This year has been a year of many firsts for us.
As Josh has gone from 3 to 4, he has been more and more able to do things for himself, though sometimes he still wants us to do them for him "just because". While we were planning on having our second child before now, I think it will be a real blessing that Josh is so self sufficient before she comes.
This was the first year that I had enough riding students to have not one, but two weeks of riding camps. Since I was going to be so occupied those two weeks and immediately before in preparation, I wanted to make sure I had some good quality time with Josh to make up for it. This year, we decided that Josh was old enough (and big enough) to invest in seasons passes to out local theme park Carowinds. It was perfect! He had never been before because he wasn't big enough for many of the rides. It is half rides and half water park. Between the two, we had an entire day to do nothing but play together. I think this made a tremendous difference in the amount of impact my having had to do the camps had.
Josh also got his own first pony over the summer, thanks to a friend of mine. Little Toot is a little Shetland who was rescued out of an abusive situation. He is small enough that Josh can lead him and take care of him all by himself. He is the most patient pony I've EVER seen. He's a little cautious, but he will stand and let Josh crawl all over him as he learns. As Josh gets too big for Toot, I'm sure Bree will be ready to take over.
Our other big first this year was Disney World. Since I just did a whole post on that, I won't go all into that again, but all the practice standing in line at Carowinds really helped prepare Josh for that aspect of Disney.
This was also the first year that Josh was really aware of Christmas and all that goes with it. My wonderful husband decided to try to use the Santa myth for good behavior. He even found a website called Portable North Pole where you can create a personal message for your child from Santa. While we had been dealing with a few issues, once Josh got a personal message from Santa, he thought he was set and his behavior plummeted! Finally, I told him I was taking one of the toys he knew we had bought back to the store and he shaped up.
Lessons Learned
Lesson learned from Santa: kids under 5 need to see it for themselves. They need concrete proof that something is going to happen. They won't believe that they won't get it until they see it going back to the store. You don't want to have to wait until Christmas Day for them to see that they aren't getting what they wanted and ruin Christmas Day (and not improve their behavior until then). So, next year, we will be doing Santa for fun as a reward after he has behaved, but use a toy he can see (that you don't mind taking back) to help with good behavior.
There were some things that were not firsts, but that we can still learn from.
For the second year, I did a full time office job on a temporary basis. While I enjoy the work, we realized that I really wasn't adding much income and was adding a whole lot of stress to the whole family by not having any time to take care of things or spend with Josh. So in the future, if I do work to earn income, it will have to be part-time or from home.
Speaking of finances, this summer I had more students than normal and picked up another school horse. But then most of them stopped for the winter and I still have all these horses to feed. I had picked up a couple of youngsters to train when the economy was better, but now, no one is buying. In the future, I think I will only keep horses that I can use for lessons and personal use and maybe one for training, but not have so many that I don't have guaranteed income from.
After a few trips this year, we figured out that driving, while cheaper, also requires more planning ahead and may require an overnight stop halfway to the destination to give everyone a break. Let the kids spend the afternoon running off their pent-up energy so they will sleep that night and be ready to sit in the car again the next day. Also, once the kids are old enough to watch full length movies, a DVD player with a car charger is a GREAT tool! One note: if you have someone in your family that gets motion sickness or otherwise does not do well on ling car trips, go ahead and invest in plane tickets. While you'll have to spend more money, you'll enjoy your vacation much more if everyone is healthy for it.
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