Here I am, a full two years and three months immersed into motherhood and I have learned an astonishing amount. One of the most important things I have learned, now two babies in to the whole deal, is that there is still so much left to learn and not a whole lot of time in which to do so (or energy, either)! I cannot help but think that if mothers were better at "keeping it real" (ugh cliche) and dropping the facade, we all could learn so much more from each other.
During my daughter's first year, I spent my time with quite a few moms who were putting on the Pinterest show and though I met them through a group that was promoted on the basis of moms supporting one another, it was anything but. Their lives were the scary realization of social media in carnate-Facebook walls and Pinterest boards and Instagram sprung to life with each mom trying to outdo the last mom's storybook-themed playgroup playdate. This is not to say that finding a creative way to whittle away your time isn't worthwhile; it's just that in doing so in the name of trumping your so-called friends, pretty much everyone walks away feeling bad about themselves.
Recently, I was challenged to post three positive thoughts a day for five days and although I didn't complete it on five consecutive days (as sometimes my first quiet moment to myself is also the moment I am hitting the pillow, heavy-lidded and in no condition to conjure up any memory of the whirlwind of a day I just barely made it out of alive), I was honored and glad to have been chosen. I really enjoyed looking back at each day and trying to select just three wonderful things that happened because, some days, a whole lot more than three wonderful things do happen. Some days, though, a whole lot of frustrating and annoying things, stuff that is totally out of my control, happen. On social media, though, we get to chose what moments get filtered through and to those who are consuming their friends' posts and tweets and Instagrams, it can seem defeating to "witness" all these neat, happy, shiny lives when the whole picture of reality doesn't make it through.
As I am writing this, my daughter is in her room shrieking during a time out for all the shrieking she's been doing all. the. time. We went to storytime at the library today to turn around and promptly leave storytime for all the shrieking and throwing-herself-on-the-floor she was doing. My son is fussing in his chair and I have no less than four loads of laundry in various states of the laundry doing process and tons of stuff to post for sale on myriad stuff-selling sites. My house is really tiny but the kids don't care. It's also pretty messy but they don't care about that either-whether the mess is theirs or not! I
I hope for this blog to be about the tricks and tips that have made my, sometimes chaotic, life easier. I am certainly not trying to advertise a false ease in living with two babies while whipping up a batch of artisanal cookies and repurposing items from the recycling bin into a wreath for the upcoming holiday. I don't do that stuff. Certainly not well. Almost never to completion. Because I am lucky, as I'm guessing a lot of us are, to make it through the day with my sanity, but I am also extremely lucky to have the space to enjoy my day, my family, my life and I have to let some things slip (namely housework) for that to happen. I look forward to sharing my successes with you and hope that you can learn something here that I have learned makes my life easier :)
