some ramblings

Christmas is over. It was fairly low key this year. There is MORE I would have liked to get accomplished with CO but with travelling to Ottawa and then getting sick, I just wasn't able to do it all. I am ready to take the tree down (which I usually don't do until the new year). It is larger than I normally have so it is blocking a large section of my living room and it is dropping pine needles like crazy. My dear son whom I love SO much loves to sweep so I have pine needles spread further through my house than I normally would. The only thing really stopping me is I like to sit in the evening and read with the tree turned on. So I will wait one more week before taking it down and putting away the Christmas decorations. I will leave the winter ones up :)  Plus I am SO in the mood for spring cleaning and getting rid of things! Hopefully I still will be next week when we are back into our routine and with the new things on our schedule in the new year.
Most of my house decorations are more winter decorations than Christmas ones so I tend to leave them up until spring.
I am content with the little my son got for Christmas. It is SO easy to get sucked into the consumerism of Christmas. I was tempted to buy so much for him that I knew he would like but on the most part I said NO and if I did buy him things above and beyond his stocking and two gifts, I tended to just put them aside to bring out at a later date (some books, activities, etc.) I actually changed my mind Christmas eve and the present I was planning on Santa giving him I put away in my parent's basement and used one of the two presents I bought him (they were of the same set) to be from Santa. I am happy with this decision and may even donate the other gift to the playgroup that we attend on Thursdays or to our local EYC for their toy library. Overall he got PLENTY of gifts between family here and family in Ottawa. I have found homes for everything and next week I am going to go through his stuff and eliminate some old toys and downsize. My goal is for him to not own more than he can personally clean up himself.  Everything has a place and he is fairly good at putting things back. The only trouble is when he gets into modes like this week (He pretends he is Santa and he dumps a bunch of toys together into a bag or box walks around saying 'ho ho ho merry christmas' and giving the things away. The bags can be a fairly large mishmash and tend to take some work to resort. But hey how can I get upset that he is so willing to give away his own things.
CO loves to craft and read. In the new year I am going to start working on the kindergarten math curriculum that I have. The program uses lots of manipulates and is very hands on. We will add it to our week maybe doing 3 lessons a week and see how it goes. He very much enjoyed doing our weather chart that I introduced to him this month and understood it right away. We will keep it up and maybe in another month or so we will start doing the weekly chart rather than the daily chart. I also want to start a form of organized prayer with him. I don't know if I am going to do a small book with photos or a wall with photos of people that we are going to pray for daily. I wanted to do an outreach with him this holiday at a senior's place having him hand out candy canes or something but getting sick put a damper on that idea so maybe we can do it for Valentine's. I definitely want to expose him to being involved in the community from a young age so that it will seem like a norm to him. So often I see children these days who don't see beyond themselves or their little bubble and I want him to think about those in need. I try to have him select something at the grocery store every time we go that he puts into the food bank box on the way out the door. I have the photos of the foster children that I have through Compassion Canada and that I have looked after through respite up on the wall and we pray for those children.  I don't feel I pray enough in my own life so I want to work on adding prayer to both of our lives in the new year and make it a bigger focus. I want to model things like praying for my son. More than just saying grace. I remember being a teen and going to a prayer meeting with my father and thinking that that was the first time I remember him actually praying out loud for a purpose other than grace. I am not saying my dad isn't a praying man, I just don't remember him modeling it to us while growing up.

anyway Curious George Christmas special is over so I am going to take my little one up and read some stories and do some praying!