Techno-free week retrospective

Ahh, it feels good to be back.

I'm not going to lie to you--this last week was challenging. But I learned a lot. I learned that I really love music (not like that was anything new) and really missed listening to it in the car with Clara or on the CD player at home. Granted, it's almost always her music, but still, it was music nonetheless. A huge bummer about this week was that I got a cold the week previously and then this week had laryngitis, so my plans to sing a lot together were thwarted because my voice was gone for several days. We had a lot of silence instead. (But more on that in another post.)

I learned that moderation in all things is best. For example, I don't think there's anything wrong with letting Clara watch one or two Blue's Clues DVD episodes after quiet time (after she cleans up her room). But I want to do it less frequently, maybe three times a week, say. I don't want to depend on it as part of our routine, as in I'm mentally thinking, "Five days a week at 3:00 Clara watches a show for 45 minutes," which I confess was frequently my gameplan in times past. I don't know. I'll have to keep thinking about it.

As for the computer, that was definitely the hardest part. I realized it was silly for me to limit the entire computer--I should have just limited it to the Internet, since that is my main time-waster. I have a pile of receipts to enter into our finances and other things I now need to do this week that didn't require the Internet. And for the record, I did limit it to 10 minutes a day, except yesterday when I think it was more like 16 or something. Sorry.

A huge plus to not being online was that I felt less of the "world" and its influence. That was nice, but also somewhat isolating as a stay-at-home mom. Again, moderation in all things. I'm trying to think up a good way to limit my Internet time--maybe half an hour a day, or only getting on when Clara's asleep, or something like that. I'm thinkin' on it. One thing I started doing was making a list of things I wanted to look up on the Internet when I had "my time," so I would make more efficient use of the 10 minutes. It's pretty incredible how much you can get done in that amount of time! I think I'll do this anyway because there are so many times that I get on the computer during Clara's quiet time and think, "Ooh, I needed to find out about such-and-such" but can't remember what it was until later when I have to get on again when I should be playing with my child.

All in all, I'm glad I did it. Clara was quite the trooper, although on more than one occasion she said, "The TV's broken? and the DVD player's broken? and the CD player's broken?" or things to that effect. Poor kid!

Here are a few highlights of what we did instead:

As part of Teach Me Mommy, one day we--Clara--painted using celery. Messy but fun.

She also enjoyed making a picture with different grains and beans.

Clara played more on the piano than I've ever seen her before. It was so completely rewarding to watch her playing and hear her singing. I think she missed the music as much or more than I did.

In one of my ten-minute computer sessions, I learned that you can freeze tomatoes. I was thrilled.

Cracking peanuts. I got this idea from one of my sensory processing books and it is great for so many things: fine motor skills, a yummy snack, and it's fun and rewarding. No wonder you never see fat squirrels--they spend too much time and energy just cracking their nuts open.