Puzzles of All Sorts

Dear Kristen,

I, too, have never seen The Big Chill but loved listening to the music when we were younger.  After I read your review I happened to watch a preview for the movie About Alex.  At the beginning or the trailer I thought, “This sounds a lot like what Kristen was talking about with The Big Chill.”  And then….?  It called itself, “The Big Chill for Millennials!”  Again, hook-ups, drugs, probably some good music, and sadness.  It’s not one we will be watching I think.

So the work on Munchkin’s schedule and big girl room continue!  And they are puzzles.  See below:

Schedule:  I’ve narrowed down some of the things for her daily routine.  They include:

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner (these may seem straightforward, but meal time is rarely easy these days)
• Get dressed
  

  She picked out this outfit – she has good taste! She just refused to get dressed until lunch time…

• Brush teeth
• Chores
• Art Time
• Reading Time
• Rest Time
• Play Time – Outside
• Play Time – Individually
• Outing for the Day (not for every day)
• Surprise Event (for special play dates and events)
• Learning Time (to be added in by end of the month)
• Clean-up Time (two of these…at least)
• TV time (no more than two shows a day)
• Bath Time

That’s a fair amount of things, but in no way extensive – so might change before the final product.  The puzzle consists now of how to show them all when necessary.  I looked at the kaper charts you suggested and there are some good ideas there.  I’m wavering on formats though, since I can’t figure out if I want it downstairs (where we spend most of the day) and upstairs in her big girl room (in which case it would probably involve stars).  Logically, downstairs seems to be the better option, and I could still do stars, but I don’t know where I’d want to put it.  That’s another puzzle.

Her Room: We’ve been purging and purging some more.  There’s been a fair amount of planning that is really a hurry-up and wait kind of thing.  For example, we can move the trunk in her new room to her old room when we move her dresser to her new room, which we can’t until we paint it, which we’ve yet to do.  THEN we can put a few things from the linen closet in the trunk, opening up space in the closet for the rest of my sewing stuff.  So you see, a puzzle.  Matt and I stumbled across a show the other night, Tiny House Nation, which has helped in the process of feeling like we really don’t need to have a TON of stuff.  Talk about puzzles!

But we’ve gotten some more done – my fabric is moved, our books are all where they are going to go…for now, my school stuff is put away, and some trips to find organizing things have occurred.  So its a start to our big puzzle, and I’m feeling okay about it!

Then in the mail yesterday I got two new books.  The first I’m very excited about.  The second…well that’s a new puzzle for us – not a trendy one, a necessary one as it turns out.  I decided to try our old favorite cookbook series take on it – and I’ll admit I’m a little nervous.  But we’ll figure it out!

Apparently I’m so nervous about it, I can’t even edit a picture well. At all.