Parenting

Do you ever feel completely overwhelmed by your to do lists? Do you feel that when you accomplish one thing, three more things come up to take its place? Good lord, I feel like this often. Especially when my kids are at home with me ALL. WEEK. LONG.

Here’s the way I see it going in my head: We have no where to be and nothing to do this week! I’m going to get so much done! Today, I’ll clean and organize the kids’ rooms and declutter the playroom. Then, I’ll weed and fertilize my garden and cook a healthy well-balanced meal for my family. There will be plenty of time for baths and we’ll end the day reading and snuggling together.

Brutal Reality: It’s 6 o’clock and my only accomplishments are that I’ve managed to feed my children and no one has died….yet. Baby N won’t let me put her down, so organizing and decluttering will have to wait. I did spend a few minutes in the garden, but only to hide in it when my children wouldn’t stop whining. I just fed them bowls of peanut butter and pretzels for dinner and my plan is to let them sit in front of the TV until it’s time for bed.

When B was a newborn and I was crying to my mom about feeling like a failure for never getting anything done, she gave me some really helpful advice. She told me to write down all of the things I had done that day, no matter how small. If that day the list read: kept the baby fed and drank wine, that was enough. It’s easy to get hung up on all the things we haven’t done. You can feel the stress building to a point where you almost don’t know where to start. When I started turning my focus to the things I had accomplished each day, I could feel a major shift in my stress level. Yes, I still had a ton of things to do, but it helped me to note that I wasn’t the total slacker doofus I’d thought I was.

Nobody’s perfect and we just can’t do it all. I know there are images everywhere trying to tell us that it’s possible. We’ve all seen those parents that just make it look so easy, whether in real life, on Facebook or on television. The truth is: They’re all full of shit. I’m just going to keep doing the best I can day after day and you should too! Keep in mind that some days our best won’t be that great, and that’s ok. Now I’m going to go give myself a hug, and I suggest you do the same!

🙂 Erin

This afternoon, B, my seven year old, was in a play to end his two week theater camp. It was adorably hilarious, as only a play starring six and seven year olds can be! During the play, he said all of his lines on cue. He even did all of the dance moves to the opening song. He danced a bit like Elaine Benes, but that’s not the point!

Six years ago, when he was still a toddler, I wouldn’t have imagined anything like this afternoon was possible. As a baby, B was the one that I had to put in a pack and play during baby playdates at our house because the stimulation of multiple moms and babies was just too much for him. When he was a toddler, I took him to music class and story time at the library, as most of us do with our first borns, and he would just sit there, wander off, cry, etc. He would never do what all the other toddlers were doing. By the time he was three, he was also severely anxious and pathologically cautious of being sick, of falling down, of spiders, of loud noises, of mascots in costume. I could go on for a while.

By the time he started preschool, it was clear that he had some auditory processing issues. that made it hard for him to communicate with other kids his age. He was still mostly playing alone or possibly with one friend who was awesomely quirky in her own way.  He marched to the beat of his own drummer. As his mother, I loved his creativity and his different way of being in the world. I loved his big heart and his sincerity and innocence. However, I constantly worried about what the future would hold for my quirky boy. Would he be accepted? Would he ever make friends? Would he be happy? As a serious rule-follower and social butterfly, it was hard for me to see that, though he was very different from his father and me, he was going to be just fine. More than fine, he is perfect and amazing. He is one of a kind.

Savor your quirky babes! Before you know it they’ll be getting off the school bus, already done with the first grade!

Today B is an almost second grader. When he walks into his camp, all of his friends and counselors yell, “Hey, Ben!”, and his face lights up. He is still thoughtful and quiet, but he is thriving in school, and he is a friend to everyone. He walks onto a stage to perform in front of a room full of adults, climbs up to the top of a rock climbing wall or says hello to a new person with the same sweet intensity and admirable bravery. He has a strong sense of social justice and wisdom in his big blue eyes. I am so proud to get to call him my son. I wish I wouldn’t have spent all those years so worried, wishing he was like everyone else, wishing he was less than what he is. If your child is a little different, If they keep you up at night worrying, just keep loving them and showing up every day. You are what they need, and it’s going to be ok.

Love,

Erin

Side note: If you think your child has sensory or auditory processing difficulties that are interfering with their daily life and yours, I have some great local resources and book recommendations for you. Feel free to contact me.

I don’t know about you, but since they finished school two and a half weeks ago, I’ve been allowing my  kids way too much time in front of the television, just to make it through the day. In past years, I’ve had a lot of luck creating a daily summer schedule for us. We don’t stick to it 100%, but my kids seem to do  best when they have some kind of structure and an idea of what is happening every day. I decided it was past time to do that this summer as well. My 7 and 5 year old are signed up for a few different camps, including a week of science camp that runs from 9-4 (Woohoo! Um, I mean, I really do love spending time with my kids. Hehe.), so I’ve included a schedule for camp weeks and non-camp weeks. In other news, am I the only one who has trouble spelling schedule? Apparently my kids aren’t the only ones who need to go back to school, but I digress.

Camp Week Schedule:

8:00-9:30: Drop off the big kids at camp

9:30-11:30: Baby N and I run errands, library story time, garden etc.

11:30-1:30-Baby N naps, I eat lunch ALONE! Living the dream!!

1:30-Baby N has lunch.

2:00-Pick up big kids from camp.

2:30-3:00-Learning choice time for big kids-They can read, write stories or do worksheets for 30 min while Baby N has play time.

3:00-4:00-Downtime/Screen Time

4:00-6:30-Dinner at the pool, Board games or crafts before dinner, etc.

7:00-8:00-Baths(on good days), Pajamas, Brush teeth, Books and Bed

No Camp Week Schedule:

9:00-9:30: Learning choice time for big kids while Baby N has free play.

9:30-12:30-Daily Activity-see below

12:30-1:30-Lunch

1:30-4:00-Baby N naps-Big kids read, free play and then have 45 minutes of screen time

4:00-5:00-Family exercise time-dance party, yoga, tabata, etc.-Right now my husband is on his 3rd month of P90X and the kids really enjoy attempting that together.

5:00-7:00-Dinner time

7:00-8:00-Bedtime routine

Daily Activities:

Messy, Make Something Mondays-Crafts, painting, etc., for Pinterest junkies, the possibilities are endless!

Tasty Tuesdays-Edible science experiments, kid-friendly cooking and baking

Wandering Wednesdays–Dollar movies at Regal Theaters, trampoline park, zoo, bowling etc.

Thirsty Thursdays-Lemonade stand math-We’ll use practical math skills to make and sell lemonade in front of our house and then add up our profits.  I may also need to make my own “special” lemonade by this point in the week.

Fiction and Family Fridays-Library visits, followed by reading together and dinner at the pool

To everyone with kids home for the summer, good luck and Godspeed to you!

🙂 Erin

Good Morning,

Pardon the goofy 90’s hip hop reference! My name is Erin, and I live with my husband of 11 years and our three kids aged 7, 5 and 2 in Richmond, Virginia. For most of my life I’ve struggled as a serial perfectionist. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right, just right. I’m the one spending my entire evening on Pinterest searching for the perfect end of the year teacher gift, the one spending two hours constructing a weekly meal plan for my family that is both healthy and delicious and the one that everyone wants to go on vacation with because of my heavily researched restaurant reservation skills.

One husband, three kids, two dogs, and a house that is constantly falling apart later, and I’m finally starting to realize that I am enough, even when I’m not doing it right. Even when I’m at my worst, all those people (and pets) still love me.  They love me when the house is a mess, they’re eating McDonalds for dinner and watching TV well over the AAP recommended guidelines. They still have an amazing time at birthday parties when I buy their cake from Wegmans and don’t have a theme with elaborately organized snacks and cute little signs describing each one. You fellow Pinterest addicts know what I’m talking about!

I’m here to share my struggle with accepting myself for who I am and to realize that, though I’ll never be a perfect mom or wife,  I am good enough. Sorry to sound like Stuart Smalley here, but it needs to be said. From talking to other parents out there, this seems like a familiar topic for many of us.  We often feel inadequate, lonely or just plain miserable when we compare our real lives to the visual highlight reels of our friends and acquaintances that are presented to us on sites like Instagram and Facebook. I’ve had to take breaks from Facebook in the past when all of the comparing I’d been doing had made me feel like a failure.  I’ve lately realized that all of us are making mistakes, constantly, as parents, spouses, employees, etc. We’re just not posting those struggles on Facebook.

Look at the way no one is fighting and everyone is looking at the camera! This is not real life!

These would be my Facebook un-worthy posts from the last four days alone:

-It’s Thursday and I can’t remember if my kids have had a bath this week. Haha, just kidding, I’m fully aware that they haven’t.

-The kids can cross pretzels off their list of camp snacks this week. Someone ate the entire bag and an entire bottle of red while watching Midsomer Murders on Netflix.

-My 2 year old pooped on the floor not once, but twice today. I just cleaned it up with a baby wipe. If you drop food on the floor at my house, the five second rule does not apply.

-I put my kids in front of the television this afternoon so that I could play Farm Heroes Saga for twenty minutes straight.

My kids with their favorite babysitter. Nobody’s perfect!

The photo on the title page also happened this week, but that one I did put on Facebook. I knew they’d locked themselves in the dog crate and my conscience was clear.

Let’s stop pretending we can do everything right! On this blog I’ll share my successes and failures with parenting, wife-ing, meal planning, fitness, and anything else that comes up. If I find ways to make my life easier, I’ll share them here. If I try a new parenting strategy, recipe, product and it’s a total bust or just a waste of money, I’ll let you know. Most importantly, I hope to make you feel less alone in this struggle we’re all experiencing. We’re in this together!

🙂 Erin