Why I love my Diaper Genie & New goals to be a better mom

There are many things in my life that are modern conveniences that I am SO grateful for, dishwasher anyone? I mean can you imagine living without a washing machine, freezer or heck your computer with internet? I’ve felt especially grateful for internet because our internet has been out for a week (as I type this I’m at a friends house because AT&T still has not fixed it, arg!) But one thing that I’m super in love with is my diaper genie.  I was given one as a baby gift when I was pregnant with Max and I put it in the nursery and used it all of the time.  However the true love for this little device came when June was born and we had 2 kids in diapers. If you’ve never done that you seriously can’t imagine the amount of poopy diapers that is produced.

We live in a townhouse so the bedrooms are upstairs and the main living area is downstairs and then we also have a finished basement where the kids play.  Once we had 2 kids in diapers I quickly realized I did not want to run upstairs every time there was a poopy diaper for multiple reasons so we started putting them in the garage. As you can imagine the garage started smelling like poop.  So we tried to do a DIY diaper genie by wrapping the diapers in grocery sacks and then putting them in a small plastic trash can, it did NOT work.  Our entire garage still smelled like poop. gross. So after a few months of enduring the disgusting smell we bought a 2nd diaper genie for the garage.  It was kind of amazing how quickly the poop smell went away and stayed away with this fabulous invention.

So here we go friends I’ve got a great deal for ya.  Diaper genie has a promotion going on that when you purchase 3 refills at Target you can submit your receipt and get a $25 spa finder wellness gift card for free while supplies last.  Just go to THIS website for all the details. I looked at the spa finder wellness website and there are several spas in my area that I could go use the gift card at, $25 off a massage for purchasing something I already love? yes please!

So its July which means we have entered the final 6 months of the year and although I re-evaluate my goals every month, around this time of year I start to really get serious about things again.  You might remember my one little word for this year is devoted, I talked about it HERE.  Lately I’ve been feeling like my devotion to my kids has not been my first priority, I’ve been great about being devoted to this blog and to family in general but Max and June may have been watching too much TV and not getting a lot of mom time in the last couple months.  So I’m making a new commitment for the last part of this year to be more devoted to these kids who are so important to me and who I love so much.

I’m not gonna lie 2 and 3 are hard ages and lately we’ve been having a really hard time with the battle of the wills.  It seems like Max’s favorite lines are “But I don’t want to” or “but I have to” and it can be sooooo draining to deal with that all day long.  So while I was sick this last weekend (yes I laid in bed all day Saturday, not fun) I re-read some of my favorite parenting books and re-motivated myself to be devoted to my kids.

So here are a few things I plan to implement in the next few weeks.  First is a daily “chore” chart for Max that will include getting dressed (without whining), doing a daily chore like dusting (a sock on his hand with a little spray) , putting his clothes away, feeding the dogs, etc.  I’m going to give him choices of a chore to do everyday so he gets a good rotation of helping.  A standard chore will be to pick up the living room toys every evening after dinner.  If he gets all the chores each day he will get $1 a day.  I know its a lot but I’ve decided to stop buying any toys at all for him and he can earn them, and i imagine there will be quite a few days he doesn’t get all the stars on the chart.

I’m also going to start an afternoon learning time where for 1 hour each afternoon I will teach them something new or read them books.  I thought a fun place to start would be learning about different places so I ordered a map of the US and a map of the world so we can start learning about the places we see on the map.  I also plan on teaching him time soon because he’s having a super hard time lately understanding today and tomorrow and later this week, etc.  So I ordered a large dry erase fridge calendar so we can start x-ing out the days and learning how time works.