The Little Things Part 1

I'm coming up on my three-year anniversary of being a stay-at-home mom and I must say that things are getting easier. I'm sure the fact that I get a full night's sleep (most of the time) has a lot to do with it....but good old fashioned TIME on the job is finally helping my mommy brain do things smarter. A huge dose of heaping grace straight from my Heavenly Father has a lot to do with it too. God is so gracious and faithful in allowing me to figure these things out and helping me along in my calling to be the best homemaker I can be.

One of the things I've implemented in the past couple months that's making a big difference around here is water cups. I have decided that the only liquid that will be allowed in between meal times is water and everyone has their own cup with a rubber band that has their name on it wrapped around their cup. It's quite simply the hillbilly, poor man's version of these. I keep a gallon jug of water right next to the cups so that refills are quick and convenient. The tap water here is heavily chlorinated, so much so that we want to get a whole house filter for every lick that comes into our home. It's pretty bad. So until we can get a filtering system we buy the gallon jugs of filtered water from the grocery store.At meal times the boys get milk and diluted fruit juices and those cups of liquid are never, ever allowed away from the table. So, the boys have learned to accept the fact that water is their only option in between meal times. Not surprisingly, they are drinking a lot of it now that it's readily available in the same spot all the time!! What a revelation!!

I'm sure you can imagine how many spills of various liquids have occurred in nearly every room of our house over the past 5 1/2 years until this simple change. No more sippy cups filled with stinky, old, mystery liquid found in corners, under beds, and in seat cushions. No more spills anywhere except right off of the kitchen table or off of the water cup counter.
As a bonus, Josh, my hunky hubby is drinking a lot more water from his water cup as well! Yipee!!! Lord knows how hard I work to help him along in implementing things that will make him healthier. And his water intake is one less thing I have to worry about for him.

And I know that it's kinda dumb that I'm making such a big deal out of this to do a whole post on my blog about it, but it really has been a baby step in my home-management-smarter-parenting-wife-ing quest that is making a HUGE difference. Yeah...I'm slow like that. It takes me a while.