5 for 30 (August 2014)

Five goals to focus on for the next thirty days:

1: Making my daily habits daily, keeping up my slowly developing good routines about the house
- laying out my clothes and James' each night,
- packing our bags the night before an early planned outing,
- reading through the Bible, going over memory verses and and having a short prayer time with James,
- filling the dishwasher and wiping down the counters immediately after each meal,
- emptying the dishwasher reasonably quickly and leaving out the plasticware etc. to dry,
- putting away dry dishes first thing,
- putting away folded clothes first thing,
- folding clothes and generally dealing with laundry each evening/night etc.

2. Implementing a quiet(ish) independent reading time for James (and Mummy) post-lunch to settle him for nap.
- J will have three books to go through for five/ten/fifteen minutes (his bedtime stories for that night maybe) and I'll hopefully be able to use this time to fit in a short chapter from Jen's autobiography or some whodunnit reading.

3. Picture book reading with James post-nap
- Since I read aloud to him while he nurses before nap and bed, Daddy does the bedtime stories so it'll be nice to pick out a specific time each day to enjoy picture book stories with him, without losing my voice

4. Simple stretching (with James too) first thing
- To start off my morning in an energised manner, improve my flexibility and get me moving.

5. Beginning to limit my chocolate intake
- I'm not saying no chocolate, I'm just saying less :)

I'll also:
- get James' hair and mine cut,
- (finally) finish sorting all my kindle e-books into collections (e.g. by author, non-fiction, historical novels), I've got about a hundred e-books to go),
- download my recent purchase of a "homeschooling mom bundle" of e-books, save them to our PC, then to our external hard drive and finally send them to my kindle account,
- enjoy my reading plans for the month,
- sort through James' library, moving the more babyish books out from amongst the rest (while still accessible to James) and making bedtime options handier for Daddy, and
- look forward to the (deeply) discounted baby gift/future child gift purchases arriving with the much-loved (by James) postmen (Roy, James and the newest recruit, Alan), I love getting post and parcels especially.

Socially James and I have one scheduled playdate with B&T and Maddy (no doubt we'll host one too), our monthly La Leche League meeting, a daytrip with Daddy to the North Coast to enjoy time at the rararans (caravans) with Granny, Granda, Auntie J, Uncle G, LJ and baby ZG (yay cuddles). Besides which I'll have a meet up with friends, the monthly craft group and my monthly coffee date with the girls. Workwise I have a day of childminding (B&T) and three (mostly) weekly (and fairly flexible) tutoring students. Scheduling students once school starts back is more intrusive of family life and relaxing naptimes, though on a more positive note it doesn't impact on our mornings. Not that our mornings are manic :) a fortnightly toddler group, monthly LLL meeting and starting back to free-play gymnastics (hopefully weekly with a vague idea of going to teacher-led classes in January), but I am more hermit than social butterfly after all :)

Spiritually I'll miss another two weeks of church with creche duties (I missed three weeks in July) but I'll enjoy getting some one-on-one time with a few parents/children of the church family.

Anywho, here goes nothing.