Photo-a-day challenge - Manic

Boy am I glad Manic Monday photography challenge has come to a close for me. I should have thought that one through a little more or I need to be better of thinking outside the box. That was a difficult word for me to capture each week.

But for today, the final Monday for the February Photo-a-day challenge, I captured a small image of our fridge. I left out some pictures on the top and sentimental magnets but you get the picture. What I did include were our alphabet magnets and the girls dry erase boards that presently boast their attitude chart.

Anthony and I had wanted to do something to track attitudes during two tough times in our home: morning and evening. In the morning, we're getting ready for school and they can get sidetracked, talk and giggle too long during breakfast making them late to get to the bathroom and changed for school, or just simply wake up on the wrong side of the bed and be stubborn about everything. In the evening, we're tired after a long day and can be quick to meltdowns. After trying out just a morning checklist last year and that working well, we thought this year we didn't need anything and were in the clear. Wrong.

We have been working on getting the girls to talk through their feelings rather than having voices escalate. Be nicer to one another and be more helpful around the house. The girls give themselves a checkmark or sad face for morning or evening and we talk about why they get what they get. It's rather broad, I'll admit, but we're 4 weeks in and I think it's been really helpful to them. We researched chart options and we didn't want to do a lengthy rewards chart with stickers and while our chart is very, very simple in terms of day of the week, time of day and either a check or sad face, I feel like keeping it simple for our girls is the way to go. For now. Who knows what the next wave of emotions might bring!