Trying For A Routine!

At the end of February the kids and I spent 9 days in Connecticut with my in-laws.  I am not ashamed to admit that my kids are hooked on electronics.  They're probably more connected than I am and I'm on a lot.  While in Connecticut I made it a mission to cut back on the gadgets -- tv, iPad, kindle, you name it.  It was tough, but I think I did an okay job.  As a matter of fact, the first time Samantha's iPad ran out of battery, I "forgot" about it and didn't charge it for 3-4 days.  There were tears and there was fighting but she (and I) survived!!  Less use of electronics also helped us to get into a routine.  Routine is something that I'm not very good at as I am more of a go with the flow kind of person, but since we've been home, I've kind of enjoyed knowing I have something to do every day.

One of my mother-in-law's big things is one load of laundry every day.  The first thing she does every morning is turn on her washing machine and get a load in.  At first, I thought this was nuts because I'd only be washing one outfit per person, but after missing one day of doing my wash, I quickly realized how fast it adds up.  Doing wash every day has been super easy once we got home, mostly because Zach has wet the bed for 3 of those nights lol!  Even if it hasn't always been clothes I have definitely kept up with doing one load of laundry per day, sometimes even more.  Now if I could just keep up with folding it.  ;-)

Another suggestion she had was to play a clean up song every hour so the kids can clean up their toys.  She uses a song from Fly Lady while we had always sung the song from Barney.  The kids don't seem to have a preference to either song, we just make sure to play or sing something every time we are cleaning up.  Samantha and Eliza have been very into this though it has been harder to get Zach on board.  I'm hoping eventually they'll just get in the habit of cleaning up after themselves once they're finished playing with something but my mother-in-law is not optimistic.  Looking back, she's probably right because I remember our basement constantly being in a state of natural disaster because my brother and I not cleaning and my mom being adamant that we clean up whatever we were playing with before we took out something new.  I must have been 10 years old and still not cleaning up after myself!!

Now here's the part that is still tough...keeping the electronics away.  We wake up and eat breakfast, I have my laundry going...what next?  With 3 kids very close in age and still young enough to be wanting attention pretty much 24/7, it's easy to fall back on the tv or iPad to keep them entertained.  Now I know this is an electronic but I have found our Amazon Echo (aff.) to be amazing.  This is a bluetooth speaker that can interact with you.  Samantha loves to ask Alexa to tell jokes and tell us about the weather for the day.  I like that Alexa is connected to our music and the entire Amazon Prime Library.  Now rather than having the tv going all day for some background noise we listen to fun music and sing and dance together.  Our current favorite is the Chicken Dance and I'll Tell Me Ma for some Irish step dancing.

We have also been filling up time with reading and coloring.  All 3 kids are signed up for the reading program at our local library and love getting to color in acorns for each book they've read.  We will have even more reading to do once we can sign up for the summer programs and start on the kindergarten reading list.  So much to do and so little time!  I love coloring and it's so easy to pull up blank coloring pages from google and print whatever each child wants.

Now I just need to figure out how to work in some school work for the kids and we will be golden.  It has been so nice not having things going all day long and feeling like I've accomplished something during the day.  Thankfully as the weather gets warmer it will be easier to keep those gadgets turned off and be up and outside playing!