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Stay At Home Check In #5

Goals - February 2021

February goals | RISING*SHINING
I'm finishing this post in the 5 a.m. hour because Maeve finally finally had a good night of sleep for the first time in weeks which left me rested enough to wake up this early. Sleep seems to go so up and down for Maeve so I'm not ready to declare a new pattern quite yet. But appreciating the good while we have it!

At our house we're heading into our first full month with both boys doing "homeschool" instead of online school. Within the first week of Dash returning to virtual school we made the decision to withdraw him. I hope to write a post to share a little more about that decision but in short the return of online school brought the return of daily power struggles and other challenging behavior. No amount of gentle encouragement or flexibility made a difference. After a parenting heart-to-heart with Chris we decided to withdraw him and we quickly noticed a change in behavior after school stopped. I feel so much peace about the decision. I'm not sure if I wrote about it here but we also withdrew Cedric last semester. To finish out the school year I would say we're doing loose homeschool which is to say not a lot of formal education. Our days look like lots of playing, lots of audiobooks, and maybe a sprinkling of math and writing. If I wasn't also caring for a baby I would have the bandwidth to oversee more structured homeschool but that's not the season we are in. So we'll make the best of it. Even without structured school we are confident the boys will do great moving up to first and third grade next year.

Sleep and school – those are the big factors in how life goes right now. Neither feels ideal currently but they are better than they've been so we can celebrate that. Small wins!

Big things happening in February:

+ My parents visit! Even more exciting is that while they are here they'll be getting the COVID vaccine (since they are temporary residents they can be vaccinated here).

+ Valentine's Day. Not a big celebration for us but we'll do something to make it special for the boys. We all need things to look forward to right now! Maybe homemade heart-shaped pizza and s'mores over the fire pit?

 

February goals:

+ Creative work time every weekend. I have so much that I want to be working on: keeping up the podcast, writing blog posts, working on my audio project for April, and working on additional writing that I want to do. I would love to be working 20ish hours a week on it all. It's hard not to be frustrated with how little work time I get but I remind myself that this is just a season. On the bright side, now that our backyard studio is complete (thank you, Chris!) it is a little easier to retreat for a few hours on the weekend. I'd like to spend 3 - 4 hours there each weekend and Chris is always happy to give me the time. I think what happens is that on the weekend it's such a relief to not be solo parenting I just want to hang out with Chris and the family. But really there's time for both.

+ Have music for my audio project created. I already know who can do this for me so I just need to reach out.

+ Identify content components for a podcast sponsor kit. This would be an online document shared with potential podcast sponsors giving an overview of our show, content, listeners, and available packages. Next steps after this would be to create content for our podcast and to have it designed/created.

+ Renew family library cards. Chris and the boys all have library cards but I think they are expired. If we renew them then we can add them to our Libby account and get additional audiobook holds and loans – the boys listen to so many audiobooks! (Last month a goal was to renew my Chandler public library card which I did only to find out they are not connected with Libby and their online materials don't include audiobooks so that was a bust.)

 

Recurring monthly goals:

+ One on one dates with each of the boys.

+ Three at-home dates with Chris. We've enjoyed a couple of evenings of watching Ted Lasso. This month the weather is perfect to sit by the fire pit. 

+ Exercise 4+ mornings/week with Peloton. Overall doing well on this. Last week Maeve slept terribly and I only exercised twice. But hopefully last night, and my resulting high energy, will be more typical.

 

Happy February, friends!

 

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