Life changes

I am really not a person who likes organization, lists, schedules, or anything of the sort. I like a flexible, fly by the seat of your pants sort of lifestyle. However, since having our 3rd child, I have realized that I can no longer live like that. We NEED organization in order to survive these years.

I have created detailed schedules, detailed chore lists, detailed behavior lists, and a detailed perk system for the kids. A section of our hallway is devoted to these things. When I follow them and make everyone else follow them, life if great. House is clean, people are happy and feel proud of their work, and we even have more fun and spare time! When life gets busy and I don't make us stick to the routine, then everyone is cranky, yells a lot, house is a mess, and so on. I am slowly learning that we can not stray from these lists.

A few months ago I went on an 8 week weight loss healthy challenge. The focus is more on health than actual weight loss. In those 8 weeks of getting healthy I lost 22 pounds! It has almost been another eight weeks since it ended. Wanna know how much I have lost in these last couple months? Four pounds! How crazy is that that once I no longer HAD to keep track, then I just stopped and completely fell off the bandwagon?! I have been drinking pop, eating junk, and not drinking water. I KNOW that I felt incredible when I was drinking a ton of water, and yet I still slid back into my old habits.

Something else that I have noticed is that when I stopped taking care of myself is that I became "mean mom". Though my kids have never called me that, that is how I feel. I am so much more tired now that I stopped eating healthy. Tiredness = Crankiness = a mom who yells way too much. I yell at my kids. I yell at my husband because he is yelling at the kids. It is a vicious cycle. If I am the main provider of the kids and I yell at them during the day, night, weekend; then of course they are gonna be cranky and yell and scream when dad is home and he will get cranky back because all he wants is a fun relaxing time with the family. I can place the blame on so many things but in the end, it boils down to one thing. I have not been using self control. Self control over my eating, sleeping, or exercise habits, as well as my emotions.

So, I have concluded that starting in the morning, I am going back on my healthy challenge. Since 8 weeks obviously wasn't long enough to engrave healthy habits in my brain then I am making it longer. I am making it a 21 week challenge. That will put the end just before the new year. My hope is that by then I will have created new life long habits that I will stick with.

I have also learned about a No yelling challenge. Yeah! Just what I need! With this challenge, if you yell, then you start over. If you have a rage type yell, then you start with -2 days. The goal is to get to 365 days with no yelling. For me right now, that seems IMPOSSIBLE. So, I am setting my goal as this: Go as long as I can without yelling. When I yell and start back over, then I try to make it further than before. My hope is that I will get farther and farther each time. My second home is that as a side effect of me not yelling, my children and husband will stop yelling as well.

So, here goes nothing. I am posting this publicly so that people can ask me how I am doing and help to hold me accountable. I need all the support I can get if I am going to change. If anyone wants walk beside me and do these things with me, then that would be great as well.

Links to the challenges in case anyone is interested:
 http://theorangerhino.com/about-the-orange-rhino/
http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2012/01/8-week-printable-weight-loss-get.html