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Working It in More Ways than One

2013-04-04 22.17.37 Tonight I had a new experience in multitasking and it was awesome. We had a busy evening because swimming doesn’t end for another week and soccer started up this week so we are in OVERLAP. Not my fave. We didn’t get home until after seven and we ate dinner and did the normal household managing stuff.

After the kids headed to bed, I had some stuff to do and I also wanted to get a workout in. The work I needed to do first was mostly reading … PDFs, white papers, and the like. So I decided to read and hit the treadmill at the same time. I pumped my running playlist and walked along at a nice clip at a good incline. I made notes using the voice recorder (it mutes my music while I blather) as I went along and whenever a particularly good song came on, I took a break to sprint.

It was definitely a good use of my time, but the mental clarity and creative energy I felt was off the charts. I always feel so mentally clear and effervescent during and after a run and this was even better because it was directed at my specific task.

I think I want a treadmill in my office. Wonder how badly I’d bother my coworkers.

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We Be Trippin’

disneyalaska

Sometime this summer we’re going to Alaska. Actually, we’re flying to Texas and then Vancouver and then we’re getting on a big boat and we’re going to Alaska. My inlaws have generously invited us on this adventure and everyone is looking forward to it. Big time. But it’s all that flying that gives me pause. We will be in transit to and from our boat for almost 12 hours on the front and back end of our trip and I’m sure it’s worth it, but all that flying makes me nervous because since we’re going to have transfers, I worry about the airlines losing our luggage. I always prefer to travel with just carry-on luggage if possible, but with the little ones, it hasn’t been possible for long time. But now that they are getting older, we’ve decided we’ll try it on this trip, so we made a rule: everyone gets one back pack and one rolling suitcase. Matt and I will also be carrying the kids’ booster seats (bases only – high-backs aren’t allowed for air travel).

rollingduffel

My mom knows my struggle against too many toys and too much junk around our house, so she is always on the lookout for good, useful things for the kids’ birthdays. So this time I pointed her to suitcases for the kids. They already have little weekender sized ones and Matt and i have full-sized carryon ones, but the kids don’t. After research, we decided on rolling duffels from LL Bean. They can squish easily and especially with the kids’ gear, that’s perfect. I also know they hold up well because their largest duffel has been safely shuttling our family’s ski-gear to and from the mountains for almost 6 years now. And it still looks awesome.

downjackets

These will travel well, but there is still the matter of space. We’ll be gone 10 days and in a wide variety of terrain. All the articles I’ve read on cruising in Alaska say the same thing – layers! It could be a problem because that can be a lot of clothes and can get bulky, but we have a few items in our wardrobes that are better than others. Matt and I both have great down jackets that we love to travel with because they’re very warm, but they’re also tiny! The kids, however, didn’t have these jackets and I didn’t really want to shell out $100/ea from Patagonia for them, especially when mine was $50 from Uniqlo, a Japanese sort of H&M that I’ve only ever seen in NYC. Though cheaper, it’s still very warm and has held up perfectly. I love the jacket and in fact, when I misplaced the original, I begged Ani to go get one for me since at the time they didn’t have an online shop. But now … they do! And I was able to get darling down jackets for my kiddos for the trip for only $25/ea. And they’re cute! And they’ll be here soon.

Now that I have two major hurdles out of the way, I’m turning my attention towards the rest of what goes in the suitcases and on our backs. More on that later.

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Allowance, etc. Update

allowanceupdate

Well it’s been a while since we started with the allowances and chores and it’s going well. My SIL said she had to read through the system twice and still was confused and it does seem confusing, I think, but in practice it’s really pretty simple. The key has been having the app to manage everything. If I had to do this with charts and actual money, I’d go mad. Still, there are tweaks we’ve had to make.

We started off by giving the kids an allowance (automatic) of 10 minutes of screen time but found that with the chores they do which earn them 5 min for each chore, they didn’t really need it. So I nixed that. The stars, which are their measure for good behavior, have been just right. They can earn up to 3/day. They’ve been a very effective tool for reminding the kids about “good choices,” “good manners” and “good attitude.” They’ve cashed them in (20 ea) for a trip to the swimming pool already and I’ve got a groupon to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature in the wings for the next family outing prize.

Tabby has been quite gung-ho about earning extra money, especially since she was required to contribute $10 for her hedgehog’s equipment (a drop in the bucket, let me tell you). She has vacuumed the couch and the main level and she’s done a ton of extra math, reading and writing work as well. And she’s been great about making her own lunch, though help is still required. I think I need to start teaching her some more chores, like mopping the floor and folding the laundry. It would pay off quickly! Ben is much less enthusiastic about earning money, but screen time is a great motivator for him, especially since he just found a new TV show to love, Phineas and Ferb.

It’s been interesting, too, watching them figure out how to work the system. I don’t care if they clean up their rooms on a daily basis. All I care about is if, at bedtime, their rooms are clean (playroom too). As long as they’re clean, they get their 5 min of screentime for this “chore” and it’s been a good motivator to keep things clean instead of cleaning them up when Mommy and Daddy say so. The whole point of this is for them to learn good routines and be responsible and hopefully that’s a good indication that it’s working.

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Digital Allowance

allowance (1)

 

Of course once we’d decided on the basics of all this allowance/chores/responsibilities stuff, we had to figure out how to track it all. We wanted flexibility and ease and though I love charts, they didn’t seem to quite cut it. I didn’t want to be printing out new charts every week and making changes to them constantly. And they hardly serve when we’re away from the house! But then I did what I always do. I went back to my nerd roots. There’s got to be an app for that.

I looked on both of my mobile devices and the best selection of apps by far was (unfortunately :P) for my iPhone. I downloaded over 10 and in the end, I had two serious contenders: iAllowance and Tykoon. Tykoon was nice because it’s backed by a cloud and has the ability to have kid accounts and parent accounts, meaning that I could set everything up on my parent account and then Tabby could see her balances and chores on her iPod without messing with my settings. But it really fell apart in customization. The accounts that are set up are stock. You can’t rename them. And it also seemed to focus too much on obtaining material things … your kids can “spot” things and take photos of them with their iPhones and there are spaces for wishlists. It is still in Beta and hopefully it will improve because it has pretty good potential. It also had the advantage that you could setup chores for both kids simultaneously. But in the end, iAllowance worked best for the way we want to manage things.

Above is the home screen. You can click on each child to see their current data or you can click the > on the right to do setup for each kid. And it shows their current totals. iAllowance has three currencies (perfect for us!): time, money and stars.

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Responsibility

bensetstable

One of my big goals for the new year was to get our family organized with chores, allowance, etc. Raising kids who understand the value of hard work and the We’ve been talking about this for a long time and going over the way we wanted to structure all of this. We want the kids to have allowance, but we debated over whether we should tie it to chores or not and ultimately decided not. We decided to have them do certain daily chores that they are expected to do just because they are a member of our family, things like unloading the dishwasher (silverware caddy and kids cups at this point), setting the table, keeping their rooms neat, hanging up their backpacks and the like. I didn’t like the idea though that there was no penalty if they didn’t do them, so we tied these to screen time. For each chore they complete, they get 5 min of screen time.

Then there was the matter of money. An article I read that was a proponent of not tying chores to allowance suggested the idea of making kids gradually more responsible for “fiscal chores” – things like buying their own popcorn at the movies or food for their pet or later things like car insurance and gas. I like this idea – I think it is a good introduction to the realities of how much things cost and how far money doesn’t go. So we decided we’d do $5 for Tabby. $1 each of that will go to savings and givings and the remaining $3 is hers to spend as she likes. But she is now responsible for buying her own hot lunch. Hot lunch at $2.50 is one of Tabby’s favorite treats and the $3 would cover it if she wanted it. But since hot lunch is also a treat for mommy and daddy, we decided that every time she made her own lunch she would earn $1.25 so that she can fairly easily earn a hot lunch by just making her lunch twice. We also added a couple of little chores for extra bank, things like vacuuming the main level of the house or the couch and tidying the bathroom that both she and Ben use. And we likewise incentivized doing pages in her math workbook and writing sentences by offering her a reward of $0.25 for every 2 pages she does – reading a book daily is just among her screentime chores. I would also like for her to start running again and I think a $1/mile incentive might be just what she needs.

Ben had to be handled a bit differently. At 3, he just can’t do what his sister can and he doesn’t have the same experiences or understanding. We also tied his chores to screentime and they are largely the same chores. He can’t quite make his bed yet, but he can pick up his room, lay out his clothes and do about 2/3 of what Tabby can do. But we set his allowance at $3. It isn’t coincidence that their allowances align with their age. We plan to up them each birthday, by a dollar at first and then as needed later on. Ben’s $3 is only divided into spending and giving. Saving and other long-term things seem to be still quite a bit beyond him, so he gets $2 to spend every week and $1 to give to others. Being only 3, we decided he wouldn’t get any “fiscal chores” just yet. He can also earn a little extra money by helping us with his lunch. Just $0.50 since we still have to be very involved.

Lastly we wanted there to be some kind of “good citizenship” accountability. Ben in particular has been having a hard time with some behavior – he had two major tantrums while we were in Vail and we’d like to discourage that as well as Tabby’s dramatic/whiny streak. In the end, we decided to grade them daily on the concepts of “good choices,” “good attitude,” and “good manners” and then reward them with things like an extra book at bedtime, a trip for frozen yogurt or a family outing. They also have to work together to agree on a reward, so that furthers the cooperation idea. A trip to time out automatically loses their “good choices” point for the day.

Sound complicated? A bit. So we needed a good way to administrate it. Luckily, there’s an app for that. See  my post tomorrow … and an update on how it’s going.

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To Do List

The vague future always seems like a good time to travel. The reality is that we’re always busy and no matter when I schedule a trip, I’m likely going to be manically trying to get everything done right up until we head out. I/We need to:

  • decorate the house for Halloween (Tabby is dying to do this)
  • register Tabby for another session of rock climbing
  • register Ben for something where he can run around a lot and burn off energy
  • make and package 20 bags of orange, pumpkin pie scented playdough
  • make and package 20 ghost-shaped rice krispie treats
  • load an MP3 player with Halloween music for “musical chairs”
  • return several books to the library
  • take a few phones to visit the Geniuses at the Apple Store
  • pack us up for our trip
  • pack up baby clothes to take to Nashville
  • take Loki to our friends’ house
  • figure out who/what to vote for
  • vote!
  • attend a few Halloween parties (4)
  • myriad work-related things such as taking a phone to the Apple Store, spending a whole day with our new web designers and before that getting all of my thoughts on the site into some coherent tangible form, turning in various reports on this and that, selling my soul to get a few extra iPhone 5 cables, etc.
  • pay bills, update budget and all that crap
  • clean up our house
  • buy Ben some new shoes
  • figure out an appropriately awesome b’day gift for my niece
  • get haircuts
  • make sure we have appropriate clothes for the family photo we’ll be taking on our trip
  • stop the mail
  • check in with the kids’ schools about absences
  • check in with our neighbors about minding the house
  • make a car rental reservation

Then we’ll need to buckle down and enjoy our vacation!

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What a Weekend

This weekend kind of reminded me of what weekends were like before the kids were born. We did a lot, though nothing real specific. We spent LOTS of time at home. We cooked. We cleaned. We ran a few errands.

Friday Tabby and I sent Ben off to preschool and went for a duathalon (she rode her bike and I ran). It was halting and slightly frustrating, but we got into a rhythm and had a nice time. Then we had a smoothie at our local coffee shop. We had a trip to Target, lunch and then we watched a movie. Before we knew it, Matt had arrived home from his trip (YAY!) and he picked Ben up on the way home from the airport.

Tabby and I had picked up the ingredients for some blueberries and cream cookies (we left out the white chocolate chips  – I forgot them and they aren’t a favorite anyhow) and the kids were eager to bake – with Daddy. Eventually Kelly joined us and we spent the rest of the evening watching movies and hanging out.

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Cooking Sucks?

This past week really tested my cooking mettle. Last week, I ran the dishwasher every single night, even the night we didn’t cook; even yesterday when we’d been gone most of the weekend. Seems we’ve been getting off easy with the kids in daycare. Without having to provide them with 2 of the 3 meals they require four days out of the week, my life has been a vacation. Well comparatively anyhow.

We made bigger batches of everything so we’d have enough leftovers to send with the kids to school. I prepped tons of fruit, dispatching a giant watermelon with my chef’s knife and paring pints of strawberries with my paring knife. I did a bunch of cucumbers too – the kids love those dipped in anything. I took the easy way out and bought the “baby carrots” though I am much more fond of carrot sticks. We went through a family-sized thing of hummus, just parceling it out for the kids’ lunches.

The whole thing was exhausting, even though I had Matt right by my side, marinating meat and hulling strawberries along with me. Still, I generally enjoy it and know that even if I don’t, it’s important. That’s why, I think, this article from Slate struck a real chord with me. The author postulates that we need to stop billing home-cooking as “fun” and start labeling it the chore that it is (much in the same way that we’re not supposed to “lie” to new moms and tell them that motherhood is wonderful when really it sucks the life out of you). A chore that though it can be drudgery is really really important and we should do it anyhow. I find myself, as usual, both agreeing and disagreeing with this. I love the message that it is important but I truly don’t think it has to be drudgery. Now I have a lot of friends who hate to cook and chock my predilection for it up to a personality quirk, but I don’t think I always enjoyed it as I do now. And as I thought about this, I came up with some ways to make it easier:

  1. Plan!! I cannot stress the importance of meal-planning enough. We plan for the week, shop once and have everything on hand to make our meals. This eliminates so much stress. And the rest of the packet of bacon you bought to use when making Clam Chowda can be served with your French Toast. Plus, when you plan ahead, you can use your slow cooker. That is mighty nice too.
  2. Build a repertoire of easy meals. I have a host of favorite dishes that we make all the time and we pepper in a new recipe or two almost every week to keep our interest piqued. There is no need to do a new recipe every week, but building a good repertoire of things you can make almost without thinking about is really key to ease in the kitchen.
  3. Learn to use a knife. I’m not suggesting you study at CIA, but learning how to quickly chop up an onion, mince garlic and dispatch a watermelon in good time is key for keeping things quick. I acquired my skills through lots of practice and a few You Tube videos.
  4. Cheat a bit. Though I stand by my stance on knife skills, if you have the $$ there are a number of things that can make your life easier: pre-chopped mushrooms, frozen turkey meatballs, rotisserie chicken, canned beans, frozen veggies.
  5. Don’t take no for an answer. We serve two things at our house: take it or leave it. It may not be a popular stance, but we do not cater to individual food preferences. The kids have to try everything on their plate and whatever we cook for dinner is what’s available until breakfast time the next morning. To compensate at least somewhat for this, they do get a say in the menu for the week. Ben
  6. Employ child labor. The kids are required to set the table (sometimes with hilarious results), get their own cups of water and clear their plates. Tabby is also now spraying down the table after most meals.
  7. Clean as you go. Food is a helluva lot easier to remove from dishes if it hasn’t had time to harden/oxidize, etc. for an hour or 10. First mission when I step into the kitchen is to make sure the dishwasher is empty. I load it as I cook and we wash the dishes immediately following dinner or breakfast.

I know I’m an annoying evangelist for home-cooking, but I’m OK with that. I hope this helps someone somewhere get a good meal on the table.

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Easy Reader EBooks

Tabby is getting to the point where she needs more to read than just sight words, but finding her books that are age appropriate and worth reading – let’s just say I’m not big on Fairy Princess Barbie books – is pretty darn hard. So when I saw Playdough to Plato’s great idea of making your own Easy Reader books, I knew I had to give it a go. I thought of going with the paper model, maybe putting it together in InDesign and printing it out, but then I thought that maybe I could make a Kindle Book! I’m techie, how hard could it be?? Turns out, happily, not very hard. Here’s how you do it.

A couple of notes: first of all, I did this on my Windows based PC. It looks like it would work for a Mac, but I don’t know and I don’t have a way to test. Also, from what I’ve read, the resulting file would work on a variety of eReaders, but since I only have a Kindle Fire, that’s all I’ve tested the file on. This is the method that worked for me and I’ve had no problems with it, but mileage may vary, etc. I am happy to have any feedback from you and I will try to help if I can!

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