Mom...I'm Bored

You know when you have a slacker day? You can't think of anything pressing, no, nothing important at all to do, so you fritter the day away doing all sorts of frivolous things like plucking your eyebrows and shaving both legs in the shower.

Then the next day you check your planner and you realize that you have at least 5 seriously pressing projects and at least 15 more important ones clamoring, and you wonder what the heck you were thinking by taking the previous day off so rashly?

I think it's the same dealio with kids sometimes. There they are, healthy, free, and surrounded by toys, but there are those times that they cannot think of anything to dooooooo.

I actually sympathise with this dilemma as I illustrated above, but clearly I'm not that much better at coming up with constructive ideas on the fly, particularly when someone is whining at me when I am on the phone and loading the dishwasher and washing machine simultaneously.

It is only when I do the semi-monthly hysterical purging of their rooms and playroom that I see all the various toys and realize all the fun that is to be had in this unassuming looking home. It is also entirely probable that any suggestion I may make will be met with, "noooo I don't want to do that" as if my suggestion of playing with play-dough was tantamount to suggesting they try a firewalk.

This is generally where I snap and shriek a list of chores for them to do whereupon they cry for an hour or two. It's great.

I feel there must be a better way. And I have decided this is it:

Have a list of options available before the need arises! Oh how very very creative and innovative I am, no? I know how obvious this is people, but it has taken me a few million Summers to put it all together, like so.

So the photo above is the circus that is currently on the cabinet where my plethora of charts and diagrams live. Aka the Cabinet Circus- Summer Edition. But there is method to the colourful madness.

Let's look a little closer at my fantastic handiwork shall we?
First off here are the goals we discussed at Family Home Evening. When all else fails, work on those man!



We brainstormed and came up with things a young healthy child living in this house may do outside on a fine Summers day.

Then we came up with things a wee lad or lass may want to do inside on a not so fine Summers day.


Now this is the important part. We took all the activities which require involvement (ie transportation and constant supervision) on the part of the mommy. They have their own envelope. They can draw suggestions from this envelope, at a suitable time for the mommy. My goal is to have at least one drawing a day from this envelope. Hopefully more then that.

The main idea is that it will cut down on the begging to go to the park/zoo/pool which are quite uncannily timed to occur at just the moment I am at my most frantically busy, leading me to veto or delay said suggestion, and then endure listening to the ensuing whining and gnashing of teeth.

This method was designed to manage everyone's expectations, and give me control over when the suggestions occur, thus enabling me to say "no" or "maybe later" much less. Which is good. Because kids hate those two phrases with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. The plan is that I too will be focused, knowing that I have a scheduled "Fun with Mom" drawing coming up and should get my work done so I can play.



I made the lists we came up with on the computer, printed them out and laminated because you know how I love me some lamination ( lamination also makes them easy to pull out and replace and helps them to last more then a day).

I put each category in a different colour so that they can be put back into the right folders more easily. You can kind of get the idea in this blurry photo.


I suppose this edition would more accurately be known as "Hope it works for me Wednesday". I have thought about it a lot though so I am fairly hopeful that it will. I find anything with lamination makes people happier.

What does not work for me? Working out from 10-11pm. It leads to blogging at 2:30am. Just thought I would pass that on too.

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