Yes Mom - Part II

I am an official Graduate of the “Yes Program.” Good news- you know I survived because I’m writing this. The other good news- so have my children, my husband, the house and our schedule – we have all survived and graduated with flying colors! It was easy but like with my husband, there were some missteps at first. I had to really challenge myself to remember to say "yes" over the past week. To over-evaluate every circumstance to see if this was a situation where the word YES couldn't hurt and might actually provide an opportunity for us to try something new.

Here is a list of things I said YES to this week:

- Painting, at 7:45pm, in our basement, with our regular clothes on. (If I did too much preparation I would have lost my kids in the moment. It was very close to bedtime but we could skip baths tonight)
- 3 laps around the livingroom in a laundry basket turned boat with my son saying “Ahoy Matey!”
- Watching Bee Movie 4 times over the course of one day
- Another book at bedtime – they took advantage of me saying yes a lot and the standard 3 books turned into 5, 6, 7 each night

- Buying a Color Wonder toy at Michaels (Note: Shopping during the Yes program is not recommended!)

- Taking a bath with the kids - it's just a little crowded in there these days and now that they're a little older, the questions about my "jay-jay" and "boobies" are getting a little harder to answer.

- Walking to their cousins house- it's not too far of a walk and it was just the type of thing I usually don't do because I'm just not spontaneous, but definitely an easy one to do.

- Let the kids sleep together on the pull-out sleep sofa in the living room - why not?

- Another cookie - similar to the bedtime books, this was something that got taken advantage of quickly

- Pancakes for dinner - no problem here - that's much easier!

Things I still had to say no to:

- Painting outside in 30 degree weather. We actually tried it - for like, 10 seconds and I quickly put the cabosh on that one & we headed inside with all of our supplies

- Going to Chuck E Cheese on a Sunday night.

- Letting Jagger ride in B's car seat- safety can't be compromised EVER!

- Letting the kids sleep together every night - this usually results in one or both of the kids waking frequently in the night which results in cranky parents which results in non-compliance of the yes program so we stuck to our guns on this one.

As you can well imagine, I learned a lot about spontaneity. I certainly wouldn’t consider myself spontaneous therefore, probably, my kids wouldn’t consider me “fun.” But we did have fun this week and I didn't give in to every request but I did pay extra attention to my kids and that was definitely worth every mess we cleaned up, every ruined appetite, every shift in plans. I invite you to take on the challenge.  After all, isn't this the year that we all say, "Yes We Can!"

This is an original post to Philly Moms Blog.