Happy Christmas!

Ahead of me lies 6 more weeks of school holidays, which has me looking and feeling a bit like this:

(photo taken the morning before I went into hospital to have Sarah!)

Anyway, I’ve had a few ideas that might help me survive the crazy combination of the summer break and my puerperium. So far I’m finding that more than half of my time is spent feeding/settling/cuddling baby Sarah!

Number One: give each child at least one job to do each day. Our children have set daily jobs: empty the dishwasher, set the table, vacuum/sweep the floor and tidy their rooms (the latter doesn’t get done very well though, perhaps we need to install that one a bit more!).

Number Two (a): ensure the children have a decent chunk of screen free time each day. By decent, I mean a 10-4 or 9-5 kind of chunk, but in all honesty, right now I’m finding this one difficult. Because I’m feeding/settling/cuddling Sarah for such a huge part of each day, it makes things easier if I let the children watch TV or play Minecraft. I’m not proud of this, and I’m working on it, but we’re setting limits nonetheless.

Number Two (b): ensure the children go outside a lot. The younger two especially love running around outside, but sometimes I feel that it’s a battle to get them outdoors. I often balance their outside play vs screen time so that they can spend 30 minutes with screens for every hour they spend outside.

Number Three: give the children a craft activity each day. I know. This is such a great idea isn’t it. I even borrowed library books and gathered my own books on the topic. I imagined sunny summer afternoons sitting with my children on a picnic rug on the deck, making leaf and shell mobiles and fabric wreaths.

Number Four: have outings and social events organised for something to do and something to look forward to. It’s very easy for me to stay home right now, in the haze of having a newborn, but if we plan things to do, we won’t go crazy.

So, do you have plans for the holidays? Can you share some of your ideas with me?

Happy Holidays!