Parenting
While I’m parenting at a sub-par level. The mornings are long and seemingly without end but then lunch & naps start around 11 so it means my nap is nigh at hand too! During these mornings, my children have experienced a few of their new favorite things while I lay around with them, occasionally running after the toddler who*still* wants to throw things into the toilet. 1. Baseball cards. SuperBoy will sit with a bundle for over an hours, carefully examining who he has, what positions they play, their stats, and then work out a paper-version of fantasy baseball, setting them all around the kitchen floor. We get the cheapies one and a time from Target for good behavior, but we have about 100,958 so really he’ll play with any of them. 2. Sticker books. SweetPea really destroys these by ripping out all the stickers at once and then putting them anywhere but where they belong in the book but I’m all lalalalal looks like you’re having fun! about it. This Curious George one was a hit. 3. Dollhouses. We have three. Yes. Three. One is this mansion one that my dearly deceased Godmother left to me. It’s gargantuan. The second is one my dad built in the 70’s for his (then) two little girls (and is the tot’s now). The third is one recently acquired because someone survived swim lessons for a year and was usually pretty cooperative (I bought myself a few boxes of these to celebrate my survival). This third one has been hours…
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Let’s say you also have the crazy morning. The small kids not yet in school, but very much awake all-too-early kind of morning. The dragging your pregnant body down the stairs to prepare oats and toast kind of morning. It’s a blessing. It’s a stay-at-home mom life that really is idyllic in many ways despite or due to the sibling snapping, screaming, and overall protests. More syrup, please, every time. One very special brightening to my morning has been the Rise & Shine gift box from GlobeIn. The premise of this company is to curate handmade goods from around the world, send you the sweet box, and you not only get to enjoy the beautiful artisan work, but most excitingly for my children, you get to read the story & see a photo of each artisan!! You can shop the artisan box subscriptions or the benefit basket (think for your loved one, college student, or yourself!!), or the stand-alone items that you can’t live without like this or these or THIS. Use code “wholeparenting” to save $10 with a purchase of 3- and 6-month Artisan Box subscriptions. Jenna curated our Rise & Shine box and it’s heavenly! We celebrated when ours came, and it included almond butter, which is currently half off (peanut allergy household rejoices at almond butter that tastes so good!!), a hand-woven basket, block print trivet, olive wood spatula, and olive wood spreader. And then, of course, oatmeal tasted so much better with the amazing spatula & trivet that I used as a hot pad! I…
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I wish I could write comprehensively about pregnancy, loss, infertility, secondary infertility, and death of a child. Not that I wish I had endured all of these, but that’s a basic range of the female reproductive experience. It’s our sisters, our friends, our acquaintances. It’s the ladies we see on the subway that we don’t know struggle, and the ones sharing their journey with the world. I wrote about the thin space of being pregnant a few weeks back. Instead, I can only write authentically about my experience, one that’s ordinary and run-of-the-mill, and, in many women’s eyes, ridiculously lucky. I experience fairly textbook cycles. Charting and planning and abstaining when avoiding to conceive has “worked” for us insofar as our kids haven’t been surprises. When we’ve been hopeful for another pregnancy, the baby’s been there. It’s my reality, and my journey, and I feel guilty often about it. The guilt goes two ways: for my ease of conception and carrying to term, and for my sharing anything about the struggle of hyperemesis–all day sickness//all night. It’s like shut up that you’re pregnant again combined with shut up that it’s hard to be pregnant because, see part 1, you’re pregnant again. There’s no way out of feeling bleh about both spaces, so please forgive me if both annoy the heck out of you. That being said, I can share my/our trepidation about another pregnancy, given those parameters. Fear of pregnancy is something I hear from women a lot. Women I don’t know well, women…
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Since we expect my pregnancies to render me nearly non-functioning, it’s a family affair when the all-day sickness kicks in. For the last few weeks, my husband, parents, and sisters have been driving my kids around, feeding them, cleaning up after them, playing with them, bringing me ice water, bringing me random food that rarely tastes as good as it sounds. My friends, organized by my sweet friend Anna!! have been bringing dinners by and saving all of us from nachos (again). And yet, we are surviving. Here are my tricks. 1) Lower low expectations. I put my etsy shop on vacation once I found out I was pregnant. If I can slide up into my chair to sew, great, I have some family project to work on. If I can’t (and that’s been more the case), I’m not under pressure to somehow make it happen. Getting together with friends for playdates or me-dates or us-dates isn’t an option. I miss the company and my kids do too, but as I get light-headed and it isn’t always safe to drive, we’re finding little ways to keep our house an entertaining place for them. The house is messy and dirty. A lethal combo. But AA did laundry this weekend, and I wiped the counters after breakfast today, so it’s not as bad as it could be. Maybe you’re in the place of pregnancy. Maybe you can cut back on taking on extra projects at work, if possible. Maybe those volunteer positions at your…
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Who are these youngsters?? Okay, we’re coming up on seven years of marriage at the end of this month. I simply cannot believe it’s been so long but so quick. My friends Laura and Nancy and I were talking about our anniversaries that are all coming up soon and the vows we took when bam! we realized our next scripture study should center around marriage vows. We brought on a superstar to write on the fourth vow: Jenna Guizar, creator & founder of Blessed is She. She’s simply remarkable and one of my fav people in the world. Monday May 16th you can download your e-study guide right here for Waiting in the Word: Our Vows. We cover the four vows used in most Christian marriage ceremonies: 1) Love and Cherish, 2) Promise to be True, 3) For Better or Worse, and 4) Until Death Do Us Part. I wrote on being true. And it took a turn I didn’t expect. On our wedding day, I thought being true meant not having an affair. I’ve come to learn it that for me it means being invested in a rich intimate life–three kids later, even through extremely hard pregnancies, his long work hours, blah blah blah. There’s always a reason to not be emotionally and physically available to each other, and honestly open to treating the other with attentive love. We hope you’ll join us. It works a lot like our other Waiting in the Word scripture studies: you get a study with…
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Things that smell weird: crayons * packaging tape * pens * money, especially coins * fridge * water Things you think before you eat: how will this feel coming back up? * did I throw up the last time I tried it? * does it have way too much taste like those salty saltines I just had and lost? * if I try it, and lose it, can I try it ever again–aka do I want to ruin this food for me for life? * how far away is my throw-up bucket or the toilet? Things you think before you fall asleep: should I take some vitamin 6 + unisom or will that wake me throwing up? * maybe the morning will not come and I get to sleep for two days * will tomorrow smell like today? * I probably have to cancel with that thing for tomorrow–why did I schedule anything? — As I lay on the ground, watching my kids play and make fun big messes, I think how long will I feel like this? and how can I make it through the morning? But usually by lunchtime I’m okay for a few hours and I rally and change poopy diapers, and drive people to lessons and school and make dinner. Once dinner rolls around, I’m down for the night, marveling at how upright I was just hours before. My husband shoulders a lot. My family helps tremendously. And the older kids are old enough this round to get it, to an extent. They’re nurturing and loving and don’t complain when I…
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