Mud Pies & Minivans: Spring Cleaning

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Spring Cleaning

It is 8:00pm & everyone is asleep, this is my chance to get a new post in at last, :).

My ladies have been beyond blessed with SO many wonderful things. They do have a nice amount of toys & while that is great, my husband & I always want to help our girls focus more on the "giving" rather than the "getting", appreciate the things they do have rather than dwelling on the things that they don't. I know I have explained before some of the steps we take to help guide them towards these attitudes, but let me quickly review. Anytime an event comes up where we get to bless someone around us with a gift, we always make a huge deal about it & include our children in the whole process from selecting the gift, picking out a card, wrapping the gift, & so forth. At other children's birthdays, I have the girls sit the whole time to watch & participate in being happy for that child & the gifts they receive. We also do not let our kids watch commercials just because of the messages they send about focusing on what we don't have rather than on what we do. In stores we do not let our girls touch toys & other things because we want them to understand that these items do not belong to us until we purchase them. They can say they "like" something for sure, but we do not condone "I want" & "I need" communication.

Recently, we decided that since our girls have built up such a great amount of wonderful toys that we wanted them to go through some of the ones they do not necessarily play with as much anymore & pick some out to give to other children out there who may not have as much. Even with all the work we have put in with our girls, sometimes it can be a lil' hard to give away some things that you think you still need or want, but overall they did a really good job embracing this idea & I loved to see them through the process starting to get even more excited that other kids were going to get to enjoy these now. It also showed my husband & I that we are doing a pretty good job with them.

After we went through the playrooms & I reigned lil' Asher back in who was trying to give away everything, Aidann decided that making these kids cards with stickers would be a good idea too :). We told her after our nap we would drop them off. Aidann really got into the whole thing & she wanted to actually meet these kids & "eat dinner together" too, lol. I loved her heart about the whole thing.

This was such a small step, but I think it is important to do things like this to check where your kids hearts & attitudes are at from time to time. We need to make sure that things don't have a hold on us because in the end they are not what really matters. Are our kids' attitudes going to always be perfect? They might have their moments where they need a lil' help readjusting which is normal, but as parents we need to just do our best to guide them in the right direction through a society that tends to focus in on "I" & "me". I definitely want to add more & more of these types of activities into their lives as they get older-making cookies for others, collecting cans, soup kitchens, & everything. Its not impossible to have good kids, it just takes a lot of work.

-M&M Momma