Week by Week: 9/52 - Exercise Fiends

We've set up our little Lenten area on the piano - grapevine wreath, print, devotionals, bean jar, almsgiving jar (Elizabeth's idea, because she found some pennies on the floor). Of course, I still haven't had a chance to *actually* clean the piano, so everything's really just kind of shoved out of the way... Had to give a real life shot! All the Christmas things have been taken down, but there's still a load that needs to get boxed up and out of here.

The beans are inspiring a new attitude towards cleaning - I like to think of it as a "bribery jar..."  The first day is always the most successful, and subsequent days see varying levels of excitement depending on the child. John Paul is very incentive-driven, Cecilia not so much. And Peter... Well, Peter thinks he's entitled to put handful upon handful of beans in the jar whenever he'd like, so it's been moved safely out of his reach.

I've started an exercise system that I've been planning on getting to since Peter was born... But Lent was a good reason to actually have the discipline to do it and finally work towards healing my poor separated abdominal muscles. Surprisingly, I'm already seeing quite a difference, but that's mostly because I've let my posture slip tremendously (no longer teaching choir will do that - after years of being the posture example every single day, I'm just baby-holding, laundry-doing, dishes-washing, and all sorts of things that make standing up straight difficult) and haven't been good about engaging my core for ages. 

Anyway, I got some tension bands to use for one of the exercises - I probably could have gotten by using the random strips of fabric/dress-up toys that I started with, but it just felt so lame and I knew the kids would like the tension bands.

Well, "like" is apparently not a strong enough word. They're obsessed. Everybody has to do their "exercises" all day, and they fight over who gets which color. I suppose I should have seen that coming, since it's a set of 4. If they see me doing my exercises on the rug, they all have to come do their own exercises too, and it's hilarious. The best part is that Edith loves it, because I just set her down on the rug and do them right next to her, and she thinks it's amazing!

John Paul rediscovered a Lego set he got for Christmas and has been at it nonstop - it's one of those 3-in-1 creator sets, so instead of building one thing and being done and abandoning it, he's constantly reconfiguring and building new things. I think this is the only kind of set I'm going to get him from now on! Peter desperately wanted to "help" but is less than helpful, so I grabbed a bunch of legos and threw them in a tray for him. He's been hard at work beside John Paul building his own creations. He keeps bringing them to me, "Look at my cool station car! It's BID. I did it myse'f. Ya. I did. It has wheels on it. And it's BID."

Affiliate links below:

Tension bands  -- grapevine wreath -- print -- St. Therese devotional -- John Paul's Lego set