Outgrowing Motherhood?!?

I've come to a couple conclusions lately about motherhood in the later years. This is not the result of my own short five years of mothering either.

First of all, as much as we all may want to escape our mothers' nagging, hovering, or any other annoying little thing that mothers do while we're growing up, that doesn't completely disappear because we grew up and moved out of the house or in my case halfway across the country. They still worry, they still stress about what we're doing and how we're doing. My parents have never been hoverers or helicopter parents at all, but they express their worry and concern here and there about things. 

Second of all, after you get married you go from one mother to two mothers. Now you have your own mother and your spouse's mother doing all that worrying and mothering stuff :)

Third, even as much as we may try to push them away during those trying, adolescent years, you're never too old to need your mama. As an adult, it has always surprised me all the times the best medicine would just be talking to my mama. Even though it may seem like a child never needs their mama as much as they did in those early years, I think the runner up for the next stage in life when we need our mamas the most is when we begin our own parenthood journey.

So I guess my final conclusion is as mothers we never outgrow motherhood and as children we never outgrow the need for our own mothers.

Thankful Post Round 2

So I'm awful. I've been working on this post for about a week which is why it's the 21st day of the month and I am now a full 7 days behind on my thankfuls. So here we go with round 2 of my thankfuls.

Thankful #8: Our dog, Bettis. He is nine years old today. Nate got him for our first Christmas so he has pretty much been with Nate and I since the beginning. His health has not been the greatest for about the last six months so I'm hoping this isn't our last celebrated birthday with him :( .

Thankful #9: I realized tonight I only have three more classes with my college freshmen class. Even though I took on teaching the class for some Christmas money and resume building, I have really truly LOVED teaching the class. It was such an awesome reminder of what I enjoy about teaching. So even though it definitely helped with the Christmas funds the enjoyment it gave back to me for a profession I was worried I was losing my passion for was really probably the biggest reward of taking on the extra hours and commitment these past three months.

Thankful #10: Home. I can't even begin to express how excited I am about going home in just four weeks. I haven't been home in almost a year, and the homesickness I've experienced in the last year really surprised me. It's crazy how you're in such a hurry to grow up and move on, but then you hit points later down the road where you really just want to go home to the people that  truly know and understand you and love you for all your good and crazy. Sometimes even though we're independent, grown people there's just something about the comfort of home that no other place can replace. So four weeks and I'm coming home!!!

Thankful #11: Modern day medicine and medical technologies.  I recently wrote about my aunt facing breast cancer. She had surgery on Monday for it and today her pathology reports came back negative, meaning they did not find anymore cancer!!! They caught it early and now it's just the road to recovery. Again, thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers.

Thankful #12: Health and wellbeing:  This is something I truly thank God for everyday. There are lots of stresses in life, but I can't imagine anything being more stressful than the worry and stress of your own and someone you love's health. The few times I've dealt with health scares with family, I know how the anxiety can just make you sick to your stomach, you can't sleep, the worry is consuming. A healthy and safe family is definitely something to thank God for everyday.

Thankful #13: My job and the people I work with.  As we all know in this tough economy they're not as easy to come by as they use to be. Last year was the worse year I ever had. I reached a point where I was just absolutely sick of being treated like scum on the bottom of someone's shoe. I told a co worker I felt like what it was doing to me mentally was probably similar to the beating one's self esteem and confidence takes when in a toxic relationship (I don't have much experience with that so who knows). I've always enjoyed working, but last year's experience was a red flag to me. This year is going better so for that too I am incredibly grateful for that because I wouldn't have handled a second year like that well at all.

Thankful #14: Time to get started on the people. The first people are going to be our friends, Dave and Jess. We've made some great friends out here but these two truly are like family. We, especially Averi, adores their little boy, Benjamin, and we can't wait to meet their little girl later this spring. They are seriously some of the most caring, generous people we know.

My First 7 Days of Thanks


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I Didn't Think you Loved Me Anymore

 Just Another Day In Paradise

I Didn't Think You Loved Me Anymore

As many of you know we had quite the traumatic experience (insert sarcasm) here when my oldest daughter decided to cut her little sister's hair. The two the most traumatized were me and my oldest daughter. The poor child that had to go around with a butchered mullet for over a month was too young to realize how awful of a haircut her sister really gave her so she escaped the experience with little trauma. I was traumatized because every time I saw Kenz's butchered hair I wanted to cry for those precious curls that were now gone. Averi however did cry for a good half an hour. She knew I was upset and horrified at what she had done. She still refers to it as the moment I didn't love her anymore.

I still remember the first time she told me this. It made me want to cry. Then tonight when I picked her up from school, I got the first bad report this school year form her teacher. The teacher reassured me that it wasn't enough for her to move off of green. (For those non elementary parents, the green, yellow, red color code system is a behavior reward chart to keep them all in line.) The teacher informed me though that she was surprised that Averi was not listening, had to be told to do things more than once, and had to be told  to settle down. When you're a teacher and you deal with everyone else's rowdy, sometimes quite rude and misbehaved children, you have little tolerance for your own child being anything but a polite, little obedient student. I told the teacher any problems tomorrow take her off green. She'll be sad, maybe even cry, but if she's not listening don't hesitate to show her that behavior is unacceptable.

However, I think it will be awhile before she forgets to listen and act out of line. As soon as I got her in the car, I didn't yell at her, but she knew from the tone of my voice and my disappointment that I was not happy with the report from school. She did not say a single word on the drive home and silently cried in the backseat. Then later she asked me if I was happy again and still loved her :( .

When I flipped out about the hair I maybe got a little exciteably loud. But I did not yell at all today, and as I told her teacher, she is such an easy child to discipline and correct because she wants so much to please. She has always been a child that's received lots of positive attention so when she sees you're not happy with her she tends to take it pretty seriously. However, I don't want her to think our disappointment means we don't love her. I told her each time she told me that we always love her, even when she doesn't act the way we expect her to. I never connected a  parent's disappointment to them not loving a child anymore but more they're disappointed because they love their child so much. Disappointment, rather than anger, has always been the thing to impact my behaviors the most. When met with someone's anger I just get defensive and want to retaliate, but when faced with someone's disappointment it's always lead to me actually think about my behavior and the result of it. I want her to understand when we're disappointed with her but I don't want her to think that means we don't love her. However, she's only four so how do I get her to understand?

 

 

 

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Prayers for the STRONG

As I head off to work in the morning, it will be with my heart in a different place. For the third time, we are here in our home in Maryland, while our hearts are back with our families in our first homes. The first time was when Nate's uncle suffered what could have been life threatening injuries from an accident at work, the second was when my dad underwent a procedure just in time to prevent a massive heart attack, and now in the morning my family will all be heading to the hospital to fight cancer once again.

Growing up, my cousin and I went to school together, graduated together, played ball together, were even nominated for the same Homecoming Court together as seniors. We even majored in the same thing with education. I don't think either of us was ever really following the other. We were definitely close but at times we were probably the other's biggest competitor. We both carried that Williams strong willed, competitive nature even when we maybe sometimes used it against each other but we were also the first ones in line to have the other's back.

Sometimes our fiercest competitor is also usually the one we have the greatest admiration for too though. We were just kids when cancer struck our family the first time. Her dad, my dad's brother, fought it longer than I ever saw anybody fight that awful disease. We were eleven when he died, and it will be twenty years this April. Now with what I see as a teacher and looking back on the last twenty years, her strength to mentally survive and overcome, hold onto her hope, and be the amazing woman and mother she is today deserves the admiration I had no hope of recognizing as a kid. She is without a doubt one of the strongest people I know.

But unfortunately after losing her father twenty years ago, she now has to go through fighting this nasty disease again with her mother. And this becomes one of those things I just don't understand. How does one child face cancer with both of their parents? It's one of those unfair things. My cousin comes by her inner strength honestly because not only from her father but her mother, my aunt, would also definitely make it into that one of the strongest people I know categories. They are without a doubt some of the strongest women I know.

But as my mother in law recently told me, even the strongest of us need back up. That waiting room during my aunt's surgery tomorrow will be filled with family.  That's what family does. We're there for the good, the bad, and the ugly and when the going gets tough, we all just get a little tougher. I won't be there with them in person, but I will definitely be there in heart. I know this is going to be a tough road at times, and we all know how strong (and stubborn) you are, but let the rest of us stand behind you, beside you, hold your hand, offer you our comfort, our help, our words and hope. Let us back you up and be there for you. Again I wish I could be there for you so for now I offer the only thing I've ever been able to offer in tough times. My support, my listening ear, and the words that show I care and that I'm here for you. It's time like this that there really never seems to be the right words to say so just know I love you all and will be praying and thinking of you.

For my praying people, I hope you'll keep my aunt in your prayers tomorrow as she undergoes surgery to remove breast cancer. Also, pray for her two children, my cousin I grew up with and her older brother.

Check out Holiday Gift Ideas and Deals

I am super psyched about the holidays this year. First, it's our first Christmas in our new house. I don't think we'll get to decorate the outside as much as we would like, but I did have room to set up a little table for my Christmas village. Because we are traveling for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, I told my daughter we would set up our indoor Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving. That leaves us one of the only two weekends between traveling for the two to get our tree and do our Christmas tree decorating. We are going to attempt for the second time to get a real Christmas tree from a local farm. We usually get ours at Lowes and we tried this once before. The search for the family Christmas tree ended up a Griswold Christmas family adventure. I'd share the story here but it's been accepted for publication in the Mused Literary Review for their Dec 21 Issue so just in time for the holidays.

The other reason I am so excited for Christmas is because we're going home for Christmas! Ever since we've been married we have rotated Christmas with our families; however, due to my sister's January wedding last year we spent two years in a row with my husbands' family (and I love our holidays with them too) but because of that we have only had one Christmas with my family since our first daughter was born almost five years ago. We will get to spend Christmas Eve with my extended family with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. There's about 50 of us when we all make it. I LOVE the huge family gathering.

My family of five that I grew up with (my parents and us three girls) are now a family of 12 and this will be our first Christmas as a family of 12. We spend the whole Christmas day together.  My mom puts her big, beautiful tree in our basement because with 12 of us now the presents would overtake her whole living room. We will eat a big homemade family breakfast hopefully before opening presents but with four little kids who knows how that plan will go. My mom then makes her annual homemade lasagna dinner Christmas night.

I am as excited about spending Christmas with my family as a little kid is about Santa Claus delivering a bunch of presents.

Aside from starting to decorate for Christmas I've also begun my Christmas shopping. I am a photo gift giving queen. I love personalized gifts. I've come across a wide variety of things on Shutterfly and Tiny Prints. We've done personalized calendars in the past, but there are mugs, blankets, frames, shirts, and many more photo gift ideas on the website. I also create my Christmas cards through Shutterfly.

I am affiliated with Shutterfly and Tiny Prints so I do make a commission off of any purchases (doesn't have to be any of the particular deals advertised) you make so if you're thinking of using them, I hope you can click on the links here on my website to place your orders.  You can click on the links in my side bar to the right or click on them below.

Tiny Prints Photo Gifts

Shutterfly Gift Deals

Holiday Cards


Here's a sneak peak at our family holiday card this year. We wish you all a Merry Holiday Season!

The Working vs Stay at Home Mom Debate

I read something today about how the biggest debate and criticism between mothers is the choice to stay home or work.  By this point many of you have come to expect the truth from me and even though I have my views anyone is welcome to argue against me. In fact I would welcome hearing some different opinions and take on what has become a generational debate of our time in motherhood. As women, we are so critical of any choice different than our own. Some are guilty of defending their personal choices so much that they put others' opposite choices down, belitting their mothering abilities, or even their capabilities as a modern day woman.

On my random days and two months a year that I get to be a stay at home mom I am busy. Being a stay at home mom is not sitting on the couch, watching soap operas all day, or even lunch and playdates. I am a busy body. I do not like to just sit and I am not a big TV watcher either so my days are usually filled with feeding, hygiene care (they can be dirty little creatures), playing and engaging them in activities, but also with housekeeping and errands. The more I'm home the more messes I'm cleaning up throughout the day so sometimes I feel that it's a daily cycle of picking up, preparing meals, washing dishes, and folding laundry. It's usually a full day but what's nice is I feel that I've kept up with the kids, the house, the errands and everything needed to keep our household functioning. Some days my time at home is more exhausting and harder work than my actual work day.

The ten months a year I'm working, I am much busier though and it's much harder to keep up. Obviously between my husband, myself, and our sitter the feeding, hygiene, and basic caregiving of my daughters is taken care of but some of the daily stuff is taken care of by the sitter rather than myself, and even though I'm busy I think we do a pretty good job of still fitting in valuable time with our girls. However, I definitely struggle with mommy guilt because sometimes I'm tired and short tempered with them, but I also feel like that when I spend all day with them too. It's just when I'm home all day I don't feel as bad because we've spent all day having more positive interaction; whereas, during the work week I feel that all they see of me is the tired, cranky mom that I am at the end of the day. Even though I'm not picking up messes all day because we're not there for them to make them, I'm still spending the end of my day squeezing in all that housework with laundry, cleaning up, and errands that I can't get to during the day because I'm working. So just as stay at home moms are really working while they're at home because being a mom is work, a  working mom is doing that work too on top of  her part time to full time job.

I'm not trying to take anything away from the stay at home mom or the working mom. They both take sacrifice and deserve respect and as women I think we sometimes forget to recognize what contributes to each woman's choice. For me working is not just because we need the income,  but I need more than my role as a mother to fulfill me. Work also gives me purpose. Some may say that is selfish, and sometimes I think part of the guilt that comes with being a working mom is because something or someone tells us wanting to work for our own self fulfillment is selfish. There have been many times in the last five years I have wished to have the opportunity to be a stay at home mom, but I've always felt I would be giving up a part of myself by abandoning my career goals. I think the thing that reassures me my choice is the right choice for me is that I am confident I am still a good mom as a working mom. I can do both. Do I struggle some days?  Oh, my goodness, yes, but I think that's life and motherhood in general.  I can still do things for myself and be a good mother to my children. I see many women out there doing things for themselves and being good and great mothers to their children. Working isn't what defines their capabilities as a mother.

I've heard a variety of arguments from stay at home moms as well but I would definitely welcome some insight from the stay at home mom on this topic.  The sad thing I hear the most is somewhere along the way being a mom has supposedly become not enough in our society. The "oh, you're a stay at home mom" mentality implies they do very little all day and being a mom just isn't much. Many of them have given up their own career ambitions and personal fulfillment with a career to fulfill a larger role at home.

Different things work for different families and different women. I believe so much more goes into raising strong, well loved and globally prepared children than the result of this one choice. As women, we each make the choice that will fulfill us the most and works for our families and our goals.  Whether it's the right choice or not is not determined by the woman beside us, behind us, in front of us, or wherever the one casting judgment may be, but it's best determined by the woman looking back at us in the mirror. Is she satisfied and content with the choice we made?


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My First 7 Days of Thanks

Last year I did the 30 days of thanks in the end but this year I decided I would do it weekly; however, as you can see I am already about three days late on my first one. Either way I decided to save the best for last (parents, kids, husband, sisters, God) so I'm going to start with some of the more simple things I'm particularly thankful for recently.

Day 1: I'm thankful for the gorgeous destressing drive I now have on the way home from work. Between the stress of work and the chaos of children at home I NEED this peaceful beauty in the middle of my day. It is sooo much better than that drive on that crazy city beltway.

Day 2: Our house. It's been more of a financial adjustment than I was anticipating because we maybe jumped the gun a year early and it's created some extra stress between us, but we're making it happen. We're doing what we got to do to make it work. All the unplanned stress with the adjustment will all be worth it in the end.  I LOVE being out in the country. I LOVE the quiet and the peacefulness, the beautiful sunsets off the deck, watching my girls run and play in that huge yard. I love the small ltown feel. I love that Averi is going to preschool with kids she could possibly grow up with.

Day 3: Our renters. When we started talking about renting our house all people wanted to tell us was all these horror stories. We know this is a risk, but what was our other choice? Walk away from the house? Rely on our wonderful prospering economy to recover in time for us to not lose our asses on the house to sell it in time for Averi to start kindergarten. For now this is working and our renters are awesome! We're going to start begging them to stay here in the next month or so since their lease is up here in just three months or so. They haven't mentioned anything about wanting to move so hopefully their plan is to stay.

Day 4: Music. I have no musical talent at all. But I love music. It's so good for the soul and spirit. I like a variety of music but country music is my true love.

Day 5: Social Media. I know I sound like a teenager but social media has allowed me to stay connected to home and my past in a way my own mother who also lived so far from home couldn't.  I look at my cousin who I feel just as close to as ever even though we're half a country apart and it's because we stay in touch almost daily through social media. I feel that I have a good relationship with my mother in law again because I feel that social media allows her not only the opportunity to foster her relationship with me but stay connected with her granddaughters. There are so many friends from back home that I get to watch their kids grow up online and we share memories and "I miss yous" from throwback Thursdays. I feel that social media allows me the opportunity to hold onto the memories and people of my past and even maintain and build relationship that otherwise wouldn't have been possible at such a great distance. (Don't worry you are each on the saving the best for last list so my thanks for you is not limited to social media :) )

Day 6: First world problems. Most of the time my biggest problem/worry is money with making everything work so we're covered or stressing out when things like three floods in one week happen. Believe it or not though I have thanked God for this problem. I would take these problems-money and broken appliances and cars- over any health or other third world type problems. Unfortunately, some health worries and problems have come up in my family recently (I'll reflect on that more in a different post). Recently I have gained a new appreciation for things we all take for granted like running water, hot water, air conditioner. But as the holidays approach, even an appreciation for things like food on the table and clothes to wear because so many out there struggle for even this.

Day 7: Sleeping children. I'm saving my individual children for last but I don't know how this happened but my kids never wake up before 730 on the weekend. I'm always reading about kids getting up anywhere from 5 in the morning to 7 on the weekends. Even 730 is an early day for my kids. Sometimes they sleep until 830 or even 9. I have no idea how I made this happen with not one but two kids. Great parental ignorance is what I'm thinking. Either way it is such a small simple blessing. I need that extra sleep on the weekends. Both of my girls have always been great sleepers once you get them past the going to bed part so for that I am incredibly thankful.

For each of my thankful posts this month I'm going to include one of Nate's photos from his website, Point Click Capture Photography

 http://pointclickcapturephotography.zenfolio.com

 

 

Check out more of his photos on his website. You can order a variety of photo products.

 

This is one of his photos that I edited for my facebook banner.

Assateague Island, Maryland

Fourth of July in our Nation's Capital

Niagara Falls, Canada

 

 

 

 



It's just been another weekend in Paradise

Well the weekend didn't exactly go as planned. That's parenthood, right? Or better yet life. I'm a planner. I don't know why because most of the time things never go the way I plan so what's the point in planning it out. Luckily, I have a sense of humor and will usually have a good laugh at my own expense. It just sometimes that day is not today.

Friday night we were suppose to have a date night. We were going to go out to dinner without the kids, which is a huge luxury for us. Not only do we not have any family to call on to watch the girls so we maybe get three meals a year without the craziness of children in attendance but by the time we pay for a sitter it feels like there's not much money left to actually go out and do anything. But I planned it out with sitter money and dinner and movie money. Unfortunately, our sitter has a chronic illness and had a flare up that day so it was takeout and guitar playing in the basement.

On the plus side because someone was coming over I thought, I had picked up all the clutter from the discarded clothes on the floor, the blanket forts in the living room, the pile of dirty dishes, and whatever other mess usually results throughout the week. My plan for Saturday was to do an hour of quick cleaning with just mopping the floors and cleaning the bathrooms, get my laundry folded and organized instead of on a pile on the couch, and get our errands done all by the time Nate would be home from class so we'd have the afternoon and the rest of the weekend for whatever. But after I cleaned the house and was ready to start on organizing the laundry, I realized I heard running water. Lots of running water. I headed towards our back storage room and before I even opened the door I knew it was bad because the carpet was starting to get wet as I approached the door. Sure enough, I opened it to about an inch of standing water and more just gushing out of the well pump. As the water was coming into the house from the well outside instead of going into our pipes it was just pouring all over our basement floor. This is aggravating enough but since this was our third-THIRD-flood in eleven days I was a little defeated. Long story short, the plummer told us he'd come out and replace the well pump today (Saturday) for $900. So goodbye Christmas right there. This would have been on top of the $300 Lowes wanted to charge us a few days before for replacing the hot water tank-flood number 2-so again we said we'd call back. My poor but awesome husband ended up fixing it on his own just like he did with the hot water tank and the busted pipe in the laundry room, as well as the air conditioner that he fixed in the dead heat of the summer. In what could have been a $1000-$2000 in house repairs this past week and half my husband spent about $250 and fixed everything himself. Thank God for handy men and that one of them is mine.

So because that was our Saturday we decided to make up for our lost dinner date by using that money to go out to dinner as a family. Luckily it was an awesome meal, especially since bringing the two girls added $20 to our bill! Now I remember why with kids our eat out nights are pizza and drive thru these days. Poor Nate ordered this awesome fish and Kenz kept wanting to eat his meal so I'm not even sure how much he got to eat, but I got myself a Maryland crab cake.

After two weekends of cleaning up flooded waters and spending a day making repairs, I am praying and crossing my fingers this is the last of our disasters for awhile. Has it all been a pain? Has it been stressful? Yes. We've both been so busy this past fall with me teaching the extra class and Nate finishing his grad courses that we were really looking forward to these last two weekends with no plans as a chance to catch our breath but as we have busy weekends picking up again next weekend, it looks like we'll be waiting for Dec now for that. With Christmas December isn't exactly a slow month. Guess there's always January. But there are always way worse problems in the world to have than this so really it was just another week in paradise with crying kids, barking dogs, self possessed car alarms going off repeatedly (that happened in the middle of my work day this week too) blanket forts covering the living room, overflowing water, broken appliances, dishes from nights ago is still covering the counter, laundry piles covering the furniture. Hope you had a great weekend :)

                                   
                               Even in the crazy, there are moments that make it all worth it.
                     I love this picture of my daughter and husband playing guitar and singing together.

                  This was our bed. So much for after date time. Haha!. Notice the life size baby doll.

 

 

 

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The House Wins and I Blame my Mother

I don't know about you, but when I grew up a generation ago, my mother, as well as my aunt, and the majority of my friends' moms stayed home. My mother, my aunt, and my childhood best friend's mom kept immaculately clean houses. Not only were they tidied up by the end of the day, but they were scrubbed clean once a week, and gutted clean every spring. Even when they returned to the working world as we entered middle school, it always seemed like they somehow managed to keep the house so clean and tidy.

I love my mother dearly but sometimes I think the expectations I place on myself are a result of thinking I need to live up to this superwoman image I've created of her in my head. Because seriously once I hit the halfway point of the week, I'm convinced she must have had some real pixie dust, a fairy godmother, a magic wand, or something from fairy tale land to keep a house that didn't resemble a three ring circus with a confetti explosion of toys all over it.

When I was first married, I was all about keeping my house tidied during the week, scrubbed clean on Saturday morning, and even a yearly spring clean. I had a ton of pride in being a homeowner and in my mind women and mothers abided by the "cleanliness is next to godliness" policy. But as children have come into my life, I have slowly let chaos replace organization, and messes replace cleanliness.

In my world, between kids, husband, work, extra work on top of work, time for me, the necessary household tasks like laundry, bills, and dinner, and then housecleaning, something has to go at the bottom. So I am waving my white flag of surrender. With two kids, two pets, and a husband keeping this house tidied and clean is a full time job in itself. I am not the woman for that job. I feel like my choice at the end of the day is clean up my house or take some time for me and I choose me about every time. I live half a country away from my mother so maybe she'll never have to know the truth. I think she'll understand though.


Are you someone that has a hard time letting go of the fact that it's about near impossible to keep a house cleaned up with small children? Do you feel like you try to measure up to some false idea you got in your head about motherhood from your own mother?


                                  Welcome to the three ring circus with the confetti explosion of toys

 

 

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The Confessional Mom Fails of the Nonpinterst Mom

I like to find the humor in my mom fails. I kind of think you have to in order to survive this gig known as motherhood. As wonderful as social media is it allows us to always know what others are doing and compare our lives to theirs. I recently read about how social media can be a place of showboating our mommy skills. I am guilty of this; however, as you know it's not because I craft, cook, or do little cutesy projects. I am guilty of showing off my kiddos and all the fun we crazy Glenns have (when I'm not sharing all that craziness that gets thrown in with that fun).

I hate thinking that we're all in competetion to see who can create the fanciest dinner, make the cutest craft, and create the most pinterest projects. I prefer to look at it as a mom that's excited about her latest adventure in crafting, sewing, and cooking and she just wanted to celebrate her accomplishment with other mommies for a moment.  Hell, sometimes I feel like if I'm doing anything more than surviving it calls for some kind of celebration and victory dance so I imagine if they found a chance to create or cook something spectacular they feel the need to celebrate too. All the power to them. You go, momma! I currently don't have a pinterest account because my skills in crafting and cooking are seriously lacking and can you benefit from pinterest without those necessary skills? If so, please share and I'll contemplate it.


So here's my first pinterest mom fail. While some kids went trick or treating in hand crafted costumes, mine went in a princess and tinkerbell costume pulled out of their playroom. That's right their costume is something they've had shoved in those toy bins for the last few years. I didn't even buy them a costume and claim I made it off of some pin on pinterest. Wal Mart (I think this is where the costumes originated) failed me once again because by the end of the night my Tinkerbell was more like Cinderella whose pixie dust expired at about eight o clock. She lost one of her butterfly glass (plastic) slippers, a strap on her dress broke off giving her the two year old bared sexy look or something, and one of her wings broke. Even as a non crafty person I think even I could have constructed something that stayed together better than that.

Are you ready for my next Pinterest confession? My daughter's birthday party was last weekend. First, I was so busy I kept forgetting to figure out what I was doing for a party so come the day before I realized it was too late to place an order for a cake so I bought $6 Halloween cupcakes from Walmart, stuck Happy Birthday candles in them and called it a day. I had no party decorations, just some pumpkins for them to paint and Halloween coloring books. I see others planning and hosting glamorous child parties with invitations and favors that rival weddings, and my kids are eating Walmart cupcakes. Go me!

My last confession is I'm a little jealous. There I said it. I still love all you pinteresty friends and if you still love me maybe next time you're crafting you can craft something for me or my kiddos I suppose : ) As I said with my Creative Expression post here, for many crafting and cooking is an outlet. Motherhood is STRESSFUL and Pinterest isn't really the enemy to motherhood but probably more an ally. I just don't have Pinterest skills, nor honestly the desire to get into all of that stuff.

Sometimes I wish I could cook or honestly even really cared enough to cook, but I married a man that was cooking amazing meals before pinterest even became a fad of today's motherhood world. A small-very small-part of me wishes I knew how to sew and craft. My mother is probably dying right now hearing that confession coming from my mouth. Now at 32 I want to learn how to be a girl. Sorry, Mom, late is better than never, right? But again, who am I kidding. Even if my mother jumped on this and tried to teach me some crafting and sewing skills, I know I'd probably lose interest before I made it to the second stitch.

There you have it. My confessions of my mom fails as a pinterest or lack of pinterest mom. However, I don't really think it defines me as a mother or any of us really. If you like it have at it. If you don't I think you and your kids will survive. Mine have, even if they do resemble the disheveled Cinderella.

Other recent posts you might have missed:

 And We Remember it's a Beautiful Life

Sometimes we Don't have the Answers

                                                         The $6 Cupcakes! Oh, my, oh no!

                                                        Tinkerbell trying to fly

                                                        My tinker and princess

 

And We Remember It's a Beautiful Life

 

Parenthood is

Crying kids, fighting siblings, and shouts filling the house of “Mine!”

But then it’s seeing the sibling love, pride, and no one messes with a sibling of mine

And we remember it is a beautiful life

 

Parenthood is

Sleepless nights of infancy, temper tantrums of toddlerhood, and adolescent defiance and lies

But then it’s snuggles and hugs, “I love yous”, and those moments of gratitude in their eyes

And we remember it is a beautiful life

 

Parenthood is

Broken doors, leaking facets, and neverending expense of another repair

But then it’s looking at the house we made a home that shows how much we care

And we remember it is a beautiful life

 

Parenthood is

The pile of bills, extra hours worked, sacrifices made,

But then it’s memories, time together, and a life even with its difficulties we wouldn’t trade

And we remember it is a beautiful life

Parenthood is

Dirt, stains, holes, sweat and tears

But then it’s joy, love, and the desire to protect them from all their fears

And we remember it is a beautiful life

 

Parenthood is

Not always pretty, nor easy, and sometimes it seems like we’re always struggling

But it’s a love like no another, moments better than we dreamed, and gives our lives meaning

And we remember it is a beautiful life

 

 

Do you have your copy of my book,  Moms, Monsters, Media & Margaritas ? It examines the expectations and perceptions of motherhood in our modern day 21st century digital world. Check it out if you haven't. You can also read the latest review on it and follow the ebook links here.