My Mommy List

This is a list I started sometime in 2007, loooong before actually becoming a mother was to be. I've added a bit here and there and I'm sure more will come with time, experience and Pinterest (gotta love it) but I wanted this list to encourage me once I became a mom and serve to hold me to my pre-mama standards. I fear getting wrapped-up in the day-to-day grind and the struggles that come along with parenthood...that I will stop remembering to cherish the joy. I want to remember to live in the moment and leave my children with positive lasting memories and joyful times that will shape who they will be as more than wee people.

I am interested in what special things other moms to do celebrate parenthood, celebrate your child's personality, encourage and motivate your wee one, establish tradition, etc. So here is what I have so far:

• Make Mickey Mouse pancakes
• Leave love notes and words of encouragement on the bathroom mirror, lunchbox, pockets, etc.
• Have picnics on blankets
• Put on legendary sock-puppet shows
• Pick strawberries straight from the field
• Go fishing from the pier on the sound at the beach (a memory I have with my granddaddy before he passed away)
• Engrave his/her initials in a tree
• Plant a tree for each child and watch it grow through the years. Come back and take pictures with the tree each year as they grow up.
• Have a select "mommy & me" day each year that we devote to doing something special together
• Make sure there is a special "daddy & me" day, too.
• Travel frequently and make it educational
• Catch fireflies in a mason jar
• Read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" each year on Christmas Eve
• Have a special Santa tradition
• Pray together every morning and every night
• Read together before bed, every night (Goodnight Moon will be a staple...so many happy memories curled up under my Nana's arm while we read this book together)
• Sing at the top of our lungs
• Go on a scavenger hunt
• Have a watermelon eating contest in the backyard, and a seed spitting contest
• Play board games and card games around the family table (many of our best family nights were spent around the table with a deck of cards)
• Have a camp-out in the backyard. S'mores, a campfire and stories are a necessity
• Stay up and watch a meteor shower or solar eclipse in sleeping bags in the back of daddy's truck
• Dance in our pajamas
• Be okay with being messy sometimes, like drawing faces on marshmallows and blowing them up in the microwave
• Teach them how to cook
• Make homemade ice cream together several times per summer
• Kiss before bed, every night
• Eat around the dinner table as a family as often as possible
• Teach them to have a heart for charity, to serve others, to have empathy and sacrifice (our time, toys, talents...)for those less fortunate

I'm sure the list is full of endlessly great ideas...I'd love to hear some.