_my here . my now_

_my here. my now_   my exact current moment. Capturing the beauty of the simple, silly, normal things of my Fridays. If you want to play along leave a link to your post in the comments. 

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My now is dealing with this! 

We kinda got into some bad habits around here. Ivy was watching far too much netflix. I got it in my head that at least it's netflix and she is not being bombarded my advertisements, but still, it was getting out of hand. Then to add my iphone and all the games on it, she was using way too much media time! 

Something had to be done. I did some googling and found a tag system for tv time and a magnetic circle chart, but those ideas didn't really speak to me, so I got my creative on! If you watched my instagram feed yesterday you would have seen all the crafting I was doing! 

Here's how it works,

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Ivy gets 4, 20 mins TV's a day and 4, 10 mins iphones a day. This may seem like a lot of time....sadly it is a huge reduction. We were in the habit of watching 3-4 shows EVERY MORNING. That is all the TV time she has in a whole day now. This amount of time works for us. 

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She gets all 8 media pieces in this pouch every morning. 

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Before she uses any media, she has to hang one of her media pieces on the little thumb tack hooks. She LOVES this part. For now I have to keep a mental note of where she is at, because when she goes to hang one piece she has so much fun she hangs them all! 

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We also have 2 reward pieces for both TV and iphone. Keith and I can hand these out when Ivy does something super awesome. Or (to be honest) when we want a family movie night and she has used up all her pieces!! 

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Obviously there are rules too. Ivy for the most part chooses when she watches a show, but she can't use 3 pieces right before bed, or in the middle of the night, or when we need to leave the house. There is still parenting going on here :) They are also used up for any shows watched in the van. THIS WILL BE HARD. But this is good for me too, to find other things to do, instead of using the TV as a babysitter. 

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How it was made,

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The board is a Ikea cork board that I had painted with chalk board paint a while back. I then took a awesome piece of scrapbooking paper and thumb tacked it to the board with gold pins I had. I busted out some script on some paper, punched it up a bit and taped it on. 

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I knew I wanted to use pics of the actual media for the pieces. I owned a tv stamp, so that was easy. And I found the iphone sketch, here. I printed it out (we bought a printer in Jan, before the wedding I was planning, it is AWESOME!) and glued the images to card stock to thicken it up a bit. I wanted to laminate the pieces, but we have no money, so I used scotch tape! Lots and lots of tape, but those pieces should last a long time. I hot glued some grey yarn to the backs of them for hangers. 

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How to put them on the board took some thinking. I decided hanging would be easier and it would make the pieces and board last longer, then if I were to use velcro or something. 

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I took about 3 hours to make.

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BUT we quickly ran into another issue with this. Another bad habit we got into. Ivy stopped napping like 9 months ago. So for Ayla's afternoon nap, when I need a break too, I would set up a little bed on the playroom floor using Ivy's couch, and Ivy would watch shows....

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I would get a break, Ayla would nap peacefully, Ivy would be in her heaven watching more shows. 

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Not cool.

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SOOO more creative juices were needed yesterday, and I came up with this,

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Ayla got a tunnel/little house system for her birthday. It is a outdoor toy (as it gets LARGE) so, since it's winter right now I thought why not use one of the little houses from the set and make a fun, REST fort for Ivy.

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Inside she has a suitcase of itty, bitty toys that she can only use when Ayla is sleeping. She has her treasure chest of pens, stickers and a note pad. She has LOADS of books that I will frequently swap out. She has her little doll bed (the one Ayla is in) and her doll bath tub. She has a chalk board wall and chalk. Blankets, pillows, stuffies and a cool flower light. 

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A perfect little rest cubby. 

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We use Keith's ipod touch as a timer. (This is also a handy device when Ayla really wants to play iphone too). It is used for all media time and at rest time. It makes a fun BOING sound, that Ivy likes, when it goes off, so it is a good transition from her device. For rest time right now it is set for 30mins. I am slowly going to increase this time over the next month to an hour. 

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Then we will all get a break.

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So this is our new system. I am hopeful it will work. How do your families handle media time? 

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FYI Blogging is going to take me A LOT longer now that the tv is not distracting my children. Be patient.

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TODAY: No plans. At all. So we will see what the day brings. An outing possibly? Keith is off to Bonnyville for the weekend, a family member passed away. The girls and I could not really make the 6 hour drive north again, so we will be fending for ourselves here. 

Comments

[val]

soo creative. love it. i read your blog while my son is watching mickey mouse clubhouse LOL. i pay someone to take him atday home so he isn't on media all the time LOL. love her rest area. brady doesn't nap lots but he rests in his room which makes a huge difference for both of us:)

[Alisha H]

We had to do tickets for Brinleigh too. between movies, Nintendo DS and computer it was out of hand. The computer time was spent on education site form school but it was still too much. This week was her first week and she's starting to get that once she's out she's out for the week haha.
She's reading more though so I'm digging that.

[Chrissie]

What a great idea! Happy Friday to you and yours x

[Christina]

I love this idea! Between my morning sickness, pregnancy exhaustion, and now having a newborn, there has been way too much tv watching than I'd like for my little man. I don't think I'm ready to dial it back yet, but I will definitely put together a system like this when he's a tiny bit older and I'm a little more energized :) Love Ivy's rest area too.

[Leah]

Cute idea! I actually have a home laminator if u ever want to borrow it.