Less You Think All I Do Is Stitch

Nope! I clean too! This weekend we actually stayed home, yup for the whole weekend! Luke had his first flag football game, they lost. They are in an age group of 5-8, but they split into two divisions, 5-6 and 7-8. Luke is 8 1/2. Somehow they gave us a few really young kids, more like 6 I'd guess. But the team we played was all tall, thin, knew what they were doing kids! Some of our kids were more worried about waving at mom and sitting on the bench as soon as possible! Luke on the other hand, though this is his first year, is a die hard! I was really proud of him for not falling apart when our team lost! Good for him! Maybe we are making progress!

I read in a parenting book (How to Behave, so Your Children Will Too) to make a little graph to record the behaviors that you find distressing in your children. To only list a few, 3-4, and then for five days keep a tally mark of how often that behavior happens. Then do whatever you plan to improve it and keep track again, so you have a visual fact of if there was any improvement. Like the author said, if they do something 5 times a day and then two weeks later they are at 3 times a day.. even though you feel like nothing has changed, there really has been improvement.

So Fri, I listed four behaviors that we find quite distressing in our wonderful child Luke! So far, there's only been one tally mark per day?! Hmm.. I thought it was WAY worse than that! I think when the problems start, they are so huge and overwhelming that it seems like it happens all the time, and in reality maybe it doesn't happen that often! It was over a weekend, so I'm interested to see how the week goes.

I haven't finished the book, but so far it's a good read!

So we painted Luke's room, set it all up nicely, organized toys and closets, etc! Then I went to Andrew's room (11)... oh my heavens, he is a junk hoard!! So it's all cleaned up, after about 3 hrs! I'm telling you.. it wasn't dirty, it was just cluttered horribly! I still need to do a few more things in there... so it can get back to the point where he can handle the upkeep himself!

We painted Luke's room RED and Starcommander BLUE! :) He loves it.. it's very wild! But the red, for some reason, was very thin paint! I wonder if all red is like that? We used a really quality paint, but even after three coats, and the entire gallon on two walls...I think we're gonna have to do another layer. Luke's overhead light had a few bulbs burned out when we were painting, so after we were all finished, DH replaced the bulbs! Oh my word.. the paint looks much brighter! I'm gonna have to get some dimmer bulbs! haha

I did stitch a little bit. It's the pattern "What Happens at Grandma's" by Waxing Moon. I'm stitching it for my mil for Christmas, so changed it to Mamaw. She'll love it! I need to get some buttons to go on it too! I am working on the door of the house, besides that all the stitching is done, well I think I have some backstitching on the windows!

So I need to take a picture of that.. did I ever post a picture of the finished Spring Bellpull? I can't remember.. I'll have to do that too!

It's only 10:30 and I've already sent two kids to school, went grocery shopping at two stores, put them away, called my grandma to say hi, started two loads of laundry! See...so productive I am! :) Now I'm going to restraighten the boys' rooms, fold some laundry, clean some bathrooms, and hopefully finish up the pattern for my MIL before I have to get my oldest from school! :)

Have a good day!