Since July is quickly slipping by, I got out my big summer checklist today to see how much I have accomplished. If I were grading myself, I'd get a B. I'm doing okay.
One thing I would get an A+ on is my goal to learn more about potty training and make a plan (or not) for potty training Amelia. When I made the list she was showing some interest in the potty so I wanted to see what the experts had to say about the matter, as well as people who often know more than experts, parents with kids older than Amelia. Based on what I learned, Amelia was showing many signs of potty training readiness: interest in the potty, ability to communicate reasonably well, ability to tell me when she was going to the bathroom, that sort of thing. There were some she wasn't showing, though, especially the desire to have her diaper changed when it was dirty. Still, because she was interested and having so many "naken minutes," we spent a lot of time siting on the potty and talking about what it was for. Pretty soon after we started, she peed in the potty. We worked on it a few days, and I sent out a call for parent advice on Facebook. After reading the responses, I decided to take my time on the potty issue. I have heard from a LOT of people how their kids trained early, then backtracked later. After reading the books, it seems like some backtracking is common for most kids, so common it is probably just part of the process. But since A was only 20 months and because I did not want to spend our entire summer in the bathroom, for the last couple of weeks I have just been encouraging A to sit on the potty when we are home and she is running around naked (which is pretty much most of the time we are at home).
It clicked for her, mostly--when she needed to pee, she would run to the bathroom, sit down, pee, and say, "Yay!" She loves the process of the whole thing, especially picking up the potty, pouring the pee in the big toilet, flushing, closing the lid, and rinsing the little potty. She also loves to stand on the little potty (lid closed) and use it as a stool to wash her hands. There was still a good deal of pee on the floor from when she would run in the bathroom without me realizing it, then bring the potty to me to see, but overall, smooth going. I was proud and happy but mostly trying not to push things and go with the flow, no pun intended.
Poop was a different story. When she needed to poop, she would ask for a diaper, then go hide behind a chair or something to squat and do her thing. Until--today! The last couple of days, Amelia has been telling me "poop in there" every time she poops, and being pretty agreeable when I try to change it right away. I could tell it was beginning to make her uncomfortable. So this morning while I was changing her diaper, I told her that just like she was been peeing in the potty, she could poop in the potty too. And after lunch today (during a naken minute, of course) she did! She was proud. Yays abounded. Exciting times! We'll see what happens next.
The potty training plan is the only section of my list with everything checked off. The "running" section has the least, but I revised my plan and got back on track this morning. I really want to do something to battle the leftover baby belly, which actually has gotten bigger since immediately post-baby. I am the last person the world to count calories or not eat the chocolate cake I want, so running seems to be my only option. Plus I read this NYT article in March.
Yoga-wise, I have mostly settled into a two-day-a-week pattern. Although I would love more, I feel good with twice a week. I have devoted more time to reading, although I need to find a good time to consistently read the news, but I have not worked at all on my two seeds for writing projects. In the next two weeks, I am going to see how much I can check off. I don't think I'll get it all done, but I might get close!
Showing posts with label June. Show all posts
Showing posts with label June. Show all posts
Monday, July 11, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
June and a Half
A dear college friend of mine, Erin Wunker, wrote an excellent post about reaching and setting goals yesterday on Hook & Eye. Although her post is targeted toward academic professionals, her words hit home to me too. Summer doesn't mean the same things to a stay-at-home-mom/writer/former-future teacher as it does to a current academic professional, but there are similarities. Both situations lack immediate pressure to actually accomplish anything, as well as immediate consequences for not accomplishing anything. Hey--you could even say SAHMs are on summer break year-round--although I doubt most of my SAHM friends would describe it that way. In any case, summer doesn't promise the juicy break it did when I was teaching, but since I finished my manuscript and sent it off I have felt as though I am on (a well-deserved) vacation from writing poetry for awhile. But as I posted at the beginning of June, there are things I want to do this summer.
I decided to follow Erin's advice to take the next step from posting about my goals and plans for the rest of the summer and actually write them down. All of them.
The list isn't terribly legible but I defined "summer" as today until the end of July. I included things I want to do between now and then under different headings: Amelia (learn about potty training); Writing (find books and brainstorm ideas for two writing projects I have been daydreaming about); Blog; Home; and Health. My favorite thing about the list is that it actually includes boxes to check. I think the idea of tracking progress for summer goals, or any goals that lack much outside pressure for completion, is a fabulous idea. It's easy to do but (hopefully) incredibly effective.
Although I just made the list today, my June plans have been progressing pretty well. I have been running and going to yoga about 2 times a week so I would like to up that a bit. I have posted every day of June except one. I have been reading a couple of times a week, not as much as I wanted but more than I was reading before. And I have not been cleaning! Much. The house is messier but not that bad. I am pleased with my June so far, and glad to have found an idea to help me get more specific with my goals for the rest of the summer.
I decided to follow Erin's advice to take the next step from posting about my goals and plans for the rest of the summer and actually write them down. All of them.
The list isn't terribly legible but I defined "summer" as today until the end of July. I included things I want to do between now and then under different headings: Amelia (learn about potty training); Writing (find books and brainstorm ideas for two writing projects I have been daydreaming about); Blog; Home; and Health. My favorite thing about the list is that it actually includes boxes to check. I think the idea of tracking progress for summer goals, or any goals that lack much outside pressure for completion, is a fabulous idea. It's easy to do but (hopefully) incredibly effective.
Although I just made the list today, my June plans have been progressing pretty well. I have been running and going to yoga about 2 times a week so I would like to up that a bit. I have posted every day of June except one. I have been reading a couple of times a week, not as much as I wanted but more than I was reading before. And I have not been cleaning! Much. The house is messier but not that bad. I am pleased with my June so far, and glad to have found an idea to help me get more specific with my goals for the rest of the summer.
Monday, May 30, 2011
June
On New Year's Day, I took a yoga/art workshop dedicated to setting intentions for the new year. After a yoga flow session, students made collages that depicted goals or hopes for 2011.
Each participant was given a square of poster paper. There were plenty of magazines, markers, crayons, pastels, glue, glitter, feathers, old calendars, postcards, and who knows what else to go around. The room had the feel of an elementary school art classroom, happy with chatter and creation. I, however, had a hard time getting started.
For one thing, I went through a collage phase in college (ha! no near pun intended) and I wasn't in the mood to cut and paste. I had, though, come to the workshop with some vague intentions in mind, as well as a deep belief in the power of setting intentions. In 2009, I went to a similar New Year's Day workshop in DC. In that one, we wrote letters to ourselves, to be mailed to us by the instructor in 6 months, that described our lives 6 months later. The idea was to describe in present tense the life that you wanted to be living 6 months later. That year, Dean and I had just decided to have a baby and I was sending off poems to journals, but so far had only received rejections. In my letter to myself, I was pregnant and holding the journal that held my first published poem. When I found the letter in my mailbox in late June, I was 5 months pregnant. The journal that contained my first published poem was on my bookshelf, within easy reach.
Because of one of 2009's attained set intentions--guess which one--I couldn't make it to a New Year's Day workshop in 2010. But I did in 2011, and I knew I wanted a year of change. First and foremost, I wanted more sleep. I wanted more time for yoga, more time for writing, and more time for myself in general. I knew I was going to wean sometime in 2011, and I knew I was going to think about looking for work in the fall. In general, I was hoping that 2011 would be a year of finding footing in the world of motherhood, of making room in my life for the things that had defined me before Amelia came along and became the center of my universe.
In the weeks before the 2011 workshop, I had been writing a prose poem about Amelia's birth. Some lines from the poem were floating through my head. I decided to write/rewrite the poem on my poster paper. First I cut into into a more oval shape. Think O'Keefe flowers--I was writing about birth here. And then I wrote the poem in the same oval shape. On top of it all, I wrote the a word in large block letters. I colored in some of the letters and pasted paper over others. The word was EVOLVE.
June is a rich month, sun and flowers and early summer harvest. It is the month I was married. It is the sixth month of the year, a halfway point, the perfect time to pause and consider or reconsider intentions for the year.
My plan for June is to write one blog post a day. I don't have any particular theme in mind for the posts--I won't always be writing about setting intentions, although this did seem like a good place to start--it's just that I have finished up some fairly major projects in May, not least of which was finishing my poetry manuscript and sending it off to several contests, and I would like to get back to the blog for awhile.
I have some other goals in mind too. In June, I want to
1. Drink more water. I realized I go through the day feeling thirsty a lot. (A note to Mom: I don't think it's diabetes.) I think I'm just thirsty. Denver is dry and I am busy.
2. Read more. My plan for Amelia's naptimes in June are to write on the blog and then read. I want to read both poetry and fiction. I started a Goodreads account a couple of years ago I would like to get back to too.
3. And with #2 in mind, I am setting a cleaning limit for myself in June. I have been feeling like I fritter away too much time straightening the house. It becomes a creative block, almost, a way for me to avoid sitting down to write. So in June, I am allowed to straighten up after breakfast and to do whatever chores seem most urgent for 10 minutes, and only 10 minutes, after Amelia goes down for her nap. I am going to set the timer. If Amelia happens to be entertaining herself throughout the day, I can do small things then too, but that's pretty hit or miss.
And forth, I would like to exercise more. I have been going to yoga much more often and even running, although that's more sporadic. In June I am going to try to do one or the other every day.
It will be interesting to see how this goes, since I often don't feel like writing until everything is neat. And the truth is I really hate running. On top of all that, we are spending most of June 1st on a plane. So we'll see.
In the manuscript class I just finished, the instructor talked a lot about closure, about the importance of finishing a project, even if it wasn't as perfect as you'd hoped. The great thing about letting something go, he said, is that you get to see what you're going to do next. The month of May was for me a definite time of closure--I sent the manuscript off, I weaned Amelia--so I feel that this summer is a kind of beginning. All this reminds of some lines from a poem by T.S. Eliot:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
Beginning or end, I am excited to see what happens next.
Each participant was given a square of poster paper. There were plenty of magazines, markers, crayons, pastels, glue, glitter, feathers, old calendars, postcards, and who knows what else to go around. The room had the feel of an elementary school art classroom, happy with chatter and creation. I, however, had a hard time getting started.
For one thing, I went through a collage phase in college (ha! no near pun intended) and I wasn't in the mood to cut and paste. I had, though, come to the workshop with some vague intentions in mind, as well as a deep belief in the power of setting intentions. In 2009, I went to a similar New Year's Day workshop in DC. In that one, we wrote letters to ourselves, to be mailed to us by the instructor in 6 months, that described our lives 6 months later. The idea was to describe in present tense the life that you wanted to be living 6 months later. That year, Dean and I had just decided to have a baby and I was sending off poems to journals, but so far had only received rejections. In my letter to myself, I was pregnant and holding the journal that held my first published poem. When I found the letter in my mailbox in late June, I was 5 months pregnant. The journal that contained my first published poem was on my bookshelf, within easy reach.
Because of one of 2009's attained set intentions--guess which one--I couldn't make it to a New Year's Day workshop in 2010. But I did in 2011, and I knew I wanted a year of change. First and foremost, I wanted more sleep. I wanted more time for yoga, more time for writing, and more time for myself in general. I knew I was going to wean sometime in 2011, and I knew I was going to think about looking for work in the fall. In general, I was hoping that 2011 would be a year of finding footing in the world of motherhood, of making room in my life for the things that had defined me before Amelia came along and became the center of my universe.
In the weeks before the 2011 workshop, I had been writing a prose poem about Amelia's birth. Some lines from the poem were floating through my head. I decided to write/rewrite the poem on my poster paper. First I cut into into a more oval shape. Think O'Keefe flowers--I was writing about birth here. And then I wrote the poem in the same oval shape. On top of it all, I wrote the a word in large block letters. I colored in some of the letters and pasted paper over others. The word was EVOLVE.
June is a rich month, sun and flowers and early summer harvest. It is the month I was married. It is the sixth month of the year, a halfway point, the perfect time to pause and consider or reconsider intentions for the year.
My plan for June is to write one blog post a day. I don't have any particular theme in mind for the posts--I won't always be writing about setting intentions, although this did seem like a good place to start--it's just that I have finished up some fairly major projects in May, not least of which was finishing my poetry manuscript and sending it off to several contests, and I would like to get back to the blog for awhile.
I have some other goals in mind too. In June, I want to
1. Drink more water. I realized I go through the day feeling thirsty a lot. (A note to Mom: I don't think it's diabetes.) I think I'm just thirsty. Denver is dry and I am busy.
2. Read more. My plan for Amelia's naptimes in June are to write on the blog and then read. I want to read both poetry and fiction. I started a Goodreads account a couple of years ago I would like to get back to too.
3. And with #2 in mind, I am setting a cleaning limit for myself in June. I have been feeling like I fritter away too much time straightening the house. It becomes a creative block, almost, a way for me to avoid sitting down to write. So in June, I am allowed to straighten up after breakfast and to do whatever chores seem most urgent for 10 minutes, and only 10 minutes, after Amelia goes down for her nap. I am going to set the timer. If Amelia happens to be entertaining herself throughout the day, I can do small things then too, but that's pretty hit or miss.
And forth, I would like to exercise more. I have been going to yoga much more often and even running, although that's more sporadic. In June I am going to try to do one or the other every day.
It will be interesting to see how this goes, since I often don't feel like writing until everything is neat. And the truth is I really hate running. On top of all that, we are spending most of June 1st on a plane. So we'll see.
In the manuscript class I just finished, the instructor talked a lot about closure, about the importance of finishing a project, even if it wasn't as perfect as you'd hoped. The great thing about letting something go, he said, is that you get to see what you're going to do next. The month of May was for me a definite time of closure--I sent the manuscript off, I weaned Amelia--so I feel that this summer is a kind of beginning. All this reminds of some lines from a poem by T.S. Eliot:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
Beginning or end, I am excited to see what happens next.
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