Procrastination.

If there was a way to sing an ode to this word, I would. It is a great plague of doom around my house. My spouse is the leader of The Procrastinators. There are 2 wee minion followers that obligingly follow his postponement teachings to a T. Oddly, C complains they "never listen to what he says", but they sure mimic his less desirable procrastination techniques. My personal favorite is the: I'll do it here in a little bit. A little bit NEVER COMES.(Or comes with a giant fit, sobbing, screaming, crying, kicking, biting, etc.) So.... We we are in Boot Camp of Time Management. I must admit that this first week has been an epic failure, but the misery that poor time management has brought may have made my point for me. No video games, no movies, no actual really *fun* stuff until the mandatory items (IE school and chores) were completed. I have each a detailed list on Monday morning of what had to be completed before Sunday at bedtime.

Neither started until Friday morning. They had to cram their entire weeks worth of school into 3 days (and I planned enough for each for 5 reasonable days), their laundry, errands, and other mandatory items into Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (today).  I think they wanted to see if I was *actually* going to make them do it. Hahhaahaha Yep. Sure did. Gonna do it next week too (and the week after that, and that.. and that..). I am happy and very proud of them that they managed to get it ALL DONE by noonish. I DID add in an extra bribe if they managed to get it all done before late today. Especially since T2 had a new concept with his math that he found very hard at first. But, once they gave up procrastination and set a timer (Ok, well T1 did anyhow) she got it done remarkably quickly. If an ice cream bribe teaches them the correct way to NOT procrastinate, ice cream it is. I think they actually got a lot more done with their school with this list method than they had been previously as well. I know there are some with the "What? School, in the summer?" But, realistically, it does work better for us. There is no refresher time with restarting, no re-gearing time, no resettling into schedules and routines. I want them to enjoy the summer, but I don't want to have to strangle them either. Plus, if we decide to go somewhere or someone gets sick, we can just push it back a few days without a concern. And there are several times in the summer the weather just is too hot to do anything. But, in the spring this year, there have been several days the weather was gorgeous and we just felt like playing - so it all works out eventually. Well, mostly. They end up ahead on the mandatory 180 days per year, but too many is better than not enough.

Here, lately, 1 & 2 have been into dress up a lot. This is one of my recent favorites.