by Christina Furnival I feel it, again. Heck, I feel it all the time, really. I’m talking about guilt — of the mothering variety. Mom guilt. And I bet you feel it too. You and I are not alone. There is not a mom out there who does not, at least sometimes, question her choices,… Read More
I’ve dealt with migraines since the age of twelve. Our relationship is old enough to order a glass of sauvignon blanc. I’ve been to numerous skilled neurologists. Taken dozens of prescription drugs. Tried hormone help. Tried acupuncture. Cranial release. Let’s just say, I have some experience with these awful headaches. One the best ways to… Read More
by Danielle Deen As I have mentioned in other posts, our path to children was destined to be with a fertility doctor and eventually IVF. We were very lucky to conceive on the first round of IVF both times, but there was a lot of uncertainty leading into it. Being subtly diagnosed with unexplained infertility… Read More
Yep. I’m bad at it. I’m a stay at home mom so there are people out there who would claim it’s even my JOB to play with my children. I however, am not only bad at it, I (can’t believe I’m actually going to admit this) don’t always like it. Now, that doesn’t mean for… Read More
by Erika of Erika’s Not So Secret Diary Have you ever suffered from stress while your children are around? Have you ever experienced yourself being extremely stressed? Let me give you some tips that you can use as a tool to reduce the stress. Whether you are a working mom, or a stay at home… Read More
Ok, so I’ll start off honestly here. I am FAR from a yogi. My three year old is better at differentiating right from left than I, and I have been known to *occasionally* fall asleep during Shavasana especially when the instructor breaks out the singing bowl. All that being said, over the course of the… Read More
Dear Beautiful Girl, The scale cannot measure your worth. And yes, I called you a girl because whether you are thirteen, thirty, or eighty-three that same mean-girl voice inside your head is judging you. While you make your list of resolutions, undoubtedly as mine always does some form of “get in better shape”, “loose the… Read More
So honesty is the best policy, and I’m actually now thirty-three as of the end of November instead of thirty, but sometimes wisdom takes a bit to settle in. Kind of like how all of those wise tidbits my mom bestowed upon me as a teen, that I then found annoying, suddenly become Gospel truth… Read More
This time of year is so magical. Perfect family moments. Delicious food. It’s also straight up chaos. With the increasingly fast pace in which we are living our lives, I can’t help but wonder what happened to Thanksgiving? It seems now we go straight from Halloween to Christmas. Is there no place in our society… Read More
Dear Sweet Mama, Are you having one of those weeks? I sure am. Maybe you handed the cashier a tampon instead of your debit card. Or just forgot your wallet entirely. Your garage door snapped off its hinges. Maybe you snapped off your hinges. Maybe your toddler lost it in a public place and you… Read More
Thousands of blog posts try to answer the question of why moms stay up late. Is it just needing more minutes in a day? Is it time to unwind with a glass of wine and a Netflix and actually chill (not the colloquialism)? Well I’ve been pondering why when sleep is the NUMBER ONE thing… Read More
Walking out of preschool I heard a mom saying, “Well, I’m glad my daughter isn’t friends with that little boy. He’s wild.” Other fake blondes (a cohort of which I am a part, so no hair judgement) whole heartedly nodded their heads in agreement. When did it become ok for grown women to stand around… Read More
Positive parenting is a trendy as well, I’m a mom I don’t know what’s trendy anymore. It sounds great in theory, when your child acts a fool as children are known to do respond calmly and positively. There are certainly situations where this is appropriate, but I don’t believe in this method exclusively. Here are… Read More
From grade school through high school dancing defined my free time. No nothing like what you are thinking. No elegant point shoes or cool hip hop classes (if you thought the later it’s hilarious), instead I spent hours a day practicing for competitive Irish dancing. Yep. Like the Riverdance stuff. Strange, but true. This beautiful… Read More
Every time I see a picture of a beautiful mama on Instagram, sporting her tiger stripes that grew her darling babes I am in awe. I cannot believe the courage it takes to be ok with or even in love with your changing body after children. Combining environmental pressures to be perfect and “bounce back… Read More
Dear Baby I Never Got to Meet, Maybe you were just a line on a Dollar Store test. Maybe you were a special secret only I carried, just like I was the only one every to hold you. But you were mine. Ever so briefly. Not for long enough. You both gave me faith by… Read More
Dear Working Mom, I have never been in your shoes. I can pretend to know what it is like to get up Monday through Friday or whatever your hours may be, but I do not. I left my job as a nurse when I was 30 weeks pregnant with my first child. It was a… Read More
One of my favorite things to do is to observe the beauty in which different women in my life mother their children. So often, we are focused on how different we all are as mothers, that we fail to notice the similarities of our loving hearts. In honor of Mother’s Day, a holiday filled with… Read More
This post contains affiliate links. For more information see disclaimers. Are you like me? Do you shower at night after you kids go to bed? Sleep on it wet only to awaken to an electric socket do straight out of Back to the Future? Or do you hop in the shower (every three or so… Read More
This post contains affiliate links. For additional information see Disclaimers. I am all about the sleep. Our family functions much better when we are all getting quality sleep in our own safe spaces. Not sleeping well is a huge contributor to postpartum anxiety (read To The New Mama with Anxiety: You Are Not Alone). When… Read More
By now, you’ve likely seen the appalling at worst or incredibly misguided at best comments of Senator Maureen Walsh of Washington State made regarding nurses. If you did miss it here’s a link, Sen. Walsh asserts that often nurses have enough down time “play cards” therefore they don’t really need protected breaks for lunch etc.… Read More
There are links on this site that can be defined as “affiliate links”. This means that I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you) if you chose to purchase something through the links provided. It’s the middle of the night. You’ve made it through the dreaded sleep regression, but now something small… Read More
Background and personality wise I am a bit of a natural worrier when it comes to letting anyone watch my babies. Emotional scars run deep after years of seeing tragedies happen at the hands of care providers in the pediatric ICU. I tend to over think every scenario that could potentially go wrong when my… Read More
Social media gets a bad wrap for causing isolation and competition, and a lot of that can be true. However, I have also found that as a mama and a blogger having a community to bounce ideas off of at your finger tips is an amazing resource! When I was offered the chance to be… Read More
When my oldest was a baby we went a much more traditional route with food introduction. Purees to pouches to table food. By the time my daughter came around almost nineteen months later it was table scraps. Or as it is much more eloquently called baby led weaning. Both approaches are working as my kids… Read More
Self care is like the new it thing. Might as well be hot yoga. Or spinning. It’s trendy. Like a top knot or skinny jeans or kale. We are all so obsessed with making sure we are getting our self care in that it is just one more thing we moms are adding to our… Read More
I adore buying baby gifts for friends. There are few things more exciting than the birth of a new baby. Now that I’m a two time mama my gift giving has gone from the precious to the practical. Another trend that I fully embrace is not forgetting about mama in the gift giving. After my… Read More
Let me start of by saying that I am not writing this post from a place of mastery. I am not an expert on peaceful parenting. Anyone who actually knows me is laughing hysterically because I am not really an expert on peaceful anything. I don’t do yoga (minus the pants) because I have anxiety… Read More
Upon finding out that I was pregnant with my daughter, I vowed to keep up with my exercise regimen. Labor was going to be a piece of cake this time. Come to think of it, I was also going to have fewer pieces of cake. Turns out that working out did help with my morning… Read More
First off, let me say this is far from a war on screen time. There is almost nothing I love more than jammie clad babes, smelling like the bath watching a Disney classic on me. But with spring break quickly approaching I can see my screen time go to spiraling quickly out of control into… Read More
The most peculiar phenomenon occurs when you are pregnant. People pop out of the wood work to tell you their opinion on absolutely everything. This can stretch from well meaning best friends offering sage breastfeeding wisdom to down right rude interjections from strangers in the super market. This is for sure one of those things… Read More
Before my kids were born, I thought my time as a pediatric nurse would set me up well to be a mother. I had years of practice with basic skills and some more complex ones, how much different could it be to have your own? As Jen Hatmaker would say, Bless. As the nurse handed… Read More
This past week, I was admittedly really looking forward to Tuesday. I had a full day’s worth of errands to run, chores to do, stuff to check off my list. The weekend was filled with runny noses and cold weather, the stuff winters with little kids always bring. And, also my least favorite shift of… Read More
Winter is long. Yes, girl! You. I’m talking to you. The one zoned out on social media pretending to engage with her kiddos while they practice “independent play”. You NEED a Galentine’s Day. And here are some reasons why I know so. These grey days of no sunshine are for the birds. Actually, I take… Read More
I interviewed more than thirty suburban moms for this post. Some I know personally, some are acquaintances, some I have never had the pleasure to meet in person. These women are working moms, work from home moms, stay at home moms. Bread winners, business owners. Boo boo kissers, household managers, and generally just badasses. The… Read More
Dear Middle of the Night Mama, I see you trudging back to the toddler’s room, assuring him there are no monsters for the 5th time tonight. I see you pour another cup of milk. I see you praying that tomorrow will be a better day. That you will be more patient. I see you rocking… Read More
Dear Parenting Books, In the last few months my confidence in my shepherding of tiny souls has taken a bit of nose dive as we’ve embarked upon two major (in the toddler scale) life changes: big boy bed status and potty training. So I did what the modern mama does and I filled my Amazon… Read More
Just leave a little earlier. I mean how hard can it be? Plan your time. That’s why kids need a schedule. I used to be on time for everything. No, not on time. Early. For everything. I was the girl awkwardly waiting in the restaurant parking lot twenty minutes before the scheduled girls dinner meet-up… Read More
