habit making//habit breaking

The house is really quiet right now, except for the dueling audiobooks coming from different corners and a little girl's voice, singing a soft song to itself in the next room.  So I guess it's not very quiet, ha.  Maybe I should have used the qualifier "comparatively."  My oldest is off schooling, and my middle child is off with his Baba, picking up a new adult-sized baptismal font for our parish at a farm store about an hour away. 

Someone I follow on Instagram posted some items from her gratitude journal this spring, which inspired me to record what I'm grateful for over the past few months.  I was looking over my first few thoughts this morning.  The amount of change that just the recent months has brought to our family staggered me.  And--what's more--I could see the long term changes made in the past few years, and the growth that we've all had in the past weeks.  My husband facetiously calls Charlotte Mason "St. Charlotte," but I credit most of the positive changes in our household to my embracing her philosophies on habit training and home education.  And prayer!  Lots of that is happening here, too. :)   But had I not begun recording all of the things I'm grateful for, I would not have seen the progress.  I need to be more intentional about jotting something down daily.

We're still imperfect, as the (metaphorical) storms during this morning's lessons show.  But when the storms grow weaker and shorter, I see growth and progress!  I'm not great at preventing things before they begin (and the time for that has passed with this child); nevertheless, the child is growing toward taking himself into his own hands.  We are making a habit of self-control, together. 

This summer we broke some bad habits, too.  One was a really big one that I'm excited to put behind us!  But new ones crop up every day; it's like a game of whac-a-mole.  If you have any suggestions about how to keep little ones from saying forbidden words or throwing their socks behind the couch, send help!


I wrote the above yesterday right after our school work had finished for the day.  It was a pretty good day!