Away with the Family and no Avatar
It was nice to get started yesterday and whilst my intention is to post in the evening, my family is out which will allow me to reflect upon yesterday.
✅ Family
✅ Personal Growth
✅ Fun & Recreation
✅ Physical Environment
✅ Family
It was a day spent with the family, mostly in our holiday home but also played with the boys at the park (where we had lunch) and then a dinner at the site van. The park was probably the highlight - kicking a ball about with my youngest and watching them both climb on the climbing frame. My eldest watched me jump off a swing whilst it was still swinging and as a usually fear-filled 8yo, he surprised us all by copying me - jumping off and even landing it! It's taken him a while to become more confident in what his body can do so this is definitely great to see and makes me feel good.
Time to be critical now - I found eating out extremely difficult. My boys were tired - I can see it in the eyes of my eldest and they just mess about. The youngest refused to eat the food, only doing so when the Gyros we bought was deconstructed and fed to him in its individual components. I really struggle with meal times. I get incredibly frustrated, angry and am unable to keep this to myself. I want to be able to eat meals with my family but it's so stressful that I'd definitely be better off eating alone.
I think that the issue is that I expect them to eat maturely, like a grown up which they simply aren't capable of doing yet. I feel that it's my role to correct and improve their eating habits and perhaps there are too many things to correct all at once so perhaps the goal should be broken down into smaller tasks. What's the priority though? What annoys me the most? What do I want to stop?
- Walking around whilst eating
- Playing with toys at the table
- Talking with mouth full of food
- Not using cutlery
- Not eating at all
5 options will do without even needing to think about it. Which is the priority? 1 vs 2? That's a close one. 2 vs 3? Definitely 2. 2 vs 4? 2 again I think. 2 vs 5? Tricky. Definitely 5 when I've cooked. What's the quickest win? Probably not option 5. So maybe 1 and 2 are where to start. I think I'll tackle them together. 2 should be easy - remove all non-eating related stimulation from the table. Then reward them for not walking around. OK. That's a plan.
✅ Personal Growth
It might not seem like much but beginning the reflection again will certainly help me to grow and become a better person. So that's an early win. Arguably, an easy win but a win nonetheless. Consistency is key now and in time, reflection alone won't cut it but it's something to look at for now.
✅ Fun & Recreation
I nearly didn't include this one but instead of telling the kids off for getting out of bed over and over again (they messed around from 6:30pm until at least 8:30pm!), I thought we'd watch a movie instead. Jack Ryan which wasn't the best but it was quite watchable. The important thing was to eventually switch off and do something fun. We're often so focused on achievement that achieving nothing should also be considered to be achieving something. Nice contradiction.
✅ Physical Environment
Whilst not exactly travelling or exploring like I'd prefer, just getting out and going to the park, wandering around the site is better than sitting around all day so I'll take that as a small win. It's quite nice here and just sitting out on the balcony can have a good, therapeutic effect.
Summary
My aim is to track the history of each day in a great big colourful image, which has to start small.
Avatar
I uploaded an avatar yesterday which doesn't appear. It looks like the image uploaded ok but something's obviously broken somewhere. But not for everybody. Maybe it'll work at some point.