Hello there! We are well into our second challenge for The Enjoyment Project, and I am just now taking the time to post about it here on the blog! Things have been a little bit crazy and hectic in our lives (you can read more about that in this blog post).
I hope that you are signed up to receive the challenge notification via email so that you can be up to date on when the challenge starts and how it is going! I try to send emails out the day before the challenge starts, and then one or two emails throughout the challenge (1-2x a week). I never use your email address for anything besides the challenge! Please go to this page to sign up via e-mail.
You may be asking yourself…what is this challenge she is speaking of? The Enjoyment Project is a project that I designed to help me build habits in my daily life that focus on enjoying my children! So often I get caught up in the daily life of taking care of my children that I forget to pause and just enjoy my children. The Enjoyment Project is a year-long project with nine different challenges that last 21 days each.Back in February, we finished Challenge #1: Greet your child with a smile and a huge every morning when you first interact with them.
Last week, we started Challenge #2: Write down one way your child brought you joy that day. I wanted to dedicate a blog post to this challenge (even though we are already part way through it) so that I can have all the Challenges collected in The Enjoyment Project posts. Which, just in case you are looking for all the posts related to The Enjoyment Project, you can find them in the tab at the top of the blog labeled “The Enjoyment Project”. Please feel free to share this with your friends and family!
Challenge #2: Write down one way that your child has brought you joy that day.
Sometimes I arrive at the end of the day and my mind is so consumed with what I did or didn’t get down. I forget that during the day I also interacted with three tiny humans. I was responsible not only for the laundry and the dishes and the toy pickup and the food prep and the blogging, but I was also responsible for getting these three precious lives through the day “successfully”. “Successful” might mean many different things to different people, but to me it means that I guided my children through the many aspects of the day: going to the bathroom, washing hands, sitting properly at the table for mealtimes, not screaming at each other, reading a book the right side up, putting away the toys…the list goes on and on. Sometimes I get so focused on the list that I forget to just ENJOY those moments with my children. At the beginning of the year, I started writing down one way that each of my children brought me joy that day. This has been a total game changer in our home. First, I am looking ALL DAY long for the little things that just fill my home with joy. Second, I am intentional to write it down and will therefore remember it on the harder days. As a little bonus, I have also been telling the kids the way they brought me joy that day. Let me tell you…their faces LIGHT UP when they hear what they did that brought me joy. And the following morning, they are eager to repeat the task that brought Mommy so much joy the day before.
There are many different ways to record these “joy moments”. I have a gratitude journal that I use to write down the joy moment. Some might write it on a scrap of paper or a sticky note or a journal that you are writing to the child. You could do it on your own or with your husband. You could all discuss it at the dinner table every evening. You could encourage your children to also find a joy moment for their parent or sibling. Be creative! The options are endless! I have found that setting an alarm on my phone for some time after bedtime helps me to remember to record these moments, but I also love to record it in the moment that it has happened so that I don’t forget by bedtime. I write down one thing for each of my children. Full disclosure: sometimes it’s easier to find a “joy moment” for one child than it is for another child! However, the habit of writing down the joy moment really gets easier the longer I do it.
We may be 10 days into Challenge #2, but it’s not too late to join! Please feel free to share your “joy moments” with me and the rest of the community who are doing this challenge- use the hashtag #LetsEnjoyOurChildren. And don’t forget that if you have a friend or family member who would love to jump on board, share this post with them so that they can get signed up!
Your testimonials and stories of how these challenges are working out in your house BLESS ME SO MUCH! I often feel like I am totally incapable of leading a challenge of this size and impact, but I truly believe that God has asked me to implement this first in my own home, and then share it with you. Your encouragement and the fact that you are in it with me mean so, so much to me!
Let’s Enjoy Our Children!