Habits

One good thing about habits is that although it always takes some effort to maintain a good habit, it definitely takes far less effort once it becomes part of your daily or weekly routine. Unfortunately in many cases it takes a LOT of effort to extinguish a bad habit. Case in point would be all the efforts I've put into trying to get Nadia to stop sucking her thumb (she only does it at night now) and to get Ian stop playing with his belly button (he's actually gotten much worse with that). Oliver grinds his teeth, and we're trying to get him to stop that before it becomes an ingrained habit. But these are not the habits I am thinking of today.

Lately I've been trying to help Ian stop fussing/whining/crying over every little thing. For example, I am doing school work with Nadia, and Oliver is stuck on his puzzle. I might ask Ian to go do a couple of pieces of Oliver's puzzle so that Oliver will be able to finish the puzzle himself. Ian moans and groans like doing two pieces of a simple 25 piece puzzle is the end of the world. Several days ago I said that he could earn a trip to Friendly's for the family (we got a gift card for Christmas). I said he needed to earn five stickers, and he would earn one sticker if he went an entire day without crying and fussing (in a complaining way, I don't mean if he got injured or something like that). He hasn't earned a single sticker yet, but he hasn't complained yet today, so maybe today he'll earn the first sticker. I will say that although he hasn't earned a sticker yet, the amount of crying and fussing has already gone down drastically. Now such antics have only been used for the things which really drive him crazy like me serving beef stew for dinner last night. At least we're going in the right direction, even if our trip to Friendly's seems like it won't be happening in the near future.

I also have been trying to get Ian and Oliver to sleep longer in the morning. Ian got a Batman clock for Christmas, and it's a digital clock, which means he can definitely tell whether it is 7:00 or not. I have had to send him back a few times (or have had to go in and turn his light off when he's been up in his room too early), but many mornings he's waited until at least 6:56 or something like that to come in our bedroom. The child falls asleep at the drop of the hat throughout the day (yesterday he fell asleep sitting on the couch around 2pm), and he frequently yawns and complains of being tired. Ten hours of sleep is not enough for this boy, and on Wednesday nights it's more like nine hours of sleep (if he gets up at 6:00) because they go to bed later that night due to AWANA. I am trying to help him get at least 11 hours of sleep. I think he needs that much. 

The situation with Oliver is a lot more complicated since he doesn't know his numbers yet, is still adjusting to being in a twin size bed, and he's partially potty trained. Getting him down for naps and at night is generally pretty simple (after going through a period of time where I had to keep putting him back in bed umpteen times). There are still times when he claims the reason he got up is because he has to go potty (although every time I put him on the toilet he hasn't really gone so I think it's just an excuse to try to stay up but I always err on the side of taking him to the potty one time if he asks). Similarly to leave him in his room in the morning when he is awake is to risk having him take off his pjs and diaper and pee on the floor (which he did this morning after staying dry all night in his diaper). Every time I just take him into our bed, he never goes back to sleep, unlike Ian who often will fall back asleep in our bed (the photo above was taken on Saturday afternoon when he and Daddy took a nap in our bed). Lately if Oliver woke up between 5:00-5:45am, I crawled into bed with him, and usually he would eventually fall back asleep. One morning I discovered why Oliver always wakes up right after Ian (if he isn't up first). Ian has his hand on the hallway wall right by Oliver's head! I discovered this when this sound woke both Oliver and I up when I was sleeping in Oliver's bed one morning. I said something to Ian, and hopefully he won't do that again. Oliver had been waking up around 6:15 most mornings, but the last several days the latest he got up was 5:45, and he's been up as early as 5:00 on more than one occasion. That is just WAY too early for a boy who goes to bed at 8:00. Hopefully I will figure out a way to teach him to sleep in later that doesn't involve pee on his carpet or so much crying and banging on his bedroom door that he wakes up his siblings. People tell me that some day I'll be struggling to get them up in the morning rather than struggling to get them to sleep, but I have a hard time imagining that scenario. I never went through that phase myself. My college roommates thought I was a bit nuts regarding what time I got up on Saturday mornings, for example.

One activity that feels like a habit to me is submitting job applications. The first 40 years of my life I'd estimate that I submitted about 20 job applications altogether (from 1989-2012 I had seven different employers).  Over the past 2+ years I've submitted 154 applications for Paul (so far) and last spring I also submitted about 15 for myself. On Thursday a neighbor called and asked me if I'd be interested in babysitting their two-year-old 9 -17 hours a week for about 4 1/2 months. I was planning to say yes until I found out they had been paying the babysitter they've had the past four years $4/hr. I remember being paid $5/hr by one family I babysat 25 years ago. The last few years we've been paying babysitters somewhere between $7-10/hr, and in talking to other moms, I know many pay their babysitters $10-15/hr. One even told me she pays $20/hr. I had never given any thought to my babysitting rate since I haven't done any babysitting for money in more than 20 years, but I decided on Thursday that the least I would accept was $8/hr, and I assumed they would be looking elsewhere given that's twice as much as they have been paying. The recent review of our budget had caused us to realize that we need to either spend less money or make more money. I would be happy to do some tutoring or give some piano or flute lessons, but it doesn't seem wise to start up such endeavors right now considering we might be moving to another state this summer. So I decided to try applying for part-time jobs teaching online. I submitted three of those applications this weekend. Nothing may come of it, but I am attempting to find a way to earn some extra money so we can afford things like ballroom dancing lessons. Paul has another phone interview this Friday (with Indiana University Southeast). It would be VERY helpful if he got a permanent job this time around so we could move into a house that matched his salary.