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I suck at this. SUCK. Is that too strong of language? I really struggle with keeping our house tidy much less clean. It’s not because I’m pregnant. It’s not because I have three little kids. It’s because I have life-long bad habits. So, of course, I’ve read a ton of books about spacial awareness and organizing and cleaning and having a “system.” Gretchen Rubin’s Happier at Home, Charles Duhigg’s Power of Habit, David Eaglemen’s Incognito, Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and a few others. I do love pop psych books! I’ve learned a few tips and tricks from these books, but mostly I’ve learned by observing myself. I made myself my own anthropological study. Sprawling around your house while insanely sick and pregnant gives one ample time to observe oneself and the last ten weeks of pregnancy, I observed a lot from my various supine positions, occasionally on the {dirty} kitchen floor, often times in the open hallway between the kids’s rooms to met out judicial proclamations from on-low, and even from the bathroom, noting my crowded cupboards and clean half-folded towels on the floor under the sink, surrounded by dust-bunny colonies. Here’s what I discovered: I have no urgency for putting things away AND I have no place to put them away even if I wanted to. There. That’s the secret to a clean simple space: put things away into their place as soon as humanly possible. So you must first have a particular spot for your things. For kids’ artwork, chewed…
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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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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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