Late Night Discussions

So last week I had a pretty bad day dealing with a dirty house and so many other things so that night I was unloading on Neil and everything came out. Too bad we were both tired when we went to bed at 11 pm but even more tired when we finally stopped talking around 1am. One thing that came up was Conner. He constantly nags me to play on the computer, or my phone or video games, or the camera. He does get 30 minutes of reward time each day if he does his chores to choose whatever he wants to do but whenever that time is up, for the rest of the day he is pestering. He knows after enough times, I'll have had it and give in. It frustrates me so because all of these activities are pretty mindless and solitary. He doesn't have to interact with anyone which is what we are trying to work on. I didn't grow up playing tons of video games and so it drives me crazy this society that we live in and I don't want to deprive my son and have him be picked on or left out because he doesn't have video games or all the other stuff. Anyway, as Neil and I talked and I realized that maybe he wants to play on the computer so much is because he sees me always on it. I always have the laptop open and throughout the day I'll check my email, blogs, recipes, ksl, pinching your pennies, whatever which often keeps me from doing things I should be doing, like cleaning, reading my scriptures, meal prep, etc. I don't spend tons of time all at once but little sessions here and there but to Conner it probably seems like I'm always on it so my goal is to only be on the computer when the kids are sleeping. Now that is going to be hard. This morning it killed me not to get on it. I keep the roll top desk closed so it's not as big a temptation. Another reason we thought Conner might be so obssessed is because he's bored. Since we moved to Layton, we really haven't had much of a schedule. The kids do pretty much whatever they want and I do to. I used to have a set reading and music time and I haven't done that in forever. I read them books but usually before they go to sleep or if they bring them to me so I'm going to start doing that everyday. Now that the weather has turned nice we're going to go to the park two days a week, the library for story time once a week, and then walks around the neighborhood the other days and then of course Wednesday is my shopping day so they tag along for that. Neil and I also made a list of things to do every day to break up the monotomy. So I'm going to make a calendar up of what we will do every day so that I don't have to think what's something we fun we can do today. We'll see how it goes. Today we got up and ate breakfast, had baths, got dressed and then did chores. While they did their chores I cleaned all the bathrooms and folded two loads of laundry. After chores, I packed a picnic lunch and we went and played at the park for 1 1/2 hours. They are all napping now so I get to do whatever I want. After naps, we're going to go outside and practice kicking a ball and then they will have their reward time while I get dinner ready. Sammy has the FHE lesson tonight so I have to help him get that ready and then it's daddy fun time! Tomorrow I'm going to try taking them to the library. I'm not sure how they'll do but I hope they enjoy it.

I'm doing much better at keeping the house clean. I've doing the dishes after every meal instead of letting them pile up in the sink until dinner time. We've made sure the house was picked up before we leave to go anywhere and it has been so nice to come home and everything be clean. It's a great feeling!