Screen time for all

“Mother!”

When the sentences stop and that’s the only word being uttered, you know already what will follow. Either a tantrum or a reasoning match where your 7 year old proceeds to tell you why he would need xy or z.

The scene described above, I’m very fortunate to say it doesn’t happen too often. So far I have been able to keep them busy with their trains, cars, occasional games (monopoly or “mens erger je niet”) or worse, gasp! Bored! And when they are bored, I get the question I don’t like much: “MOTHER! Why can’t I play the phone?” or, “But all other kids …”

So, where did my aversion and love-hate relationship with the phone, TV, tablet and the likes originate? I have absolutely NO idea! What I do know is that deep down I do think that kids should bore themselves to death, because if they do, their brains somehow gets triggered into getting themselves out of that bored situation.

Now, mind you, I am addicted to my phone too. Specifically to a game called Solitaire Tripeaks. So I understand that for the kids, it’s even worse once they’ve been exposed to a certain feel-good-instantaneously game, they want to play it again! Who would not?

There seems to not been scientific research to back up the yay-vs-nay debate on screen time for kids. But I want to challenge us all to look at not just for the kids, but screen time for all – kids and adults alike. And be critical about it: do you feel happy when you’re endlessly scrolling Facebook? I look at myself and how it affected my mood and no longer have FB installed on my phone. It is just mindless and endless scrolling into nothingness so no. I’d rather play with my kids (and be bored haha) instead.

What’s your belief system? Let us know in the comments below! 

Cooking delights

If you have been around me long enough, you might know I love cooking. Furthermore, this blossoms into my love for feeding people so the two kind of nicely go together, don’t you think?

Now, one of the things I still would love to d is go to a proper cooking class (not to mention an actual cooking school) to learn not only about flavors and what works together with what, but also to learn techniques.

One humongous reason to support this is that I almost chopped my index finger off the other day… the scar is pretty thick and visible still while this happened a good month and a half ago.

Now mind you, I don’t cook that many things well. As I’m now in a kitchen I can truly call my own, I have started experimenting again. Loving it! For example.. any type of beans? BLEH!!! Not on my watch as the texture of beans just isn’t what I can say wauw about.

Till I got a can of beans as a present (yeah, I hear you thinking.. who gives beans as present? Leave this bit alone please!! :D). And one day looking in my cupboard that was the only thing left, with a can of pasta sauce. Well then, looking up recipe it was and let me tell you. DELICIOUS! I still voluntarily wouldn’t buy the beans, but at least now when I get a can of bean I know one thing I can do with it!

Every time I was going to NYC, I looked for cooking classes I could attend. Like these at this institute. Would absolutely love to be able to learn more about good tasting food in general but also would like to know why butter makes everything better!

So that was it on cooking delights! What’s your experience with food and cooking? 

Morning routine

Are you a morning, midday, afternoon or night person? And if you are anything but a morning person, how do you cope in the mornings? Do you have a routine set out to get you out of bed every day?

I am definitely not a morning person, although I am typing this at 4:50AM this morning. There is just something about night time that gets me highly productive and capable of getting things done, that morning time just doesn’t do. But then what happened? Yeah. I got myself a couple of kids.

Now in the first two years of my life – you’ll notice that I will refer to my life as before kids and after kids – I was trained quite expertly by Justin and Bryan. Both of them were experts at getting up at 10, 1 and 4 so no matter how tired I was… well there was this little human who depended on you to get fed, changed or sang to. I did fail miserably at the singing part as it is just like counting sheep to me:

Needless to say is now that they’re 5 and 7 respectively, the morning routine still is a thing, as they need to go to school. Groan. WHY, oh WHY? Nevertheless I’m looking to a bright future  – in 5 years time we are going to travel the world for a year. They will be going to school yes. But thanks to technology, we can follow something like this. Which means creating our own routines and hours. Not being pressured into a certain box of you have to and must and absolutely need to‘s. Am I looking forward to that? Most definitely: who wouldn’t?

In any case, back to morning routine. My alarm goes off anytime between 4:30 and 5:30: depending on how rough the previous night was. Regardless of the time I get up though, I make sure to have at least 30 minutes to myself where there is no pressure that something MUST be done. You know the drill – making sandwiches or finding the last clean sock or whatever. No – my 30 minutes of solitude and time with the Lord are mandatory.

After that life can really start. So that’s it. Nothing else is routine in my life except that 30 minutes. What about you? Do you have morning routines that you can’t skip? Like coffee? Or morning-road-rage as I see many parents racing by in the morning with a set face… well might be they didn’t get their coffee yet! haha

Feel free to chime in with your two cents – what are some of your morning routines?

Tales from the crypt

Seemingly this is even more difficult oeh la la! Because my mind usually is a whirlwind of activity, which I now need to slow down in order to pinpoint at least one thing which makes enough sense to share. 

Have you ever  seen this video? It’s Mark Grungor explaining the difference between men’s brain and women’s brain. When I saw this a couple of years ago, it explained so much! “A woman’s brain is like a big ball of wire. Everything is connected to everything and is compared to the internet super highway driven by the energy called emotion. That’s why women remember everything.”

Don’t know about how it is for other women, but to me it is exactly how my brain functions. I remember most things and everything is connected to everything. That’s why the title of this message is tales from the crypt. Tomorrow I’ll delve into one particular subject and just see where it will lead me. Chances are, that it will lead me far from where I started because when everything is connected …

Hope you have a GREAT first week of March peeps, and see you here tomorrow, for more tales of the crypt.