Kidding
I wanted to share with you all my faves I’ve purchased over the last year. With four kids and a postpartum healing that just won’t let up, going the actual store during the day is a nightmare. Amazon has been my saving grace on that front. Going with the best two behaved kids to Target still resulted in crying//spittingup//frantic nursing//dragging toddler body on the ground, so online #foreverandever Linen Romper: I’m wearing this right now. I kinda live in it. Yes, I look like a polygamous sect wife gone wild, but hey, it’s awesome. Stretchable shorts: It’s called having four kids. Yes, I’m not embarrassed that my shorts are stretchable. Okay, maybe. But I LOVE these. I ordered a tad larger to be forgiving and they fit like a glove. So either my estimation of my own size is off (likely) or they run close to the bum. Epsom Salts: I soak in this salt almost every day. It’s really good for our aching bones, people. Naty: These diapers are the very very best. They never leak and they’re 100% compostable and the pull-ups work like a charm for potty trainers and little fat babies alike! Electric Kids Toothbrush: it plays a mash up of American kid songs and one we don’t recognize. BUT THEY BRUSH THEIR TEETH WITH THEM SO PRAISE! Lunchbox for the fall: After a whole school year of putting my son’s lunch in this velcro contraption that was half fabric, half wipeable, I had it. This…
Read MoreMy little love, I watch you walk, run, and laugh with that mouth holding two adult teeth and marvel. How did the baby I never stopped holding and staring at become this bounding, bouncing being? They say the years go by so fast, but the days are long. Days with you have always zoomed by with baseball cards, audio stories, narrated baseball one player full field games, and periodic fast tickle laughs. I wouldn’t know any other way. Your little sisters and brother look up at this face of teasing, teaching, and tenderness. Not in any particular order. You can poke and prod like any pest but usually draw them into your world of games with invisible endless twists and turns. You look with an open heart. And share whatever you have in yours with theirs. When your dad and I watch you race your bike or pitch a curve ball, we rejoice at these signs of your growing and reaching toward what brings out that wide mouthed stretched eyes laugh. I also cry a little. Because I’m a mom. And want you to always be my baby at the same time that I want you to become more and more yourself. Our prayer for you this year: that you continue to grow in patience for our shortcomings and your siblings’ purposeful aggravations. May you feel the lightness that only love can bring into your daily mood. May you explore. May you experience God and seek His will in your…
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I dug up this oldie photo from around the time I started the blog. Who are these babies?? I just don’t even know. Would you help me out? I’m trying to sort through my work here and figure out how to do things better! Two second survey here. And one of you lovelies who takes it will be gifted a $100 amazon card as a token of my appreciation!! Also, a few places to connect with my newsletters: if you want to learn more about the mothering journey journals, the link is here. If you want handmade whole parenting goods discount codes & first peeks, the link is here. If you want to be subscribed to the blog, the link is here. (Tell me you’re subscribed already, people!!) That’s it & that’s all. Happy Saturdaying!
Read MoreHow do we do this? I just talked to a girlfriend who’s moving for her husband’s job relocation. With kids from college-aged to kinder. How do we make girlfriends as adults? I can tell you how many times I’ve been in a conversation where a woman has revealed that making adult female friends is the WORST. And I mean, worse than a spray poopie diaper or being out of chai tea latte mix at home. Friendships blossom over shared experiences, challenges, and triumphs. Sports team mates. Roommates. New Moms groups. Going to the same church. But as we enter into adulthood and leave the comfort of the easy-to-meet people school environment, it’s rough. For me, I went through a very awkward period of zero friends when we moved home from Vegas and I was looking for a job. My law school friends dispersed around the country, my college friendships were slim and hadn’t been tended to throughout law school, and my new work colleagues lived far away from where we were living. We set up our first home in a little condo in Minneapolis and spent nights cooking, talking, walking along the river. We joked to my brother that we were “couple’s shopping” in looking for friends who were married that we both liked. But in earnest, we were hoping for friendships. I was hoping for women who understood both my work and being pregnant, which seemed to be exactly zero. I slowly met women at church, but only by approaching them after…
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Summertime and the living is . . . still a wee chilly up here in Minnesota. I mean, we’re no Christy or anything but it hasn’t burst into full on oven-door-open living. I put on my new jeans and the white linen shirt the other night. I wanted to feel like a human being, not a milk-making mama bear. It wasn’t forty minutes in to this novel experience that the baby directed an enormous poop right at the shirt, the toddler spilled his dinner plate on the jeans, and my earrings (yes, I PUT ON EARRINGS) got caught on my mom-bun and yanked ever so staunchly on those tiny fly-away hairs that are evidence of re-growth and postpartum hair biz. Right back into the bathrobe I zoomed. Linen It’s breathable and lightweight, but more forgiving in its flowing than a knit cotton. I gathered a bunch off off the inter web and then kept nearly all of them! The buttons make the shirt, as far as I’m concerned. Thank you for a little wooden button, designers! White one & pink one & butterfly one (for my sister) & brown one. All three of mine have been put in the dryer on accident and made it out relatively unscathed! Stretchy jeans Oh, as I confessed, I haven’t packed away my maternity jeans just yet (she’s a mere 5 months!) but that was, in large part, because I only have one pair and my non-maternity jeans were either too high waisted (not really ready to dive back…
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Are you also an affirmation person? I need that verbal pat on the back–well–ask my husband–maybe often? But more keenly, as a mother, I’ve wanted to have external validation that I’m doing it all correctly. I’m doing it all right. I’m making the best choices I can for our kids and for my health. I want it from my doctors and care providers. I want it from my own mother. I want to hear it from my community. My sense of validation starts to pull apart, seam by seam, as I grow deeper into my role as a mother. The time I felt worse and worse postpartum but had multiple care providers tell me I was fine, and it turned out my uterus was infected (a rare condition!) and I needed to be admitted to the hospital right away for IV anti-biotics. The time I felt judged as a wannabe homeschool mother when we knew, just knew, that school was best for our oldest. The time I knew that I had to step back and let my husband parent or it would kill our marriage. You see where the grounding erodes away? Where the hems are pulled apart? When my validation for decisions came from O U T S I D E of me. When I was counting on those around me to make me feel affirmed. Affirmation from within would make a difference. What kind of questions could I ask myself, inform myself on, pray for grace & guidance on? How could I find…
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