Archives for March 2014

This year, for the first time EVER, I planned out my goals for the year, and then decided to assign mini-goals for each month. It has kept me moving in the right direction, kept me trying the things I’ve been putting off for a long time, and kept things fresh by adding a little bit each month. And of course, blogging about it gives me the accountability I need for motivation and perseverance.

At the beginning of each month, I have 3 new habits to implement as best I can. It usually takes me about 2 weeks to get the hang of the new habits, while still trying to remember the habits started in previous months.

The resources I’m using for each month are:

1) 12 Steps to Gentle Parenting
2) Goodbye Chaos, Hello Peace 12 Essential Habits
3) 10 Gifts of Wisdom (affiliate link) (doing the first gift: Faith: creating hearts deeply centered on loving God and a life formed by habits of Faith)

So, what’s in store for April?

1) Breathe: consciously focus on enjoying your children

After starting the habits of slowing down, listening to my children when they speak to me, and trying to speak with a more gentle tone, now it’s just natural that I can enjoy my children more.  I’ve already seen this in moments when I could have been stressed out about something (usually a huge mess), but I chose to ignore it, and just sat with the boys and was available to them.

I found a list of 200 Ways to Bless Your Children With a Happy Childhood, and I plan on trying a few of these this month in an effort to have more FUN! I’ll let you know which ones we end up doing! (Of course, Easter will provide lots of fun and joy!)

2) Go to bed at a decent hour and get up early
I have been dreading this one. Ever since I typed it back in December. How can I possibly go to bed early? What’s a decent hour? Will I still be able to get my blogging and music done, or have some ME time?

To help me put this into perspective, I need to remind myself why sleep (starting before midnight) is important! I struggle with anger and impatience…could this be partly because I go to bed too late?? This question alone warrants an experiment this month to see if regular sleep helps me to be more patient.

How about overall physical health? Does going to bed earlier help? Dr. Mercola says:

Get to bed as early as possible. Your body (particularly your adrenal system) does a majority of its recharging between the hours of 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. In addition, your gallbladder dumps toxins during this same period. If you are awake, the toxins back up into your liver, which can further disrupt your health.

In the same article, “Want a Good Night’s Sleep?”, he also recommends not watching any TV (and I’m assume no staring at smartphones, either) for an hour before bed.  This is a huge lifestyle change for me. As of the past year, my bedtime routine looked like this:

• Put boys to bed
• Computer/iPhone/Kindle time
• Sugary snack
• More media
• Brush teeth, etc. around 11:30
• Get in bed, check emails one more time, prayers, asleep by 12/12:30.
• Kids wake up anywhere from 6:30-8.

Ok, how embarrassing, but that is what every night looks like around here.  There is more to life than media!! But, what could my new bedtime routine be, then? The following are just thoughts; I will be experimenting all month with a combination of:

• Start my bedtime routine right after I put the boys to bed (I’m always tired when I put them to bed…why not try to go to sleep?) I don’t know, that sounds boring!
• Relaxing shower
• Read magazines, hard-cover or Kindle books, not blogs, tweets, status updates, etc.
• More prayer time
• Needle felting, cross-stitching, or practicing piano
• Visiting the local Adoration Chapel
• Go to the gym

Now, hand in hand with going to bed early will have to be getting UP early so I can have some quiet time before the boys wake up. (Another dream of mine!) Plus, the gym down the street from us is opening in April, so that’s another motivation to get up in the morning; however, in order for that to happen, I will need to go to bed at a decent hour!

Ok, I’m starting to believe this is going to be a good change. I’m sure you’re curious how this is going to pan out…believe me, I wish I could look at my life in 30 days and see myself more happy and healthy because I’m getting enough rest!

3) Bedtime Prayer: Bless each child individually

This used to be a habit, but this is another tradition that we started with our first-born, got irregular with the second, and almost forgot about it with the third. Well, it looks like it will be part of our life again with the fourth!

All of our boys (well, not the baby yet) all sleep in the same bedroom. I sit in a rocking chair, usually nursing, and we say prayers, and I sing songs until everyone is asleep, or until the baby needs to be moved to his crib (haha, I mean, our bed!) Thinking about this, I wonder if I should do the blessings right after prayers. Some nights, the baby is already asleep in the other room.  Maybe I can use that opportunity to let the boys talk to me about whatever is on their hearts, and then give a blessing.

I do want their last moments to be as comforting and loving as possible. I want them to feel secure, knowing that we love them, God loves them, and that they are each a special boy with a future of unknown possibilities and potential!

I wish you a happy and holy Easter! God bless you and your family!

Ok, so I thought that giving up certain online time wasters would free up some time for more spiritual reading during Lent. At first (meaning the first 3 days of Lent) all went well.

But then, what did I do?  I became active on Google+, I joined three Catholic blogger groups there, and spent WAY too much time reading and thinking about blogging.

Insert headache here.

Then, I started looking up public domain and copyright laws, and I started to wonder if I have to wait 35 more years until I can post the songs I want to share with you.

Insert frustration here.

I started researching my “niche” to see if there are other Catholics who blog about homeschooling, music, and their Catholic Faith. That’s when I started to find all these amazing sites with hundreds of songs, tutorials on how to learn Gregorian chant, and professionally done videos and error-free sheet music.

Insert second thoughts here.

And this made me think: WHY am I starting this blog? Why now? WHAT do I have to offer to the online world that is unique?  WHO do I think I am, anyway?

I think I’ll tackle that last question first. I think I have answers to that one.

I’m Erin McFarland. I’m happy as a wife and homeschooling mom, but I’m also a mother who struggles with patience with her kids. I’m a pianist who’s out of practice, but I want to get back into the musical space. I’m a learner. A doer. A dreamer. I have high ideals, and I’m prone to depression when I can’t get close to them. (Yeah, I’m a perfectionist.) My emotions get the better of me – often. I’m really sensitive; always have been – just ask Sr. Mary Germaine. I have a deep faith in God and powerful love for the Church and everything she teaches.

Faith: that’s what holds me all together.

I want to make this world a better place, and I feel strongly that I will somehow do this with music. Maybe it will be as simple as teaching my own kids (and maybe a handful of other families) the hymns and chants of ages past. Or maybe I will one day be helping interested parishes across the country to transition from “On Eagle’s Wings” to “Adoro Te Devote.”

Insert the grace of God here.

That brings me to my other 3 questions about why I’m here on this site.  I want to help other families (especially those who have little experience with Latin) learn traditional hymns and chants so that in 15 years, the next generation of Catholics will prefer beautiful, traditional church music, and even insist that their choirs bring Gregorian chant back to its proper place in the Mass. There are already some inspiring people working tirelessly on this. I’m still figuring out what exactly I’m going to do to help this cause. I need more prayer time. Less Google+ and Facebook.

My brain is overwhelmed, and it has been hard to sit down to write this post. Maybe I’m just stalling a little before I tell you how my mini-goals went, or maybe there has been too much on my mind, and I needed to let some of it out.  I hope you didn’t mind the longer-than-usual introduction.

Before I think of anything else, here are the mini-goals for March that I attempted to add to my daily life:

1) Live It: Make sure that what your children see in you is what you want to see in them.  This is actually funny for me to read again…did I really think I could suddenly do everything right? Haha, wow. (Note: In reality, I was supposed to use a checklist every night to see if I used a gentle voice, tender touch, and showed more affection to the kids.)

Well, I never pulled out the checklist…printables and me are just not a good fit…I always end up wasting printer ink! Ok, negativity, go away…I did give out more hugs, and that was part of the plan, so yay for more love!

Insert positive thinking here.

2) Leave the Kitchen Clean at Night and Prepare for Tomorrow. This was mostly already a habit of mine, so this was easy. I washed the stove top more often, and the kitchen was usually left pretty clean at night. And even though I didn’t sit down at night to plan for the next day, I would mentally prepare like this:

“Hmmm, ok, tomorrow is Wednesday. School day. Mike (my husband) will be working from home, so I’ll have to keep the kids downstairs. Hmmm. We have meat and veggies in the fridge, so I’ll be able to think up some combination to eat tomorrow. Ok, now I just need to prep the coffee maker, and then I’ll be ready for tomorrow.”

I don’t think this was the type of “planning ahead” that I was supposed to do, but I realized that we don’t do too much that needs planning for, anyway. I think this habit will be more useful when the kids are older and have more outside-the-home activities.

3) Keep a prayer list, and pray for those intentions at meals or bedtime.  I didn’t do this everyday, but more days than not, so I’m happy. We will work on being more faithful to this habit in the future.

If you made it this far in the post, leave a reply, or “like” it, and I’ll add you to our prayer list as a thank you for taking time out of your precious day to spend time with me. I appreciate you. Together we can change the world, one Catholic song at a time.

Insert gratitude and big dreams here.

God bless you and your family.