As many of you know by now, I have two children: a 3 1/2 year old daughter named Ella, and a 1 1/2 year old son named Judah. They are both blessings to my life, and I am forever grateful for them; that being said, there are days like today when I just wanna scream and walk out. Ella is in the lovely temper-tantrum, not eating phase (joy) … she picks and chooses when she wants to behave/listen/eat/do as she’s told, etc…and apparently, she didn’t choose today. AHHH! The not eating thing bugs me more than pretty much anything because I know she’s hungry-this girl has got to be THE most stubborn, hard-headed little girl ever…she’d rather starve than eat something I’ve made for her (and I’m a really good cook in all seriousness so it’s definitely a her thing)! She’d be all too happy to not eat all day then drive us nuts asking for candy or cookies or whatever (which she rarely get anyway).

I’ve tried almost every suggestion that’s ever been thrown my way and at this point, I’m more than just a little frustrated. My pediatrician’s advice? “When your toddler doesn’t want to eat, you can just supplement with pediasure.” EXCUSE ME?! The kid isn’t eating but let’s give her pediasure which she enjoys so she feels rewarded for not eating and simultaneously you expect me to spend that obsene amount of money to feed her a DRINK everyday? I don’t THINK so…

Feel free to share your frustrations, concerns, suggestions….

Tags: #mama, #SAHM, domestic rockstar, eating, frustration, habits, kids, mommyhood, moms, motherhood, parenting, toddler
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Soooo….for the last few weeks, hubs and I have been working towards a schedule for the kids that will also allow for some “us” time after they’ve gone to sleep and before they wake in the a.m. This week started off AMAZINGLY. Got them to bed Sun, Mon, Tue w/o any issues, they woke Mon, Tue, Wed with no whining, they sat together and ate breakfast, we had some outdoor play and speech study time, they ate their sandwiches and veggies at lunch, made it through the days with very few tantrums, etc…and I have to admit, we were feeling pretty dang proud of ourselves… *cue the ominous tones now*

Well, Wed night rolled around and we did the same things we’ve been doing: nighttimes meds (asthma and allergies-joy) followed by storytime, “Jesus loves Me,” prayers, and cuddles. We said goodnight, stepped outside for a few minutes and it began…our 3 yr old daughter starts kicking at the walls and hollerin’ some version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” at the top of her lungs, despite the fact that she shares the room with her 19 month old brother, who then began trying to join his sister’s recital by screamin’ alongside her. Siiiigh. We had a chat with them, walked out of the room and downstairs, and waited. They continued for a bit then fell asleep (hooray!).

Around 2 a.m., I hear the all-too-familiar sounds of a baby boy trying to wake himself up. I walked into the room, snuggled him, got him a cup of almond milk, gave him some kisses and laid my drowsy boy down. I walked across the hall into our room, adjusted the heat, got situated in bed, laid down, and it began again (siiiiiiigh). We are living with my in-laws right now (my M.I.L. is disabled so it’s a help for all of us as I’m here to care for her during the days and she LOVES having the babies around), so my M.I.L offered to snuggled J-man for a while so I could get some rest. Half and hr later she brought him back to his bed (I, of course, still hadn’t managed to fall back asleep) and as I hear her get to the bottom of the stairs, he starts up AGAIN.

Hubs has been sleeping through everything to this point, when I poke him in the ribs and ask for advice. What does he say? “Tune it out, he’ll be fine…” GAH!! Soooo not possible for me! Jman continues and after 5 mins, hubs decides to check on him and give me a break. Lol…you can imagine how well this is gonna turn out as Jman sees his Daddy as his biggest and best play-thing. Hubs walks Jman around the room, coo’s at him, then makes his mistake and moves to sit with him. Lmbo…cue, PLAYTIME! After a few minutes of that, he heads back to our room with Judah in hand.

Hubs decides to check Judah’s ears when he realizes he’s got some build-up around his tubes. We gave him some motrin and some of his drops and he spent about 20 minutes crawling and climbing all over everything-and hubs managed to fall asleep (talk about an exhausted man) so I flicked on BabyTV which got J-man’s immeadiate attention and we snuggled up. As he began to calm, I started to remember why night-time feeds were always my favorite despite my exhaustion: he started to pat at my face, coo, babble “mama” and a few of his other words, offer me kisses, let me snuggle into him … I finally got him back to bed around 5-drowsy and full (thank God above for Gerber puffs) and he drifted off quickly. After I laid him in his crib I spent a few minutes standing in the doorway of my kids’ shared room remembering those sweeter moments and when I laid down, my “mommy-heart” was full and I slept like a baby (lol).

Both babies woke just before 9 so I was utterly exhausted all day but…it was actually a nice reminder of how much I adore my babies, how wonderful being a mama really is…#joysofmommyhood

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So, I’m coming off a two-day break from my kiddos (they spent the last 2 nights with my parents) and it occurs to me that everytime the kids are away, their Daddy and I seem to remember how to play.

In parenthood, it’s so easy to get caught up and lose sight of how important your partner is to you, and even how important YOU are to yourself b/c you become so focused on how important you are to your children. It’s a slippery slope and I think it has a lot to do with the facts behind the ever-rising divorce rates. Before you become a parent, you start off as your single self…you come and go as you please, take care of yourself as you see fit, spend your money as you wish, work and play on your own schedule, etc… After you get married, you have to learn to adapt your life to include your partner. You have to mix your schedules, plans, goals, money, etc… and find a way to ensure that you’re both satisfied with the way things are going. And then you decide to have a baby and EVERYTHING changes again. You don’t get date nights anytime you want, you have to plan them around what your children need and when you can find and afford a babysitter in ADDITION to coinciding with the limited time you have with your partner.

Children are one of life’s ultimate miracles and each and every one of them are a blessing. That is not to say that parenthood comes easy. It seems to be especially true for mothers that we forget how to put ourselves first. As if, should we decide to go and have our hair done or a mani/pedi or something, we face a guilty conscience over the money or the time away from our kid or just because it’s something we’re doing for ourselves. Whatever the reasoning, you have GOT to push past the guilt sometimes and do SOMETHING for yourself. Do something for your partner. Do something for yourselves as a couple.

I’ve struggled with this so much since I had children. I want to do everything right and I put so much pressure on myself to be what I would consider perfection as a mother that I let mySELF kind of slip away. I quit listening to my own music (which had always been a HUGE part of my life), I quit PLAYING my music (I play a couple of instruments, none of which I’ve even picked up since I had my first child), I quit reading for myself (BIG difference for me as I am a self-proclaimed book-worm), I quit getting my hair and nails done unless I do them myself, I quit even taking any time out just to get in my car with the windows down and music up to just DRIVE. It was a mistake. I lost sight of myself and when you do that, how can you expect this person that you’re sharing your life with to continue to appreciate you when you’ve become nothing more than a shell of your former self?

Luckily for me, I have an INCREDIBLE husband who has taken the time to listen to my fears/doubts/concerns and truly UNDERSTAND them, supports me by helping with the kids so that I can do little things for myself at time, and stands by my side as I am beginning to chase my other dreams (my first and biggest dream was always to be a mom and it’s always going to be the one I treasure the most). He’s helped me see how important it is to take time for myself and he NEVER let me slip away. He reminds me of who I was and who I am and how easy it actually is to let the two sides of myself join. He has been the most amazing support system I could’ve hoped for. I truly don’t know what I would do without him. Because of him I am going to be returning to school in the near future to finish my degree, I am already a wife and a mommy, and he has reminded me that above all, I am still ME. I am still the woman that he fell in love with; the one he vowed to spend his life with.

Now we take time for one another. At least twice a month our parents will switch off taking the kids for a night or two and he and I get to go out and just be US. None of this IN ANY WAY means that I have one single regret about having children. My children have not put any kind of damper on my life. In fact, they have filled my life with more joy that I ever could have imagined. But it’s still important to have time to just be a woman. Where would anyone be if we all forgot how to just be a woman? Take the time to do something for yourself and MAKE the time to do something with your partner. Remember what you love about each other before it all slips away and you end up another statistic and your children lose the security they need the most. Put your spouse first at least some of the time and everything falls into place (at least it does when you’ve got the right kind of marriage-when you’re both fully committed).

Tags: family, home, marriage, mommyhood, moms, motherhood, motherhood stay-at-home-moms
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Long nights are definitely par for the course when it comes to babies, unless you happen to be one of the few parents whose child sleeps well from the start. I have two children but when my second came, I was surprised by how much harder it was dealing with the separate sleep patterns of two very different children. My daughter came first and she was sleeping through the night by about four months old-she was in the middle of potty training when I brought my son home, however, so I expected it to be a bit of a struggle; however, I had NO idea what was coming. And that’s a very important thing to remember when it comes to children: you cannot know what’s coming. You can plan and that’s definitely a smart choice, but you have to leave yourself a margin for change.

My daughter – thankfully – continued to sleep well through the nighttime. We only have two bedrooms but we knew better than to put our newborn in the same room with our (then) two-year old at night. Besides, I was breastfeeding, so it made since to keep my son in the room with his father and I. But that wasn’t enough, as it turned out. He had a very difficult time … breastfeeding did NOT come easy and despite medications and every bit of advice I could find, even my OB told me that I’d have to start using the formula after about 6 weeks b/c he wasn’t getting enough nutrition from me. I was DEVASTATED. He’d been actually co-sleeping in his little nook in the middle of our bed since we came home from the hospital. As it turns out, my daughter was a bit jealous so that was something we weren’t prepared to deal with, but we took it as it came, making a BIG, excited deal about putting glow-stars on her ceiling and gushing over her big girl bed…so she began to really enjoy sleeping in her room again.

My son was still another story. He wasn’t sleeping well even from the beginning-most children will give you at least a 2-3 hour repreive between nighttime feeds, but not my son. Nope. He wanted to be fed immeadiately upon opening his eyes, so needless to say the switch from breast (always ready) to formula (takes time) wasn’t exactly easy. Add to that the fact that he then ended up being switched to a different formula at least FOUR times before-at 6 months-we finally found out that he has a milk allergy and you can probably see that I was a walking zombie in no time. It felt like he NEVER slept and he was ALWAYS unhappy.

Shortly after we found out about his allergy, we had to take him to an ENT specialist as he and his sister were both having recurring ear/sinus infections. Our daughter ended up having tubes places in her ears, as well as having both her adenoids and tonsils removed immeadiately followed (literally, the next surgery scheduled that day) by her baby brother who had the tubes placed and an agressive removal of his adenoids. That first 10 months after we brought J home was an unbelieveable strain. So little sleep, so much sickness…but after their surgeries, things started to get better.

J moved into the room with his sister and began sleeping for about 6 hrs before waking and wanting another cup of “milk” (almond milk) before he went back to sleep for another 5-6 hours. It was still difficult b/c his sister was finally potty trained and would sleep through the night but being over 2 she had no need for quite as many hours of sleep as J. They would go to bed around the same time, then I’d be up with J in the middle of the night for just a while (of course, he’d go right back to sleep whereas my “mommy brain” would start spinning and cause me to take an hour and a half before I could drift back off) and then shortly after I’d fall asleep myself, my daughter would be up. And actually, it’s still a bit like that to this day-and my daughter is now 3 1/2 and my son is almost 1 1/2. Whenever J is having tummy issues or gets even the slightest bit sick, I know we’re in for a fight. My little girl just wants to be cuddled, get her meds, and sleep whenever she doesn’t feel well-even when her asthma is flared up, she just wants me to hold her a while, give her a breathing treatment, and let her go back to bed. But J? No way. It’s almost as if he gets angry about getting sick. He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t eat, he barely drinks, he cries almost nonstop without much comfort. The only solution is to quite literally hold him all day. The instant I try to put him down, it starts all over.

The joys of a  stay at home mom? We never leave our work. Ever. It’s quite literally a 24 hour job every single day. The kids always come first (as they do with most every mom you ever meet…it seems to just be built into us) regardless of what else there is to do or how Mommy feels. There are no sick days, no vacation time, and no day to just roll over and sleep in (nope, not even the weekends) b/c the kids aren’t going to do the same thing. So what do you do? Simple. You just keep going. Because the only other choice is to just give up and that’s not fair to your babies. They didn’t ASK you to give birth, or to give up your job, or to NOT give up your job if that’s the case. You don’t get to just decide to QUIT being a mom b/c it gets a little hard. You learn to be honest with your support group and hope that every now and then someone can lend a helping hand. And in the meantime? You JUST KEEP GOING. That’s absolutely all there is to it.

Kids are screaming and you wanna scream back? You lose your mind and think you wanna slap them or hurt them? Then you put those kids SAFELY in their baby-proofed room, close the door for a few minutes and CALL SOMEBODY ELSE. You do NOT, EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, hurt your child. You don’t ignore them, you don’t refuse to feed them or change them, you don’t leave them on their own, you don’t abandon them, you don’t take them into a dangerous situation/place, you don’t lay a harmful hand on them. EVER. Do you understand me? If you wanna feel your heart break as a mother, read about ANY OTHER MOTHER who has STUPIDLY harmed or killed her own child. They always claim exhaustion or say they just couldn’t take it anymore. IT’S NOT AN EXCUSE!!! There is NO excuse for harming a child!!!! PERIOD!!!! Grow up, get some help and take care of your children. If you CAN’T handle them, then go to DFACS and turn them over sot hat they can find someone who WANTS them. Soooo many people who WANT children more than they want air to breathe and are unable to conceive. If you can’t envision yourself as a mom, then do NOT bring that baby home…put that sweet child up for adoption and give them a better life than a mother who doesn’t really want to care for them.

That is not say that every woman who places her child for adoption is just some wreck who can’t handle a child…placing a child for adoption is a deeply personal choice and one you have to make with a level head. I’m not speaking to the women who make a concious choice to place their child for adoption b/c they KNOW it’ll be best for the child. I’m speaking to the others. The selfish, self-absorbed women who just don’t think they can do what it takes to GROW UP and be a REAL woman. To be a mother. I’m speaking to the people I described in the paragraph above-the ones who consider harming their own child. Babies are innocent. Toddlers are innocent. PERIOD. They do not KNOW what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s frustrating. It’s up to you to teach them, to guide them, to HELP them. Children should never suffer at the hands of someone that they trust. If you EVER have thoughts of harming your child, PLEASE, listen to me…put that child in their crib or bed or someplace they will be SAFE while you call someone for HELP. PLEASE. Just walk away from the anger. As moms, we all know it can be frustrating when you haven’t slept or showered or even THOUGHT about yourself and your child is screaming and crawling all over you. It’s exhausting. But it isn’t something the child should be PUNISHED for b/c IT IS NOT THE CHILD’S FAULT. Children don’t come with a manual and they aren’t automatically programmed like a robot to be turned off or on when you want them to. PLEASE do NOT EVER hurt your child. I am begging you. Please. Put them somewhere safe, and call someone. Anyone. If you know you can’t take it, then call the police. Call DFACS. Call a friend. ANYONE. And let that child go somewhere SAFE.

EVERY SINGLE BABY AND CHILD DESERVES TO BE SAFE AND LOVED AND CARED FOR AND NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT BEING HARMED.

Tags: domestic, domestic rockstar, family, kids, mommyhood, moms, motherhood, motherhood stay-at-home-moms, parenting
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Ahhhh, the joys of motherhood…there are truly too many to count. However, there are also the not-so-joyous moments: a sick baby, a sick mommy (especially as a S.A.H.M. b/c they don’t have any choice than to push past their own illness in order to care for their children every day), tantrums, picky eating (or not wanting to eat at all), speech or other developmental delays, rainy days trapped indoors, looming work deadlines (working mothers have to worry not only about their children when at work, but also about work when at home), problems at school, bullies (a monumental issue that you canNOT ignore), trouble sleeping (for baby or for parents), and a million other things we won’t get into right now.

When I was a new mom, I found myself stressing out over every little thing. Every time my daughter cried, I felt like I was failing her somehow. As if-by being a “better” version of myself-I could actually prevent my baby from crying. It was an unreasonable amount of tension to deal with and I was doing it to myself! I couldn’t figure out how to balance my time, my exhaustion, my housework, and still be “the perfect mommy.” Can we say unrealistic???

It took some time but I finally found what I needed. I paid very close attention to my daughter and let the housework slip (not completely or anything but I gave up the notion of have the perfect home) in order to see what HER needs were first and foremost. Once I figured out her schedule a bit, it was much easier to find times to do the dishes, the laundry, the shopping, etc… It was important for me, however, to learn that “perfect” is entirely unattainable for just one person. You have to let go of the notion that you can acheive “perfection.” WHO defines perfection in your world? Only YOU.

For me, I had to learn that I couldn’t keep myself , my daughter, and my home immacualte. I had to let something go. So, I’ve learned that it’s okay not to wash the dishes as soon as they’re done…I can let them go until naptime or until the kids are playing happily together. It’s okay if I don’t vaccum the floor every day…twice a week is enough. Dinner doesn’t have to be ready precisely at 6pm…it’s okay to wait until my husband comes home from work at 5 to begin cooking (giving Daddy time with his kiddos). Kids cry and whine and throw tantrums REGARDLESS of what you do…it’s just a fact of life. If I don’t wake up until the kids do, it’s okay to feed them cereal sometimes rather than insisting upon waking early even when I’m sick or exhausted in order to make a hot breakfast every day. It’s okay to be that parent who has to punish my child even in public…no need to stress about the looks from passersby when I know I’m doing what’s right. Children have to have boundaries and they have to be clear and CONSTANT. The t.v. isn’t an evil source of man that will destroy my child’s brain cells…it’s okay to turn on BabyTV or some other educational program (or every one in a while, even just an old-school cartoon) so that the children can watch for half an hour while I check email or blog or return phone calls.

You have to stop insisting upon perfection. Strive for what is important to YOU. Understand that-sometimes-you WILL make a mistake. And that’s okay…you just fix what you can fix and move one! If you happen to let the dishes go for too long, then get in there, get caught up, and move on! Same with any other housework. If your child gets keyed up and you find your sanity starting to slip away, just take a deep breath and go on about your business. If you yell (not something to be taken lightly if it’s happening frequently), then you stop, apologize to your child, explain the situation, and move on-trying not to let it happen again.

The best thing you can do as a mom is LEARN. Find what works for you, your child, and your situation, and just go from there! Don’t compare yourself to other moms or even to what you originally expected of yourself. Take comfort in other moms who’ve been there. Lean on your spouse for support or, if you’re a single parent, then turn to your other friends/family. EVERYONE needs a support system. As it’s been said, “it takes a village…”

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