Back to Basics

I've been thinking a lot lately about this blog. I started this blog almost a year ago, and most of the focus has been on the learning activities I do with M&M, my almost 4 year old. At that time she was almost 3 and I felt the need to spend more time with her during the day on a one-on-one basis. Especially since I just had our second child a few months before, M&M was feeling a little left out and having a hard time adjusting to our new life with a baby. Doing these things with her have made awesome improvements in her development. She surprises me everyday with what she knows. Just in the past few weeks I have seen major changes in her behaviorally. Ever since she was a baby she would just scream....a lot! It has been difficult to know the best way to handle situations and what discipline would work best for her. She is a VERY stubborn child. While I would see other kids her age have a tantrum for a few minutes and get over it she is the one that would hang onto it for hours it seemed like. For three and a half years I've struggled with this and still do, but lately M&M is becoming more and more independent in a positive way. She is listening to what we ask her to do and doing it without tantrums. I've been surprised many times when I ask her to do something and then brace myself for the screaming. All I heard is "Ok, mommy." What?! That's it!? Wow!

It's funny because my baby, who is 14 months old now, used to be the "easy" child. Now him and M&M have almost done a role reversal. It's like they got together one day and made a pact where M&M told Bubba that she has been challenging enough for us, her parents, in her youngest years. She has taught us all we needed to learn in the past 4 years. Now it's his turn to challenge us in another way so that we can learn something else that will help us grow as parents. Now, he's the one screaming. And running away from us. M&M was always attached to us and she would stay near us at church, the park, whereever we went. Bubba just runs...far...away as fast as he can. Maybe what he's trying to teach us is that we need to get into shape so that we can run after him for the next 4 years!

With all of that said, my point is that I don't see the need for doing Tot School and Tot School posts on a weekly basis. This is not to say that I won't be doing learning activities with M&M, because I will, but I'm not going to really plan anything, but rather follow her lead in what she wants to do. She's really into writing and drawing anything right now. I will definitely be doing arts and crafts with her, and as it warms up we will be playing outside,  A LOT! I'll post about some of the things we do, but not all of them.

Back in April of last year I wrote this post. The last paragraph says, "My major in college was Home and Family Living. One of the main things that stood out to me in my classes was how to turn everyday, monotonous activities of taking care of the home and family into joyful experiences that we can treasure and remember forever. I want to take the activities of feeding, clothing, cleaning, etc. to the next level. I am at the point in my life where I am just starting to learn and begin to understand how to effectively run a home. This blog will follow me on my journey step-by-step as I try to better my own home through experimenting with new ideas from teaching my children to trying out new recipes."  

This is what I want to get back to. Writing short posts about things that I learn that have made my life easier or helped me learn something new in regards to my home. I will also be dabbling into my interests of sewing, crafts, blog design, photography and organization to name a few. I know, I am interested in way too many things! Along with this you will see that I will probably never do a giveaway or a review. Not that I don't like these things, but I started this blog solely to share and learn ideas., and to meet different people with these same interests. I'm also hoping that my sister/sisters will want to add some of the things that they know because they are much more crafty and organized than I am. ;) hint hint

I am in the process of creating my own blog background and header, but it's taking a while because I am learning everything new and having to read all of these tutorials to understand how to do anything. I'm really excited about learning this though! 

So if you made it through this, I hope you're as excited about these changes as I am!