walking the dogs

2-5-13

No yelling is working.

I gotta say, it is truly making a difference. Even though I have still punished them on things, they seem quicker to respond when I ask them to do something. They seem to appreciate the fact that I don’t scream instructions. Plus, I have curbed my habit of asking them to do something more than once in the span of a minute. I get pretty impatient, especially when they dink like champions. But I am trying to step back for a second and let them be kids. It is nice to be in this place.

I went to go pick up the boys and I kept on the dress I had on. It wasn’t fancy. In fact, it is just this little cotton flower dress that I kicked up a notch with my red boots. Bobby’s whole class was oohing and awing over me, which I found adorable. I didn’t think I was dressy, but it is nice to hear a bunch of little kids tell me I was pretty.

We managed to do the new nightly activity of a walk with the dogs. It isn’t a long walk. We are just going up and around the school. I just think some kind of outside exercise will be good for the whole family. Dax walked Luna, and the two of them were perfect together in their energy level. They ran ahead and Luna was great in listening to Dax’s commands. Bobby walked Lycos, and they were in a good groove the whole time as well. I am hoping to do this every night after dinner so that we are spending less time in front of the tube. Mind you, the boys don’t watch much in the evenings. Maybe 90 minutes if we are on time. That being said, I would like to cut it down a smidge, and I like the family time.

I am sleepy today. Poor Ken is in pain. His arm is still giving him problems. The diagnosis of tennis elbow is not what he has. He can’t get comfortable, he can’t get sleep, and he tossed and turned all night last night. He even was all over the bed, which he doesn’t tend to do. It kept me up more than normal, which has left me a little more tired than normal.

I managed to not only clean the playroom, I even got it scrubbed and vacuumed! Ken had beaten me to the punch on working on the living room and had already begun laundry, so the playroom was the next logical choice while waiting for the boys to complete their homework. I started off which just putting their weapons away. Then I picked up some other small things. Next thing you know, I am in full organize mode and in the process found an empty crate that is now housing their extra swords and I put away some other books I found. I also de-cluttered their desks which had started to accumulate distractions that were making the homework slow going.

In that activity, it brought me to their bedroom a couple of times. I did a quick Mary Poppins on that as well and got it looking decent again. Most of the time, my main objective is to just be able to walk barefoot through that room and the playroom without impaling myself with some soldier or god forbid, Lego brick. Thankfully it wasn’t in too much disarray and I was able to make it look even better than tolerable.

I scanned about 85 pictures yesterday. I found some good ones of Grammie for the party. I also scanned some wonderful old shots of other family which I am happy to have. I had intended on scanning all of them, but a lot of them don’t seem like ones I need in general. Of course, how many photos do you “need”? I am also going under the assumption that when Grammie dies, I have most of the family convinced I think that all photos should go to me. This will make for some giant boxes in my house some day.