Whatchu Doing With Your 24 Hours?

 Just wanted to get on and wish you all a happy fridayyyyyy. Hope you guys kicked this week's azz. We all only get 24 hours in each day. They say that we are what we repeatedly do each day. Obviously there'll be some variations here and there to what we do, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that most of our days generally go the same and we have a lot of control over them. With that being said, what are you choosing to do each day? What is it that you’re wanting to be? Because apparently all it takes to become/achieve who/what we want is to simply do it each day. 

Each 24 hours is like a microcosm of our lives; whatever you’re choosing to do in that time is basically what you’re saying is the most important to you. However, I’d be willing to bet that if most of us looked at our lives a little more closely, there would definitely be some things we’d change in terms of importance and priority with what's currently happening on our day to day basis. 

Like Remy says in the movie Ratatouille, “If we are what we eat then I only want to eat the good stuff.” In terms of who you want to be, what’s your “good stuff?” If we want to become who we want to become then we simply just need to be more deliberate with each 24 hours. What’s important enough for you to make sure gets penciled into your schedule each day? It’ll probably take some trial and error but eventually, with some effort, I’m sure you’ll end up with much more efficient days. Then all there is to do is repeat this over a decent period of time and watch the magic happen. 

Show some discipline, build a little momentum, and become who you’ve always wanted. 

Anyways, hope you're all doing well and this weekend feels super long for you.

PEACEEE

Losing My Mind Trying To Teach Savannah The Alphabet

So when we first moved to Moses Lake and Kalynn started going to work, it was just the girls and I at home. So feeling all driven I decided we were going to be SO educational and the girls, specifically Savannah atm, were going to learn SO much. Anyways, first we started with colors and Savannah was killing those. We got one of those foam alphabets, I would scatter them around the room and then we began with her simply separating them all into each individual color. She didn’t know the names of the colors to start but just knew which ones looked like the others. 

The next step was after she would separate them, we would go around to each pile and name each of their colors. She started picking this up pretty fast and I was kind of encouraged thinking my teaching methods must be pretty darn good. Lol Eventually it got to the point where after she would separate all the letters, I would say a color and then she would either point to it or walk to it; she had them down pretty well. Then just to reinforce, whenever we were at the store or random places I would point to different objects and she would tell me what color it was. Again, she was killing it. 

So I assumed/hoped that learning letters would be a somewhat similar experience. To start she had a hard time picking up the individual letters but she would say “A for apple, A for Barbie, A for Cat, A for Dog, A for Eagle and Elephant, A for Frog…” That’s about as far as we went into the alphabet to that point wanting her to pick up those letters first before moving on. So in my mind I'm thinking, “Okay, so she is definitely intelligent enough to recognize the shape of each letter and remember which animal it was attached to. So now how do I get her to remember the actual letter?” 

So that went on periodically for days, maybe a few weeks. Anyways, one day I thought to myself, “you’re going to learn these freakin letters.” You know, basically the preceding thought to all greatness. Lol So I obviously came in with some great energy… Side note as well, I had been having her watch some different YouTube shows that would sing alphabet and number songs, etc., just so she could get her reps. 

So this particular day my goal was to get her to simply advance to the letter B; that was ALL I wanted. So we go over it for a few minutes and she just isn't getting it and my frustration is building. I’m mostly just super confused at how she can have the ability to associate the letter E with not just one animal, elephant, but also a second one, eagle, and STILL not remember that it’s the letter E..? Lol 

So we keep going and my frustration is really kind of boiling over at this point. And I could tell she was reading my body language and energy well and was trying so hard to give me the answer that she thought I “wanted.”  And obviously that wasn’t what I wanted either but my patience was getting pretty thin and in that moment I was just too prideful to throw in the towel and come back to it another day. Each “wrong” answer led to my voice levels rising and her body surely tensing up more and more. You know, all ingredients for a solid learning experience… 

Anyways, after going over B repeatedly for like 10 minutes, we come back to it and I ask, “Okay Bub, we’ve been going over this one a lot today, can you remember what it is?” And she looks at me all determined and says “X..?” And I lose my sh*t because 1, she deliberately disregards us going over B for the duration of time that we did, and 2, we haven’t even gone over X?! So basically Savannah and I haven’t really tried letters since that day. Lol I assume she’ll learn them pretty easily when she’s ready, much like the potty training experience.

Moral of this story…I think at times we probably all struggle at parenting even when we have the best intentions. A lot of you might be thinking, “Bro, it’s just the alphabet. Chill out.” And I totally agree with you. There was no reason for me to bring in the bad energy that I did. Our kids are who they are and we need to celebrate that. They’ll learn and progress when they find things important enough to do so. Just when we think we have some of this parenting stuff figured out, something else kicks us to our knees. Just gotta be resilient and keep trying. 

Anyways, hope you’re all kicking life’s a$$.

PEACEEEEE

My Laughable Costco Membership Photo Experience

 A couple years ago it was time…we were going to sign up for the coveted Costco membership. So we walked up to the info desk to get it all set up and eventually they asked me to “go stand in front of that blue board” that was on the wall to get my photo taken. So I walked over there, and being an exact instruction follower in this moment, I stood right in front of the blue board.

As I stood there, my nose maybe about 2 inches from the blue board, I began to wonder what the purpose of this was. After much too long of a moment, I turned to look at Kalynn to question why they would ask me to do this. She proceeded to look back at me with a fairly perplexed look. The “wait…are you being serious..?” type of look. Lol Obviously, my brain now racing a little bit, I look back at her now even more confused wondering why she would be looking at me that way.

I quickly began to look around a little bit to see if I could solve this deep mystery that I now found myself engaged in. It seemed as if all at once the answer came. Though I was in fact standing as directly in front of “that blue board” as I possibly could, it was then I realized that the camera I was to be flashing these pearly whites at, was in fact behind me… I had stood in the right place, just not facing the right direction…

I immediately locked eyes with Kalynn, realizing my mistake, and we began to have a great laugh about the situation. She could not believe that that was how I interpreted the instructions and stood in front of the “blue board.” Obviously, after replaying the events in my head, I couldn’t really believe it either. Lol 

Moral of the story; try not to take yourself too seriously. Maybe I could have been given clearer instructions or maybe I could have just been a normal person and stood the right way. Lol Regardless, the more you’re able to laugh at yourself and the silly things you do, the happier and less stressed I presume you’ll be. 

Anyways, have a good one, y’all.

PEACEEE 

"Do you want to keep the placenta?"

 I apologize from the jump if my ignorance in this story is somehow offensive in any way. This was just my personal experience. 

Excitedly, we walked through the automatic sliding doors of the birthing center knowing our first baby was about to be born in the next few hours. It was a fairly relaxed check-in because we had scheduled an appointment to get induced. Kalynn’s water hadn’t broke or anything and nothing else was really spiking the blood pressure up to that point. As we’re checking in and the nurses are going through a little check-list with us, they asked, “do you guys want to keep the placenta?” Full disclosure, up until just reading into it right now, I didn’t really fully know what the placenta even was. Just knew it was something up in the female business that has something to do with the baby process.

My response, with probably a fairly grossed out/perplexed look was, “for what? Do people put them in like jars and then put them on their trophy case or something?” Lol Honestly thinking only about those evil scientist cartoons/movies where they have different body parts or whatever in jars on shelves. Lol I literally had zero preparation for this question or any idea of what one would possibly want to do with a placenta and why they would want to keep it. I’m fairly sure all of this was being clearly expressed by my body language and responses.

The nurse, seemingly amused by my reaction and silly question, shrugged her shoulders and responded with, “sometimes people like to eat it. I’ve heard of people putting them in smoothies or eating it in other ways.” Wide eyed and a little shocked, having not had this option anywhere even near the realm of possibilities of why someone would keep the placenta, I asked, “Why..?!” Lol Of course, they then explained the health benefits of it and also that some people do it for more natural and/or spiritual types of reasons. It was finally starting to make a little sense.

Nevertheless, selfishly and completely locked into my own thoughts at this point, without even thinking of consulting Kalynn, I responded with a sharp, “Uhhhh, no I think we're good.” Lol It was at this moment that I somehow came to and remembered that I wasn’t the only person on the planet and looked over to Kalynn to see what she wanted to do(as if she’s more connected and important to this whole “birthing/placenta process” than I am…(-; ). 

Anyways, long story long, we ended up deciding not to keep the placenta. I look back at this experience though and can’t help but just chuckle a little bit. Just another probably very normal and understood life question/process(of keeping the placenta) completely taking me off guard. I guess the moral of the story is to never be too afraid to ask questions..? I mean, look how much knowledge I now have. Lol

Hope everyone is doing great. 

PEACEEEE