Day 3: Say Yes and No
If you haven’t read it yet, see Tuesday’s post about thisย two-week pre-holiday minimalist parenting bootcamp. Now that we’ve written our more/less lists and tackled the most challenging to-do list item, it’s time to say yes and no.
It’s taken me a while to get to where I can say no to structured activities without feeling guilty. Truthfully, I do still harbor some guilt as the word is uttered, but then when I flip through a week of calendar and see very few chauffeur/ring-leader/volunteer jobs, I heave a pleasant sigh of relief. The biggest harbinger of busy work I have most recently kicked off my list is playdates. Even the word itself bugs me because it signifies how much more we schedule our lives than we did when I was young. It’s not that I never say yes to playdates, but we’re doing more like one or maybe two a month compared with the five or six I was previously managing.
I’m not suggesting you always say no. Especially if the activity is one that you are only saying no to because you are afraid of failing, then you should try it out! Having a child who loves to try EVERYTHING life has to offer has gotten me over my urge to say no out of fear
My “Say Yes” list this holiday season includes carol singing {GULP} and, as we learned yesterday, sewing. We have also been wanting to try a babysitting swap with our friends who have three young’ns, so I closed my eyes, swallowed hard, and offered to go first. Verdict? It went well! We bit off a bit more than we could chew by taking a walk to the hardware store in the chilly drizzle, but otherwise they played well with each other, and our friends got to attend a three-course engagement party dinner in peace.
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| Is it cheating to give them snacks and let them watch a movie? Heck no! {note: wandering baby not pictured. He was probably unloading our toilet paper from the roll right about then} |
Now you give it a try. Check out the list of invitations and evites in your inbox and items on your to-do list and decide whether they make sense for you.ย Say yes to events that make you happy or excite you and say no to events that drain you. Then let me know what you sign up for and let go of!