Top Ten New Year's Resolutions for Stay-At-Home Moms

Time comes at a premium for busy stay-at-home moms. Mothering is not a nine-to-five job. It is a 24-hour commitment from which there is no projected retirement. It is the noblest of all professions.

As the New Year ushers us into the unknown, there are several resolutions that busy stay-at-home moms ought to consider.

1) I WILL ACCOMPLISH SMALL TASKS DURING TELEVISION COMMERCIALS. It is important for stay-at-home moms to take time for self-enrichment by watching their favorite television programs, whether they are documentaries, comedies, medical dramas, or any other genre of wholesome entertainment. However, the average commercial break is about four minutes long and can provide numerous opportunities to conquer small cleaning and maintenance tasks. For example, you may determine that during the next commercial break, you can clean off the shelf on which the television resides. This can take four minutes or less, and you will have accomplished something by the time the regular programming resumes. The trick here is to select SMALL areas of the house to improve. By "small", I mean one shelf of a refrigerator, the top of the coffee table, or a small corner of the room. Small accomplishments add up to big improvements. Cleaning, of course, is not the only option for using commercial breaks wisely. Put your children's school clothes in the washing machine; put JUST the silverware away; make the sandwiches for tomorrow's school lunches. By adopting this practice, you can actually use television as a vehicle for accomplishment!

2) I WILL MAKE BATH TIME "MOM-TIME". Sometimes, the only breaks that moms get is the time they spend in the bathtub. It is crucially important to make these rare times of isolation as luxurious as possible. Take the time to prepare. Place a portable CD player on a shelf away from the tub and turn on your favorite music. Take a small empty margarine container and poke a hole in the center of the lid with a needle. Insert a stick of your favorite incense into the lid, light it, and blow it out. (I am particularly fond of "Sandalwood". Its sweet, woody scent is intoxicating!) Place the homemade incense holder near the tub, within view. Now, turn your attention to the bathwater. As the water fills the tub, put five sprays of perfume directly under the faucet. Soak until the incense stick no longer produces smoke, about twenty minutes. When you get out, don't dry yourself off immediately. Instead, rub baby oil all over your body while it's still wet; the oil will lock in the moisture that's on your skin. Only at this point should you dry off and clothe yourself in your warmest, fluffiest robe. Bath-time can be vacation time if you plan well.

3) I WILL LOVE MY CHILDREN LIBERALLY, SINCE I MIGHT NOT HAVE THEM TOMORROW. When your children come home from school, hug them tightly and greet them with a smile! Chat about their day with them. Maintain interest and eye contact. Children never outgrow affection, and your outward expressions of love can help them feel psychologically secure. Make them laugh, even at your own expense. Cook favorite meals with your children, assigning them simple tasks to encourage their participation. Make a couple of bags of microwave popcorn and watch family-friendly films with them. If you can't afford to rent movies, take advantage of the Internet. If you happen to have a good D.S.L. connection, take advantage of some of the websites that offer free movie downloads. They can offer hours of free entertainment and are especially useful to families who live in rural areas away from movie theatres. Set time aside to play games with your children, preferably after all homework has been done and supper has been eaten. Encourage your children to customize their bedrooms, based on themes of their own choosing. To this end, actively participate in decorating, gently suggesting your own creative ideas to turn their bedrooms into relaxing, personalized sanctuaries.

4) WHEN I HAVE DISAGREEMENTS WITH MY MATE, I WILL BE CIVIL IN THE PRESENCE OF THE CHILDREN, TO REDUCE THEIR STRESS LEVEL. Children have enough to face in their everyday lives without their mothers adding to the pressure. Kids have to deal with peer pressure, homework, problems with friends, and in the case of females, tremendous pressure to be dangerously thin. Arguments between parents, or even between mothers and stepfathers, can put undue stress on the children. For their sakes, consider calling a truce when they're home.

5) I WILL REDUCE THE FINANCIAL PRESSURE IN MY HOME BY ADOPTING SMALL CHANGES FOR THE PURPOSE OF SAVING ENERGY. Economic hardships may be lurking just outside your door. Your kids may feel the financial pressure as they see news reports of company layoffs and shutdowns. They might feel a vague sense of panic. More money is better than less money, and can ease some of the strain. Saving energy, even in small increments, can translate into having more money to use after the utility bills are paid. Here are some suggestions: If you have an electric hot water tank, consider switching off its breaker when everyone goes to bed for the night. (When the family is asleep, hot water isn't being used, and is therefore unnecessary.) Adopting this practice could result in the hot water tank only operating half the day. Just be sure to turn the breaker back ON in the morning, about thirty minutes before people in the family will need hot water. Switch from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs. They last longer and use less electricity. Invest in electric blankets and use them to stay warm instead of heating the whole house at night. With regard to your activities in the kitchen, propane is expensive. If you cook with gas, consider reducing your propane usage by investing in a two-burner electric hotplate to use for some of the cooking. As for heating the house, consider supplementing electric or gas heat by using a cast-iron woodburning stove. Firewood can be purchased in bulk or even attained at no cost from a cabinet shop wishing to rid itself of unwanted scrap. Besides getting heat out of the woodburning stove, the use of propane or electricity for cooking can be eliminated altogether by preparing meals on top of the woodburner while it's lit. This can be accomplished by removing the eyes on the stove and frying food in disposable aluminum pans. With a little bit of patience and experimentation, moms can become quite adept at cooking on a woodburning stove. Inside the woodburning stove, paper garbage and even discarded clothing can be burned to keep the house warm. Because it's being burned, this saves room in the garbage cans and results in less trash in the landfills, which is better for the environment as well!

6) I WILL ENCOURAGE MY CHILDREN TO EAT HEALTHY SNACKS. Eating nutritious between-meal snacks can jumpstart your children's energy level and elevate their mood as well. Oftentimes, snacks translate into both physical and psychological comfort. Too much sugar can be detrimental to children's health, but the appeal of a snack is often its sugary nature. Are there healthy snacks that taste great? There certainly are! Here are a few examples: Peel a red apple and cut it into four pieces, making sure that the core is eliminated. Spread creamy peanut butter on each piece. Press chocolate chips gently into the peanut butter. The apple and the peanut butter are healthy, but the chocolate chips make the concoction TASTE like a snack. Sugar-free instant pudding topped with sugar-free whipped topping is another option. Sugar-free fruit-flavored gelatin is tasty as well, especially topped with sugar-free whipped topping. Even canned peaches can be topped with sugar-free whipped topping. Another classic favorite for children is pizza! These are easy to make and take very little time. Purchase a package of English muffins. Take an English muffin and cut it half horizontally. (Some muffins are already pre-split this way.) Put the muffin pieces on a cookie sheet or toaster oven pan. Bake them at 400 degrees until they're crispy and slightly brown. Remove them from the heat and spread ketchup on them.

Then sprinkle them generously with grated pizza cheese. Top them with three slices of pepperoni or other favorite pizza toppings. Put the muffins back into the oven at 400 degrees and let the cheese melt. When you pull out the little pizzas, step out of the way to avoid the stampede of children. Corn chips and mild salsa are another healthy snack to use when children are craving something crunchy or salty. What can you do if your children want drinks? Try equal amounts of red Hawaiian Punch and apple juice. (Don't tell the children that you're sneaking in the juice. The drink will still be red and they won't know the difference.) If your children enjoy carbonated drinks, make a glass of equal amounts of orange juice and lemon-lime soda. Do your kids eat vegetables? If they're anything like mine, they eat vegetables about as often as there are solar eclipses. Don't worry. You can still encourage them to indulge in their vegetables and ENJOY it. You just have to be sneaky about it! It's easy. Pour a coffee-cup of vegetable juice. Add two heaping teaspoons of chicken or beef granules. Stir the granules into the vegetable juice. Microwave the mixture on HIGH for four minutes. When the microwave stops, remove the cup. Stir the hot, creamy mixture and give it to your children as soup! You can even put miniature crackers in it.

7) I WILL NOT MAKE UNDUE COMPARISONS BETWEEN SIBLINGS. Never compare one child to the other to make one child seem favored above the other. Children are absolutely unique. Temperament and even birth order are major factors that contribute to a child's personality. Kids are as unique as fingerprints and should not be encouraged to be carbon copies of each other. Instead, keep a keen eye for the interests of your children and gently steer them in those directions. I have a child, for example, that has demonstrated an undeniable talent for digital photography, cinematography, and animation, so my husband and I invested in an inexpensive digital camera that takes both still pictures and video. I encourage my child to experiment with the camera and am both fascinated and impressed by her creativity. I'm encouraging her to run her own photography business when she gets old enough. She doesn't enjoy reading for pleasure, so other than for homework, she avoids it and I don't pressure her to read more often. In contrast, my other baby reads everything she can get her eyeballs on, including my e-mails! She's like a sponge, zealously absorbing almost any text that she encounters. I'm encouraging this particular bent by letting HER read to ME at night. At first she was intimidated by books that had several chapters in them, but she got over that fear quickly as she became interested in them. My two girls are as different as night and day, but I suspect that at some point, their unique talents will begin to complement each other so they can eventually collaborate on a few creative endeavors. In the meantime, I'm careful not to compare them.

8) I WILL KEEP MY BLOOD IRON COUNT UP SO THAT I WON'T BE TOO TIRED TO TAKE CARE OF THE CHILDREN. If you have a problem with anemia, or low blood iron, you know it that it can lead to daily fatigue. I had anemia for years, but I couldn't take iron pills without feeling sick to my stomach. Thankfully, I found a way to get all the iron I need per day WITHOUT taking pills. I simply eat cereal in the mornings that have 100% of the iron that I need during the day. There may be more brands on the market, but the two cereals toward which I gravitate are "Total" and "Product 19". I prefer "Product 19", since I favor corn over wheat. Both cereals are tasty, though, and they don't produce the unwanted side effect of stomach upset. My youngest baby laughed at me at me at first when she saw me eating "Product 19" and I claimed that I was "taking my vitamins". Now, however, she likes the cereal herself and enjoys the fact that she doesn't have to take chewable supplements.

9) I WILL NOT BUY INTO THE MODERN ASSERTION THAT STAY-AT-HOME MOTHERING IS NOT A "REAL" JOB. People who work outside the home for a paycheck often assert that raising children isn't "real" work. It's a fallacy. If stay-at-home moms didn't do the housework, for example, the family budget would have to increase to make room for the hiring of a housekeeper. Mothering is tiring, too, especially before children are old enough to start daycare or school. Secular humanists may have a problem with mothers staying home to raise their children, but God created the family in the FIRST place, and He doesn't have a problem with it. The Bible supports a woman's decision to stay home. Titus 2:5 of the Amplified Bible charges women to "be self-controlled, chaste, HOMEMAKERS, good-natured (kind-hearted), adapting and subordinating themselves to their husbands, that the word of God may not be exposed to reproach (blasphemed or discredited)". It's perfectly alright for women to stay home and raise children! The Greek word used in this scripture is "oikourgos" and means "working at home". Stay-at-home moms know that there's always plenty of work to be done!

10) I WILL ENCOURAGE MY CHILDREN TO PLAY EDUCATIONAL INTERNET GAMES. There are many sites on the Internet that make skills fun and easy to learn. If the sites are appealing enough, children won't even be aware that they're learning! Games that address particular weaknesses (such as adding fractions or telling time) can be instrumental in improving a child's confidence and giving her valuable practice. The Internet can be a valuable tool in a young child's education, one that can help hone a child's skills and let them have fun at the same time! However, how can a stay-at-home mom deal with two children who are fighting over one computer? In my family, we stumbled upon a viable solution. From the beginning of the hour to 29 minutes past the hour, the computer can be used by my oldest daughter. From 30 minutes past the hour to 59 minutes past the hour, the computer can be used by my youngest daughter. This way, each child can use the computer for up to thirty minutes at a time, and there's no argument over whose turn it is.

These resolutions are just a few suggestions for stay-at-home moms. There are many more possibilities, of course, but the above comments can get you started. Enjoy your children and have a blessed year!