Lists

photo by mianolting.com

Do you write lists? Shopping lists? To do lists? Goals lists?

Sunshine loves lists. It struck me just how much when in the space of a week she had either written or made mental lists & even suggested that I make them over several different things. If it was just one, it wouldn't have been so remarkable, but by the time she was suggesting it to me, I thought, this young lady loves order & organisation!

The first was a mental list she made in terms of clothes she was going to wear for the week. One of the challenges of moving houses between Mum & Dad is ensuring they have the right clothes, especially uniforms when school is on. Sunshine is particularly organised and said she had chosen what she was going to wear everyday, folding her clothes in neat piles set out for Monday - Sunday!

Wow that is super organised & totally self initiated!

The next lists she made were a menu and shopping list. This was out of necessity post dental work that made eating 'normal' food difficult. Having a hunk of metal cemented to the roof of her mouth in pre braces work up made eating anything hard a struggle. To overcome this she suggested we write a menu list for the week to make sure she had soft foods (that wasn't just soup, ice-cream & jelly) for dinner! Who's the Mum here?

To go with the week's menu planner she wrote a corresponding shopping list to buy the ingredients needed for the dinners she had chosen! And put both on the fridge door as a gentle reminder!

Lastly but certainly not least was a suggestion from her to me to write a pro's and con's list to help with a decision I was making. Over dinner that happened to be just Sunshine and I, all her other siblings were other places, she maturely asked how my day was. Besides general stuff, I told her I had a difficult decision to make. We were candidly chatting about this when she asked;

"Have you tried writing a list of all the good and bad things for that?"

Far out! My 11yr old was counselling me on how to use lists to their advantage! How cute I thought and tried to remember if I had ever suggested the same to her before. How did she know to do this? Intrinsically practical! So over dinner we went through a verbal list of all the positives and negatives together. I was a little overwhelmed at her lovely objectivity which seemed way beyond her years. Sometimes our children delightfully surprise us, this was definitely one of them.

Priceless!

Cherishing my daughter's love of lists

Cherishing when they initiate organisation and order

Cherishing precious, memorable moments together