Lullaby, and Goodnight…
Lately Matthew has had this thing where he likes to be rocked before taking a nap or going to bed, and since Sara worked all weekend that duty fell squarely on me. It’s kind of cute, though – he’s got a big, stuffed Mario that he sleeps with and he likes us both to go under his blanket like a tent. Recently Sara started playing lullabies on her phone and he seemed to enjoy it, so I tried doing it, too.
The only down side I’ve found is that in addition to being effective at helping him fall asleep, the combination of it all also seems to be great at making me fall asleep! That said, I keep meaning to set some time aside for meditation and it’s incredibly relaxing, so why not just kill two birds with one stone?!
Video Games FTW
I’m planning on writing a Scott’s Guide to Life article about it, but video games seem to have surged in popularity in our home this summer … and I love it. On top of continuing to work from home due to COVID-19, I’ve spent some great times racing Christopher and even David in Mario Kart, and because his Switch Online membership comes with a bunch of retro NES and SNES games, I’ve even been showing them some of my old favorites which has been super fun.
For example, one of Christopher’s favorite tracks in Mario Kart 8 is Excitebike Arena, so he was very curious to see the actual game that it was based on! He’s even been trying to play some of the original Mario games, some of which are a little less forgiving than the newer ones, but it’s just awesome to get to share that with really all three of them. 🙂
Ugh, Garage…
And last night I reluctantly did some more cleaning out in my garage in order to be able to fit one of the cars inside. The whole ordeal was anything but voluntary – we’ve gotten a couple of letters from our HOA complaining about our kids’ therapist parking in our driveway because there’s only room for two cars before someone is then parking over the sidewalk … which I think is an absolutely stupid rule, but after paying them a few hundred bucks in legal fees last year after they got trigger happy about weeding our garden … I just don’t have it in me to argue with them right now.
The last time I tried cleaning, I still was about a foot short of actually closing the door, so last night I rearranged a bunch of stuff and found some more things I could throw away, and now the car just barely fits … which is good enough for me.
Note to self – Next house needs to have so much more room for storage!
Bonus Positive Thing – Swim Time!
I think we went swimming every single day for the last four days, and even though I’m exhausted … like, seriously! … the kids really loved it.
Our pool this summer has kind of been my secret weapon when I’ve got the kids by myself because although it can sometimes be a little stressful keeping track of all three of them at the same time, particularly when Matthew wants to dive in without waiting for me, however we do also have a lot of fun and as an added bonus – it really wears them out and makes the rest of our time until bedtime a lot easier to pass!
I don’t know what we’re going to do in another month when it starts getting too cold to swim.
Regularly scheduled family Mario Kart tournaments???