up before the kids

   Sleep is one of my favorite things. In high school I could sleep until 1 pm. I gave it all up for my babies. I don't think I slept for 3 years. I go to bed at the same time as Hubby but always justified sleeping in with I'm getting up with the babies in the middle of the night. Well, I'm no longer getting up with the babies in the middle of the night (insert confetti and salsa dancer emoji). I now have a child that has to get to school in the morning. I tried sleeping until the babies woke up and getting everyone out the door for a few months. I didn't like the mom I was rushing around and angry in the mornings. I tried the old fashioned set an alarm and get up. Didn't work.

   I'm kind of embarrassed to share my secret for waking up before the kids...

 

I call a game of bingo Monday through Friday at 6:30 am. 

   I'm sure you are super confused now. Awhile ago I found a cleaning guru called Flylady. She doesn't do a weekly cleaning checklist. She suggests starting routines. Our evening routine is to do the dishes before we go to bed. I started following her on facebook and found some other groups that follow her. I'm in a group called 5,10,15 clean. They have bingo cleaning games through out the day.

   What is a bingo cleaning game? You pick 9 things you need to get done. 3 that you will spend 15 minutes on, 3 you will spend 10 minutes on, and 3 you will spend 5 minutes on. There is a caller that posts a number and then you do that number for the amount of time and when the time is up you come back for the next call. You might think you need longer than 5 or 15 minutes to do things but you would probably be surprised. Anyways, it has helped motivate me to clean to have other people cleaning and deciding what to clean. I have issues prioritizing things. Bingo and flylady helped motivate me to clean and decorate our master. 

   So Monday through Friday my alarm goes off at 6:25am and I jump on to facebook and let everyone know the game will start in 5 minutes. At 6:30 I post the first number. There are other women from all over the world that join in and post what they are doing. Since I have to keep posting calls/numbers I just get out of bed and get ready for the day. The babies wake up around 7ish. Today they are still asleep at 7:35! I actually need to go wake Chase up because he has school today. 

   That's my secret for getting up before my kids. If you live in a different time zone there are probably games at the time you would need to be getting up. Join the group! If there isn't a game at the time you need, you can call one! It is really easy! Let me know if you have any other questions!