Aunty Nanokha

Sometimes when I make up a story for the kids, I let them add in random words and sentences, and it’s usually very amusing and encourages their creativity and imagination. I thought I would share last night’s story with you…

Once upon a time there were three
3 year old: stars
named
5 year old: Mark,
3 year old: Nanokha (you have to say the “kha” like in Arabic with the grating throaty sound!)
5 year old: Jr.
3 year old: I mean Aunty Nanokha
They were shooting stars that reached the moon. Mark was trying to pass
5 year old: over
the moon, to get to
5 year old: mars
for a umm, star covention, and Aunty Nanokha went
3 year old: under
the moon to get to the
3 year old: greens
greens? to umm, play golf? And then Jr
5 year old: fell out of the sky into the open sea
but how can he get back to the sky?
3 year old: Aunty Nanokha can help him!
OK,
5 year old: the moon can tell her!
so the moon tells Aunty Nanokha to help Jr get out of the open sea
so, umm, she gets a rope, i don’t know how
3 year old: from the rope store
of course! She gets rope from the outer space rope store and then she pulls Jr back into the sky
and then she told him he’s too young to fall into the open sea
and they all live happily every after!
The end.

3 Essential strategies for achieving balance in your marriage after kids

One of the biggest mistakes I think new parents make is expecting their life will at some point get back to what it was sans kid, without realizing ‘normal’ must now be redefined.

I had my first kid while most of the other people in my age group were pursuing high education, advancing in careers, or just beginning marriages, and I made a tonne of mistakes and learnt most things the hard way.

Now that I am redefining my life for the third time, I sure hope that I have a little more wisdom! Although it’s still a struggle to find balance, and even though three kids are difficult, it’s a little easier to manage our shortcomings and “issues”.

Find your “thing”

The most important strategy I think is that each parent has some alone time to do something that is fun and interesting to them, their “thing” if you will. I would suggest something physical, like for example, to join a sports team, or just have a regular, weekly game with friends. And if not, try a class, I am starting some cooking classes with my sister, first up is sushi! I think that each one of us need some space away from family and responsibilities to rejuvenate and get back to our true selves.

Redefining your spousal relationship

Now that it’s no long just the two of you, almost everything in the relationship needs to be reassessed and redefined. It is tremendously easy to fall into parenting and mundane living, and it’s even easier to become completely stressed out and feel like there isn’t any time for “fun”, and there may not be time for what you once considered fun, but surely once you get creative, I think you’ll find a lot of little ways to take away the monotony from the relationship.

With kids comes much less freedom and much more responsibility, so one of the things that we need to learn is how to unwind and have some enjoyment at home. This is sort of dependent what you and your spouse enjoy doing, I think the only thing my husband enjoy is movies, so we end up doing that a lot, but it’s works. Other things that I think may be fun, is cooking a meal together, or a game that you both enjoy, sometimes simple things are all you need, and of course a few laughs are essential.

Having fun as a family

With a first child, it’s easy to forget that the kid is now a part of the family, I mean it’s just natural almost to want to go back to what life was before, but of course since that is really not an option, it’s essential to instead think about “family activities”. Now that my kids are a little older, bike riding, playgrounds and parks are huge on our list of family things, but even with younger kids, walk are great, trips to the zoo, even spending time hanging out in the backyard can be fun.

Managing expectations, in my opinion, is one of the key factors in having a healthy marriage, and it becomes so much more important after we become parents. It’s impossible, I think for our spouses to actually live up to our ideals, I mean, there are possibly some of you with the perfect mate (lucky you!!), but I think that most of us need to set our expectations a little lower to be happy!

Surviving marriage after kids… it takes patience and understanding, and sometimes even a miracle! I am kidding! Sort of…

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Introducing the Org Junkie and my reorganized living room

Have you ever heard of the Org Junkie or may be Menu Plan Monday? Well, over the past couple months, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Laura, author of a blog called I’m an Organizing Junkie, which is filled with great tips for making things easier for moms especially.

I have a pretty small house, the main floor has basically 2 rooms, the kitchen and then an open area that functions as the dinning room, living room, family room, play room, tv room, and everything in between! The kids toys were always all over the room, and I hated the fact that we didn’t have a play area set aside for them. I think that I was inspired while working on Laura’s website redesign and I did a little organizing of my own.

I used to have the couches at the back wall, and a big empty area in the middle, so I move up the couches to split the living room a bit and created a tiny play area of the kids. It actually has been working out very well for everyone!

The other storage solutions I’ve had for about the last 3 and a half years, but thought that I would show them anyways…

The TV stand actually houses a lot of our “stuff”, there is a toy box, prayer mats, and the cupboards are home to diapers, wipes, books, playdoh, craft supplies, and many other items that need to be ‘hidden’.

The window seat has little pockets that actually serves as a “garage” for their large planes, trains and automobiles.

I hope that you do check out Laura’s website, I know that you will find her and her tips totally awesome!

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What’s an adventure in Ontario without a trip to Niagara Falls

For Day 8 of our adventures, we went to Niagara Falls, and although I have been there countless times, I had not been there on a summer day in peak tourist season for years and it was really great, except of course for the fact that there was barely any standing room! Day 9 and 10 were kind of hacked – we went to a park each day, once for cricket and once just for a walk – come on people, could you do 10 days of ‘real’ adventures with 3 kids under 5?! Yeah, I figured not!

*the rest of this post consist only of photos.

Treasure hunting for everyone!

Finally, when I was given a turn to pick the adventure on Day 6, of course I chose IKEA! Now, if you’re thinking that IKEA is not a real adventure, you’ve obviously never gone with my 3 kids!

We let them go nuts in the kids section, and I would say that it was a successful adventure!

Adventuring with kids tip #5: A small shopping trip can be considered an adventure if you talk about it in the right tone and add in a generous sprinkling of excitement!

On Day 7, we went on to what I would consider the most adventurous adventure; we went geocaching (which you can read about on our brand spanking new shared blog).

This was certainly the most interesting thing that we did all week, also the least expensive, and the in the closest proximity to our house! I was completely shocked at this world that I had not even heard about previously, but apparently geocachers have been doing their thing since 2000, so it’s possible that I may be just about the only one who does not know about this! If you have the opportunity, I really recommend trying it out, but maybe not with small kids, I think ages 7 and up should be fine.

Adventuring with kids tip #6: Adventures do not need to be all day activities or far away from home – geocaching can be a very inexpensive, nearby, mini adventure on days when you don’t feel like venturing too far or for too long.