Parenting
Last year we did this for the very first time: we took a family vacation staycation at my folks’ home in Wisconsin just us. Not to travel for a baptism or a wedding or another family to-do–just for us to bond, be quiet, have temper tantrums in nature, and eat lots and lots of good food. Being pregnant makes everything harder for my poor kids because I’m limited in my energy and capabilities, but they were troopers and played lots and lots of games with each other and made lots of messes and kinda even cleaned them up! I actually let our oldest play with a sling shot. Rules and boundaries set in stone ahead of time, but yes, I let him just have wild fun with it. I must be relaxing as a mom. I’m learning to sit back and watch them. Watch their relationships unfold. It helps that they’re older and not just screaming at each other when frustrated, though that happens too. I can guide them through talking it out, addressing each other, and teach basic empathy skills. And their little minds are developed enough to get it. To get why we are kind and loving. Why we don’t hit and say hurtful things. Why mama is always right—okay, let’s not go too far 😉 And this little 2+ year old really held his own this year. Yes, you may have more oatmeal. Yes, you may cut with your sister’s scissors. Yes, you may that hammer. Yes, you may splash…
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I’ve been talking about my favorite audio stories for years, but I always get asked which ones for which ages? My kids are 6, 4, 2, and 21 weeks in utero and we have been Jim Weiss fans for about 3-4 years. We use them for quiet time for the oldest during the two smaller ones’ naps. We use them for car rides (long ones, too). We listen to them at breakfast to break up the fighting. We use them to augment our faux homeschoolering. I didn’t include the history ones that we love because I’ll do that in a different faux- homeschooling post this fall. We one a few dozen so this is not all of them, but a good place to start. Your library should be able to get them for you but amazon links here (disclaimer that the blog gets $.02 for any purchases you make through me) make for click click easily. Without further ado: Audio Stories birth to 2: Good Night Animal Tales First Stories to Last a Lifetime Fairytale Favorites Audio Stories 2-4 years old: Uncle Wiggly’s Storybook Just So Stories Tales from the Old Testament American Tall Tales Audio Stories 4-6 years old: Greek Myths Egyptian Treasures Mystery! Mystery! Shakespeare for Children I Said I Could and I Did 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and lots lots more. But these are always an arm’s length away from my little stinkers. Keeping me sane, one CD at a time!
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It’s another hot humid muggy soily (as in, my children will soil their clothing) Sunday morning. I am up early with the tot, then play pass off to my marathon-training husband who ran 26 miles this morning (!?!?! because he’s amazing), and doze a little. I dream of the perfect donut and sleeping forever. Did you know you could dream about sleep? You can. I haul my jiggly sore belly out of bed and semi-get ready for church. Throw on a dress and hoop earrings. Kinda brush my teeth and hair. As I pick up a hustle down the backstairs to the tunes of it’s mine and why does she always get it cascading as plaintive cries to the heavens, I think what if we didn’t have to get to church? We swap parenting again. This time for him to shower and put his legs up and for me to soothe the irrationally irate tot who wants blue mac & cheese for breakfast and insists on using a sharp kitchen scissors to trim the bushes in the driveway. They don’t need a cut. We all settle into reading about Little Bear and I sorta start a chai tea, iced. Like usual, I forget about it until the ice has watered it so down, no one would count it as mildly caffeinated anymore. We struggle the kids into their church clothes, we struggle them into their car seats, and I’m already ready to call it a day. It’s 9:56am. Mass is the center point of…
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It feels weird to be home and normal because it feels so home and normal. I was on the road for two weeks–first the Finding Your Fiat conference in Illinois, then a partial day home, then packed up the kids with my mom & sister and flew to New York to stay with my other sister and her family, then AA joined us and we all drove down to Virginia to see more family, joined by my dad, and other sister & spouse. That’s the last few weeks in a nutshell. A very run-on sentence one. I posted a lot on instagram–things like how karaoke with Marie Miller is fabulous (especially when you’re singing uptown funk with Laura), NYC cousins make birthdays so much better, and that wearing a swimsuit at Coney Island when you feel body-ugh is fine. In Virginia we not only had a mini-family reunion but got to see close family friends perform (SweetPea’s first time seeing her Godfather play a live show!). Now that we’re back home, and my life-bending hyperemesis appears *hold your breath* appears to be abated somewhat, we can actually go places! And do things! And I can cook! And eat a little! Mostly we spend our mornings playing around the house, listening to Story of the World, playing with hieroglyphic stamps, and occasionally enduring screams of shock and awe that someone disrupted their masterpiece of toilet paper carefully shredded to “feed” their dollies. AA is marathon training again but this time I’m not only…
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Britt and I met two years ago–TWO years already!–and she’s been one of my favorite e-friends ever since. She and her husband and littles live & work on her ancestral ranch in New Mexico. Aren’t you already following her on instagram? And her blog? Her eye for photography is par none and I’ve so loved experiencing the joy that her work brings to those I’ve gifted it to–my dad for one and my daughter for the other. Then she sent this print and I about died. Britt offers in life photography services for people in the lovely state of New Mexico, but the rest of us get to experience her lens through her shop! Shop with your 15% off discount “WHOLEPARENTING” through the end of July right here AND scroll down to comment and maybe win a 5×7 print of your choice. Don’t we all feel nostalgic twangs with sunsets and horizons? Maybe just me. Her smaller prints come backed on sturdy foam board that make for perfect mounting or framing. I can’t decide where I want my sunset yet. I just know I want it to be in our bedroom (which was finished and tidy and then, well, life). The mantle is a work in progress–and this little tin box holds all the love letters my sweet love wrote me while we were engaged and separated for a year–he wrote almost every day! And two special bottles of wine for us surrounded by two fav icons we found thrifting.…
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Short answer: being a working mom is NOT a moral question and it makes me crazy crazy when people say it is. Full disclosure: I’m not a working mom. I primarily take care of our three kids. I make their meals and clean them up. I drive them to activities. I read with them and help them nap (protest nap). I semi-tidy the house. I would consider myself a simple stay-at-home mom. I wrote a few years back on how I came to the decision to be at home, as a lawyer. I do work in the cracks and creaks between their busy days. I write this blog and sometimes get paid to write elsewhere. I sew organic baby clothing and sell it (when I’m not on hiatus like right now). I serve as Managing and Content Editor for Blessed is She, Catholic women’s ministry. I co-author a series of scripture studies called Waiting in the Word. These are semi-paid activities. Like a billion moms out there, I volunteer lots too in spare moments. I get to MC galas like the Radiance Gala for the Guiding Star Project and conferences like Finding Your Fiat next week in Illinois! I get to talk occasionally on SiriusXM Catholic radio with Jen Fulwiler. I get to do lots of non-mom related activities. And some weeks I do nothing but violin practice and baseball in the backyard. There’s a balance. But when a woman in casual conversation praises me for giving my daughter the great…
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