Goal 1: With my son

Its the year of mindfulness for me.
My hope is that focusing on mindfulness will help this become a habit.

The first area I am focusing on in being mindful with my son.

Baby boy will be 11 months old next week. He is such a happy camper. I can honestly say that I am super blessed by him, his sweet-tempered-ness (did I just make that word up?). His lack of fussiness. His giggliness and curiosity. He has these funny little things that he does like, instead of looking at flshing lights and knobs on those musical toys, he likes to look and find where the sound is coming from. He also gives giant open-mouthed kisses. He is constantly observing his surroundings and puts everything in his mouth. This also makes him a very un-picky eater so far.

 

In being more mindful with this bundle of joy, I want to make each interaction count. I want to not only be physically present with him, but mentally and emotionally present with him.

Confession: ever since I got my Iphone, I have been addicted. Addicted. Seriously, I think I check it every 10-15 minutes to see what the newest facebook updates are or if I got a new email or am just bored and want to play *sigh* Goldminer or Words with Friends.

The thing is I do this so much in front of my son. He knows my phone and loves to look at it and play with it, presumably because thats what he sees me doing all of the time. I also spend a lot of time on the computer seeing as we keep a laptop in our living room where we sepend most of our time. (somewhat thankfully, we are having a screen issue and its unusable. therefore writing this from the desktop in another less convenient location)

(although I may not be able to stop myself from pulling out the camera on the phone for moments like these)

I do not want his earliest memories to be of watching momy looking at her phone, computer, tablet, tv etc, instead of looking googly-eyed at him. He is looking to me for approval, for praise for comfort, and how long am I making him wait while I finish doing this or that online. And when he looks at me, my attention is elsewhere. What message does that send him? This is going to be a challenge for this generation of parents. Being in the moment with our kids, which is sometimes boring, in this fast paced, instant gratification world.

So I want to decrease my screen time in front of my baby. Perhaps this means I will just be online less often. And so be it. Maybe my screen time now will be more deliberate and less wasteful, as it usually is, since I plan to limit it to nap time, bedtime, being a passenger in the car time (I have other issues that require me to look at anything other than the road when a passenger). And I know I will not be perfect at this. And really do not want it to be my spouse and I on a device at the same time instead of with him. One at a time maybe? It will be a challenge for us.

And increase my "present" time with my son. Give him the gift of undivided attention. And me the gift of being aware of my sons growth and achievements and development.
He needs more of this:

He is getting so big so fast. Just in the last few weeks he has moved from crawling, to crawling EVERYWHERE, to figuring out how to escape my barrcades, to crawling over people and objects, and chasing kitty, to pulling himself up to him knees and now to standing and up a stair. I do not want to miss these things while my head is turned the other way every time.

 

 

 

There are fewer greater gifts than that of "presence"