Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘mommy love’

“How do you do it all Maken­zie?  You must be so busy!!”

I hear this all the time when I encounter peo­ple.  Work­ing on two busi­nesses from home, tak­ing care of my hus­band (whom I might add is recov­er­ing quite nicely and doing a great job at this point of tak­ing care of him­self!), and shut­tling the kids to and from school.  Home­work, base­ball, play dates, lunches, din­ner etc…!

It doesn’t really seem that over­whelm­ing when I am going through my day–well most days.

A LifeHacker’s Views on Time Management

It all starts with my morn­ing, I am not a morn­ing per­son typ­i­cally, so I “roll” out of bed around 0730, pray­ing that my hus­band has been able to make his way to the kitchen before me to put on my morn­ing “heaven” (aka cof­fee.)  Morn­ing really sets the tone for the rest of the day for me.  This is the part of the day that I have to really be present, to focus my ener­gies, to align with the stars, to regain my Chi.…and ALL of it!  Because if I ALLOW my morn­ing to go bad, then quite fre­quently I have a hard time get­ting in front of my day.

The con­cept of Time is a funny one to me, because some days just seem to go by so quickly and some are a mean­ing­less mess and drag out for­ever!  Yet, Time always Feels in my favor, when I have a chance to get my energy AHEAD of TIME.  Makes sense or no?  If I can be present in the NOW, slow down my “reac­tion speeds” and work on my “proac­tion” speed, then it seems like Time is on my side.  ProAc­tiv­ity vs. ReActivity

Of course part of this proac­tion speed is defin­ing my day! I define my day on sev­eral levels.

1. How do I want to FEEL today? What do I want my energy to be like?  Do I want to be a pissed off, angry mom?  Or do I want to be a happy, joy­ful, peace­ful, fun mom?  (I choose the lat­ter because it is more fun!)
2. What do I want to DO today? And for some this seems like a ridicu­lous ques­tion because you HAVE to do so many things.  So let me point you back to the idea of Proac­tion…  When you choose to do some­thing, you allow your­self to feel proac­tive, it’s your choice, it’s your deci­sion! Yay!  When you feel that you HAVE to do some­thing, you’re react­ing to out­side influence…and well 99.999% of the time you’re the only one that can make the choice for YOU!!  So are you being respon­si­ble for your choice, or are you giv­ing up your power of choice?  Think on this for a lit­tle while.…
3. What do I want to BE? This can be such a broad state­ment, but often I chose to be inspired, to be fun, to be happy!!  I also chose to BE a MOM, to be an Entre­pre­neur, to be a Run­ner.…  I get to choose these things every­day!  What do you choose?

A few sim­ple steps to align your Mind with Clar­ity and good energy will allow you to get ahead of TIME!

(PS — I also do this trick, that was rec­om­mended by Zig Ziglar that on days when I roll out of bed and feel just cruddy, I jump up and down 10 times, laugh and say “This is the best day of my life!” “This is the best day of my life!”.…then I look in the mir­ror and say “I’m talk­ing to you–turn that frown upside down!”  It is so ridicu­lous, but it’s a fan­tas­tic pat­tern inter­rupt!  Works!!)

I don’t know if you rec­og­nize that a lot of my posts are about get­ting your MIND and your ENERGY in the right spot.  Lit­tle of it has to do with how much time or effort I put into cer­tain tasks.  I used to be that very task focused-driven person.…but it didn’t work for me, I was a mis­er­able mess!  So I had to try some­thing dif­fer­ent.  Focus­ing on my thoughts before focus­ing on my actions was the BIGGEST dif­fer­ence.  IT works…no bull­shit here!

Two more “No Bull­shit” Life­Hacker Tips:

The best Wheat Bread on this Side of the Mississippi:

This is the EASIEST bread recipe I have found.  You have to do it 2 or 3 times until you find the rou­tine, and you will be ask­ing why you spend so much on bread at the store!!

1. 1 cup warm water
2. 1 Table­spoon Milk
3. 2 Table­spoons oil
4. 3 Table­spoons Honey (I usu­ally add more!)
5. 2 Table­spoons Brown Sugar ( I some­times sub­sti­tute Molasses)
6. 1 tea­spoon Salt
7. 1–1/2 cups all-purpose flour
8. 1–1/2 cups whole wheat flour
9. 2 tea­spoons instant active dry yeast.

1. Com­bine Ingre­di­ents #1-#6 in a large mix­ing bowl, stir.

2. Add flours and yeast, and knead (turn on the kitchenaid mixer) for 10–15 min­utes.  Dough should be smooth and elas­tic.  Place dough in a greased bowl, turn­ing once to grease top.  Cover with plas­tic wrap, let rise in warm area (usu­ally above the refridger­a­tor or oven works well.)

3. Punch down dough; knead for a few min­utes until smooth then form into a loaf.  Place in a greased loaf pan and cover.  Let rise again until dou­bled, about 30 min.

4. Bake at 350 for 30–25 min­utes.  Remove when done and allow to rest in pan just for a few min­utes (any longer and it starts to sweat!)  Easy peasy!  Enjoy!

HOMEWORK!!

I don’t know about you, but my biggest bat­tle with home­work is try­ing to just get it done!!  How many times have I asked him?  Is it done yet?  Finally I was exas­per­ated by my attempts to fin­ish it the night before it was due (for us, it’s a Wednes­day!) and I thought, well, I will do what many com­pa­nies do when they want the job done ahead of schedule…factor in BONUSES!!

So his home­work sched­ule looks like this:

Home­work comes home on Fri­day due on Thursday.

If it’s com­plete by Mon­day — $3 bonus.…

If it’s com­plete by Tues­day — $2 bonus.…

If it’s com­plete by Wednes­day $0!!!

Why $0 on Wednes­day? The goal was to get him to com­plete his home­work before crunch time, so now he’s self-motivated to com­plete his home­work on Mon­day or Tues­day.  He doesn’t have to do it over the week­end, and he gets to choose when he wants to do it.  Either choice has an impact, but it’s ulti­mately his choice!!

Thanks to all of my read­ers who so gra­ciously fol­low along with my posts!  You inspire me every­day to make great posts!  Feel free to drop me a line and make com­ments!!  Many Adven­tures to You! ~Makenzie

I would be lying if I said that being a mom was what I wanted to be when I grew up. In fact it was the last thing on my mind. Our old­est son came into our life a total sur­prise when I was 24. At 18 years old, I walked out of church ser­mon when the pas­tor was insist­ing that a woman’s place was at home with her kids. No way, no how.…hell no!

It was 15 years later that I would even think about step­ping foot into a church again. Why? For my kids. Curi­ous isn’t it?

It is such an inter­est­ing evo­lu­tion that one’s life takes from being totally solo, to now fly­ing with lit­tle wing­men. I’m the mamma plane and they fol­low my every move. For the last 7 years, I have to admit, I was some­what annoyed that I couldn’t fly on my own, they were in my flight formation.

I really fought being a mother, every last ounce in me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love them, I loved them so much. What I hated is what I thought being a mom meant. I thought it meant I had to bake cook­ies, I had to be extra car­ing, I had to be atten­tive, I had to be “soft.” That wasn’t who I thought I was.

The fun­ni­est thing is that, when I decided to quit fight­ing moth­er­hood, I learned an inter­est­ing fact about myself: I don’t think I’m a typ­i­cal mom, and that’s okay–it’s really okay. And then, I found out that I really really like these lit­tle wing­men! In fact, I find that I learn more from them per­haps than they do from me for instance:

Life is Sim­ple and Not Complicated

Chil­dren do not see a rea­son to com­pli­cate life. They wake up…no…they bounce out of bed, hop-hop-hop down the hall to the kitchen table. They’re just happy to see the sun shin­ing and be awake! They don’t carry the bag­gage from yesterday’s events with them, they’re excited to see what today brings!
Rarely do they scour their closet for the per­fect out­fit, won­der­ing who they may need to impress today. Nope. They get dressed in what­ever clothes fit, and carry on about cre­at­ing fun!

Ques­tion Even the Basic Assumptions

My older son asked me one day: “Mom, why do peo­ple con­fuse their Left and Right, but they don’t con­fuse their Up and Down?” *Silence* Um…ummmm…hmmm… That’s a really good ques­tion son, I am not quite sure how to answer that. Up, down, left, right, all direc­tional, but maybe if our head was mounted in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, we wouldn’t be so con­fused about the left and right? I have no idea.

For­give­ness is Natural

Yes, we get frus­trated with our kids, and some­times irra­tionally so. We get tired, we get cranky, and then they have to screech at the top of their lungs the most annoy­ing sound in the world! Then here comes the evil mommy scream and yell.… Only to feel guilty about doing that 10 min­utes later. We go to apol­o­gize, and they eas­ily and read­ily accept the apol­ogy, it is nat­ural for them to for­give. Car­ry­ing grudges, hat­ing peo­ple and dis­dain is very for­eign to them.

There is Fun Around Every Corner

As I am writ­ing this post, my 5 year old has found my kitchen rolling pin, sit­ting on the office chair and play­ing “make the pizza” with his older brother. (Although hon­estly, I am wait­ing for one to hit the other over the head with the makeshift weapon!) Every wak­ing moment is fun and excit­ing. No won­der they love to pop out of bed! Where did we lose this fun and excite­ment as adults? Per­haps we don’t see the won­der and fun in everyday…everyday becomes a chore for us.

Since I became the Adven­tur­ous Mom, I have real­ized that I appre­ci­ate my chil­dren more than they could know. I strive to become more like them, more curi­ous, more for­giv­ing, liv­ing sim­pler, ques­tion­ing assump­tions, for­giv­ing quickly and hav­ing fun…every day!

What have your beau­ti­ful chil­dren taught you?