Letters from Pemberley

Seems like I’ve gotten this question a lot: “You have three kids, and you take care of them all day, every day? How do you do it?” I tend to say something generic, like that it gets easier with practice.  And it does!  I’ve made so many mistakes that I won’t make again.  But for the benefit of my friends who are just starting out, here are a few specific things that I’ve found helpful over the years.

• Our family puts a big premium on sleep.  In our experience, well-rested parents have an easier time showing patience to their children and each other.  Well-rested children are less crabby and more likely to obey.  So our parenting style focuses on training our kids to be independent sleepers.  We have predictable naps and early bedtimes (6:30 pm for baby, 7:30 pm for big kids).  Everyone sleeps in his own bed.  We try to keep exceptions (skipped naps, staying out late) to a minimum, and we build in a recovery day afterwards.
• As I’ve mentioned before, we function well with a predictable routine.  (This is not to be confused with the rigid scheduling of programs like Babywise.)  We have predictable mealtimes and naptimes, and I plan social outings and errands around them.  We can be flexible by an hour or so either direction, but we are always home in the afternoon for naps.  The girls always take a nap after lunch.  We have the same bedtime routine every night, and the kids pretty much go down without a fuss most nights.
• I try to warn the kids when we’re going to have to shift gears.  At the park or a friend’s house, I try to tell them “5 more minutes” and “2 more minutes” so that they can wind down what they’re doing.  Sometimes they’ve wound down between the first and second warning and are actually ready to go before I’ve even said, “Time to go!”  So many of Tommy’s early tantrums happened because I suddenly announced that we had to leave.  We still have tantrums sometimes, but the warnings have cut them drastically.
• We also build a lot of home time into our week.  Actually, this was a struggle this semester, when all my friend-making activities panned out and I found myself over-committed, but I’ll be dropping most of them for next year.  While my kids love trips to the park or play dates with friends, they also love spending an entire morning coloring with markers, setting up a city with matchbox cars, or digging a ditch in our back yard.  I think we’re able to stay home happily with very limited TV (once or twice a month unless someone is sick) because we have toys that are open-ended for imaginative play rather than a bunch of battery-operated contraptions that only do one thing.  And I admit that this is much easier in SoCal, where we play outside almost every day, than in PA, where I spent months reading countless books on snowy and rainy days.
• I don’t do much of the house tidying.  From about 18 months on, I train the kids to pick up after themselves.  I’ve found that when it looks like a toy bomb has exploded in the living room, it helps to divide the cleaning-up into discrete tasks.  Usually I’ll give each of the big kids three specific tasks: “Tommy, your first task is to clean up the cars, then the second task is to clean up the blocks, then the third task is to clean up the trains.  Lizzie, your first task is to clean up the play kitchen, then your second task is to put the books back on the shelf, then your third task is to put the baby toys in a bin.”  If I stay in the room, folding towels or loading the dishwasher and monitoring progress (giving praise when a task is completed and encouragement when someone is lagging), this can usually be accomplished in 10-15 minutes.  (If I give the command and then leave to take a shower or compose a blog post, things can take considerably more time.) We generally do this twice a day when we’re home all day or just after dinner if we’ve been out.  If everyone completes their tasks quickly, we read books as a reward.  Since the kids do the tidying, that frees me up to get to sweeping and vacuuming.
• But our house is not as neat and clean as it used to be.  When I just had Tommy, every book and toy was in place when not in use, the bathrooms were cleaned every week, and you could have eaten off my kitchen floor.  Susie still eats off the kitchen floor, but I don’t recommend it to others.  I have other priorities, and sometimes they include checking facebook to have a few minutes of adult interaction in the day!  After both the girls were born, I was extremely blessed with the gift of cleaning ladies.  My dream is to be able to afford a cleaning lady on a regular basis.  But until that happens, we muddle through with dusty baseboards and grimy windows.
• I’ve lowered my expectations of what I can accomplish in a day or a week.  I have two designated laundry days and go grocery shopping once a week (with an occasional extra run out if we’re low in milk and eggs).  I don’t try to push the kids past their limit (1 hour or so) when running errands.  So I have to do more non-food shopping online in the evenings, and I save up secondary errands for the weekends, when Derek can stay home with the kids.  Basically, if I keep everyone fed and clothed, I call a day a success.
• I have a well-stocked diaper bag that lives in the car.  It has extra changes of clothes, diapers, hand sanitizer, and a ton of other things we might need on an outing.  Because it stays in the car, I don’t have to remember to pack things or grab the bag every time we go out.
• I bring snacks everywhere.  Hungry kids are cranky kids.  Cranky kids tend to lose it in the middle of a store and have to be carried out, screaming, under one arm.  A snack can buy me a couple minutes to get the cart unloaded and everyone buckled into the car.  So we pack red pepper slices, clementines, mini granola bars, or cheese sticks for most outings.  I also have a couple emergency snacks in the front console of the car and the bottom of the diaper bag and my purse for dire occasions.
• I try to give the kids choices when I can.  The big kids dress themselves almost completely, and I’ve learned to just give them general instruction up front about what kind of clothing to wear (church/play clothes, long sleeves/short sleeves) and then let them come up with their own combinations.  Most of the time, it is not worth fighting about a specific outfit.  I save my energy for the clothes battles that matter–wearing appropriate shoes to ride bikes, or putting on a specific outfit for a photo shoot.  If we’re home, and I have the time, I’ll give them two or three options for breakfast or lunch.  I don’t really care if they eat oatmeal or toast, and they usually pick whatever I’m having, anyway.  On the other hand, I’m not a short order cook.  They must choose between options I’ve given them; at dinner, there is only one option, or they go hungry.
• We color-code cups, dishes, water bottles, bags, etc.  I grew up color-coded (I was always yellow), and it cuts down on dirty dishes and fights over plates, gamepieces, and sleeping bags.  I’m a big fan of orbit name labels.
• I shamelessly seek advice from more veteran moms.  Pretty much all of my best tricks of the trade were passed down to me by others.  Sometimes it is humbling to have to admit that you just don’t know what you’re doing in a certain situation, but a fellow mom probably knows exactly how exasperated you feel and isn’t going to judge you, anyway. =)

I think it’s important to note that what works for one family might not work for another.  I used to compare myself constantly to a friend whose husband was home for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day.  Obviously not all of her strategies were going to work for me back when Derek was working 12-15 hour days at the law firm!  I have friends who swear by babywearing, but I do not have the temperament or the back health for it.  One of my mentors, Amy Dennis, used to remind the young moms in our church that the Bible does not, in fact, lay out the one holy way to potty train, sleep train, or clean a house.

Also, while my life runs smoother when I do these things, there are still days when I let our house rules slide and start to feel overwhelmed and hopelessly behind and wonder how I’ll ever be able to stay afloat with another kid or two in the mix!  (I can guarantee that when we get back to California in a couple weeks, I’m going to have a few tear-filled days while we all re-adjust to home life.)  It’s important to admit that I’m not always going to have it all together, particularly in stressful seasons like Derek’s finals weeks, early pregnancy or other family illnesses, or re-entry from vacation.

So what survival lessons have the rest of you moms learned?