It’s that time already. I know many of you have already sent kids back to school but we don’t go back till after Labor Day, which is fortunate for us since our elementary school still doesn’t have central air conditioning. I know, can you believe that? The Southerner in me can’t wrap my mind around it, but them’s the facts.
So!
This morning I took my 6-year-old with me to the mall to do some good old-fashioned back-to-school shopping. We’ve never made a big deal out of back-to-school shopping; I usually just shop as I am out and about. But I thought it would be fun to have a girls’ day out with my middle child, so we left the other two home with their daddy and we set off.
When we got to the mall, we made a beeline for Gap Kids, and my daughter instantly honed in on an adorable embroidered jeans skirt and a precious pointelle wrap sweater. I love that we still have the same taste in clothes; I know that won’t last forever. Still, I told her that we should check the sale racks first. So we headed to the back, while she tried to convince me she needed this and this and this. As it turned out, there wasn’t much on the sale racks, so we went back to the front of the store and selected some pieces to try on.
While we shopped, I discussed making choices. There was so much that she loved (and I did too) but I decided that it was high time to start teaching her about the value of money while we were shopping. I explained that we should set a limit and then select our favorite items. When we got to the limit, we’d have to put the rest back.
Well. It’s almost cruel to ask that little girl to make a choice. She belabors every decision like it’s her last. Poor child, she got her indecisiveness from me, I suppose. We finally left the Gap with a new fall school dress, a pair of jeans, THE jean skirt, two tank tops, and two sweaters. And a couple pair of jeans for my son and a fall dress for my younger daughter. I had a 25% off coupon, what can I say?
For every one thing we bought, there was something we put back, and when we got to the cash register, we had a whole other conversation about being practical and buying things we need, as oppose to things we want (like bracelets and lip gloss and hair bands and… Moms, you know how it goes.)
I think it was a worthwhile shopping trip — a little mother-daughter time, a little financial education, and an Auntie Anne’s pretzel to seal the deal. What more can you ask out of a Saturday?
This post is part of the Back-to-School blog tour with Parent Bloggers Network and Capital One. For more information on talking to kids about money, a national consumer advocacy group, Consumer Action, sponsors the Moneywi$e eLearning tool, which includes a section all about talking to kids about money. Plus, check out @TeachingMoney on Twitter to get bite-sized family-focused financial tips.
1. I accidentally wrote Blissdom Thus Fart in my title. That made me giggle. I clearly have the sense of humor of a 14-year-old boy.
2. Meeting people face-to-face that I’ve only known online is surreal, enlightening, and strangely natural. I’ve hugged more necks than I can count, but that won’t stop me from trying — Sarah, Shannon, Melanie, Jenny and Emily, Robin, Jill, Marcy, Jordana, Moriah, Kristen, Steph, Arianne, Lori, Beth, Alli, Meredith, Amy, Malia, LisaB, Stephanie, Kimba, Emily, the Nester, and Dawn. And I’m sure I missed someone, so I apologize in advance. **UPDATE — I don’t know HOW I could forget Amanda, one of my longest bloggy friends!!! LOVE her.
I’d love to list the names of the hands I’ve shaken, but I don’t dare even attempt that. Suffice it to say, I have met so many extraordinary, smart, creative women. I’m truly in awe.
3. I’m thoroughly impressed with Barbara Jones of One2One Network and Rebecca Weeks Watson of Real Girls Media.
4. Having my own laptop at a conference like this is invaluable. THANKS, HON!!!!!!
5. Hearing my husband’s voice over the phone this morning, and his interest and support in what I’m doing this weekend is an incredible blessing.
6. I am thrilled to hear from corporations who are interested in collaborating with bloggers and are doing it in a thoughtful, respectful, and creative way.
7. I’m tweeting what I’m learning in the sessions. You can follow me on Twitter at @dcrmom.
8. A half-hour in the silence of my hotel room with room service for lunch is heavenly. But I can’t wait to get back downstairs and mingle some more.
9. Maria Bailey wasn’t here, but her book, Mom 3.0, is the perfect post-Blissdom reading material. I brought it with me to read in the plane, and it’s all about marketing with moms with new technology. It’s a must-read. She was also generous enough to sponsor my trip so I could be here. So I owe her a HUGE thank you!!
There is so much more I could say, but I need to take a break and eat my lunch. Tune into Twitter for more updates this afternoon!
It’s generally assumed that moms give, give, give until we lose our sense of self. Everywhere you look you see moms advised to take time out for ourselves and encouraged to maintain a balance between our families’ needs and our own. I wouldn’t be entirely genuine if I didn’t confess that making time for myself has never really been a challenge for me. My bigger issue is putting aside my agenda to tend to the needs of my family. It’s so easy for me to get caught up in blogging and designing and emailing and twittering that my One-More-Things turn into 5 and my Just-A-Minutes turn into 20. So while me-time is certainly important, and blogging and designing and emailing and twittering don’t really qualify as me-time, I usually feel more convicted to increase quality time with my family than with myself.
There are various ways moms make time for themselves. Some women like to slip away to a quiet coffee shop and regroup while perusing magazines or surfing the internet. Some make time to go to the movie with their girlfriends. Some like to work out at the gym. (I do not get that one AT ALL.) Some have hobbies like scrapbooking or photography or reading.
I shop.
Yes, ma’am, I have to say that there is nothing in the whole wide world quite like getting in the car ALONE and driving in complete and utter silence to the happiest place on earth — the mall, of course! Actually, at this point in my life, I have to say that going ANYWHERE alone is a treat. I’m not choosy. The mall, the spa, the grocery store, the dentist — ALONE is the operative word here.
Funny thing, I never understood when moms would talk wistfully about the magic of being alone. I’m a social person. I don’t consider myself a loner. I’m certainly not an introvert. I never craved alone time until I became a mom of 3. When child #3 came along, I developed a sudden and deep appreciation for solitude — if you count meandering amidst a throng of shoppers solitude. See, I have a very low tolerance for noise. I also have a low tolerance for chaos. And clutter. And frankly, I have a low tolerance for interruptions when I am trying to accomplish something on my to-do list. Finally, I have a low tolerance for neediness. If you’ve ever wondered why we stopped at 3 kids — there you go.
So every once in a while, I will say to my husband on a Saturday morning, “Do you mind if I go to the mall?” And he always cringes and tries to make up eleventy-two excuses why today would not be a good day for a shopping expedition. But usually he will acquiesce because he has come to understand, over the past several years, my deep need to GET. AWAY. And the mall is simply my favorite place to get away to.
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A while back I wrote a post about my goals for 2009. I refuse to call them resolutions because I have never known anyone to keep a New Years Resolution past January 15 and I didn’t want to jinx myself. But those are some ongoing goals in my life that I am making a renewed effort to implement with the fresh start of a new year.
There is something about writing down your goals, especially on the World Wide Web, that helps keep them in the forefront of your mind. I have had moments over the past few weeks when I have recalled that list and said “yes” to my kids when I wanted to say “no,” times when I looked up from my work and smiled and took the time to really listen instead of shooing them away, times that I’ve wanted to say “Just a minute!” but instead hopped up and did what was being requested of me, putting their agenda ahead of my own. I KNOW. What a concept.
Of course there have been plenty of times when I’ve said no, frowned, yelled, ignored, shooed away, and procrastinated — more than I’d like to admit. And the manage time more responsibly part, well, um…
But that list has definitely served as a helpful reminder. This blog is sort of like my cyber-conscience.
There is one area of my life, however, that I’ve been sorely neglecting and was definitely not present in my list of goals. This week PBN asks us to share how you and your family help others, or how you plan to add that to your list for 2009.
I have to admit, helping others has not been at the top of my list of priorities. I feel like I’m barely staying afloat trying to keep up with everything I have going on under my own roof. And while that should be my first priority, I KNOW that it is not enough. In fact, several times I’ve had great intentions to do make a meal for a family at church or send a care package to a neighbor who is serving in the armed forces overseas (and who is probably reading my blog right now!) but I just haven’t stepped outside of my own little self-absorbed world long enough to do it. There are church outreach opportunities that I have squandered because “I’m just too busy right now.”
So I’m taking advantage of the PBN Blog Blast and my cyber-conscience, and I’m going to start brainstorming ideas for our family to help others. First I’m going to refer to that list of goodies Kim sent me weeks ago and get a box in the mail to Iraq. See, now I said it here so I HAVE to follow through. No more procrastinating. My son even wrote a note to include, but it’s probably long gone now. That’s just how lame I am.
Something we DO as a family is support a child through Compassion. This is an AWESOME opportunity to pay it forward or give back or whatever the latest catch phrase is. We exchange letters with our Compassion child on a regular basis, and my son corresponds with him, so that is a neat way for him to get a glimpse of a world other than his own. And for just $32 a month, we are making a difference in one life. I really would like to add another Compassion child to our family; that’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Perhaps now is the time to do it.
So how about you? What do you and your family do to help others and give a little bit back? I’d love some fresh ideas, especially for getting our kids involved.
This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by The Quaker Oats Company.
PBN has teamed up with The Quaker Oats Company to spread the word about the Start with Substance campaign to donate up to one million bowls of oatmeal to those in need. From January 12 through February 28, for every UPC from a Quaker Oatmeal hot cereal product families enter at www.startwithsubstance.com, Quaker will donate one bowl of oatmeal to Share Our Strength, a childhood hunger organization. You’ll need to be a Facebook member to participate.
PBN and the new SC Johnson website, Right@Home, have teamed up for a blog blast about how you clean up after the holidays, and they want to know how you get back in the swing of things.
After two full weeks of sleeping late, a laid-back posting schedule, wondering what day of the week it is, and having three kids underfoot 24/7, I was relieved to get back into the swing of things this week. Finally Friday feels like Friday (instead of last week when EVERY day felt like Friday) and I’m actually dreading the weekend a little bit.
We’re pretty much packed up and put away, with the notable exception of the dead greenery on the outside of the house. My husband is ruthless about putting away Christmas by New Years Day, so I grudgingly went along with it when he drug all the boxes down from the attic and hauled the Christmas tree to the curb on January 1st — the latest we’ve de-Christmassed in years. Usually it’s closer to December 26th, which may seem intense, but then again, we usually decorate for the holidays on Thanksgiving weekend, so by Christmas Day our live tree is merely a skeleton of its former glory.
I don’t have any great tips for getting the house put back together in a timely manner except for the old Nike ad slogan — Just Do It. When my husband brought those boxes down, I wanted to crawl under my desk and hide until it was all over. I was so NOT in the mood for the task at hand. But my husband insisted that once we got started, it would feel so good to get rid of all the Christmas clutter. So we trudged along, and by the end of the day, I was glad we had persevered. There is nothing quite as satisfying as a home recently cleared of its holiday trimmings. It always feels so empty and clean.
Unfortunately the bitter cold has prevented us from spending the time necessary to de-Christmas the exterior of our home, and since I don’t have to stare at the dying greenery (which is now more brown than green) unless I actually emerge from my cozy haven, which I try to avoid at all costs, there it remains — a grim reminder to every passerby that the festivity of the holidays is behind us and all we have to look forward to is the dreary, frigid, lifeless part of winter. As diligent as we are to rid the inside of the house of any reminder of Christmas past, we are equally as negligent to do the same for the outside. My goal at this point is to take it down by Easter.
How do you get back into the swing of the things after the holidays?
Lately my life has felt like a 3-ring circus. With the kids getting older and going in all different directions and the holidays approaching and the commitment I’ve made to our church’s ladies’ Bible study and my design business and my li’l blogging hobby turning into more of a job (which I LOVE, but man is it kicking my butt!), I’m going in so many different directions that nothing is getting done WELL.
I may be delusional, but I’m operating under the assumption that things will slow down after the holidays. With our three kids’ birthdays and the major holidays out of the way, surely things will settle down, right? If not, something drastic will have to be done. I’m prepared to make some changes to the way I operate and perhaps even cut out some of my commitments. One thing I know is that my home and family must come first, and if I can’t keep all my balls in the air, then I’ll have to set one down for the time being.
The first thing I plan to do is to start making better use of my calendar. I need to put some batch processing into effect. Instead of flitting from one thing to the next, I need to concentrate on one type of activity, bang out a bunch, and then go to the next. I think I will assign certain days of the week to certain tasks. I think I can create more time if I organize my duties better. If all else fails, I’ll cut something out, but I hope it doesn’t come to that. I love everything I’m doing. I just need a few more hours in the day to get it all done, that’s all. Do I hear an amen?
For their final blog blast of 2008, Parent Blogger Network has teamed up with BigTent — an online community with nearly 1,000 parent-led groups including the Silicon Valley Moms, for whom I write at the Philadelphia Moms Blog. I can attest that the Big Tent is an awesome FREE platform for keeping people connected, and the subgroups are great for bigger groups (such as the SV Moms) who want to organize emails so that they only go to the people who need to see them, thereby reducing the clutter in your inbox!
And right now BigTent is partnering with Compass Life and Business Designs CEO and founder, Kimberly Fulcher, to offer a special “Get your act together for 2009″ promo. For any group leaders who start a group on or move to BigTent by December 31, Compass will provide a free one month membership ($19 value) to Compass Coaching Network, and all new group leaders will be entered in a grand prize drawing for a “Life Makeover” private coaching series ($1500 value). Groups must be of at least ten members. How cool is that? I could so totally use a private life coach, couldn’t you?
Do you have any great plans to get your life in order for the new year? I’m not one to make New Years Resolutions, but I always look forward to the new year as a time for starting over and getting organized. Here’s hoping I can get this circus act up and running like a well-oiled machine.
