Tag: babies

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kids Life Parenting

lonely.

Part II

For almost 3 years I have worked from home – while my work has a physical location in Virginia, most everyone is remote. I love it – it’s perfect as a mom and especially works because my husband sometimes travels or frequently has night conference calls and working remotely allows me to get dinner ready, do laundry, walk the dog and not feel as overwhelmed like I would if I had to go to an office and work. I am super productive and can multitask like Simone Biles can sail through the air and make it look effortless. But, we all know it’s not and I’m also incredibly isolated. Not being from this area, I don’t have a core group of girlfriends nor do I seem to make women friends easily. I’ve joined Facebook groups for moms but it seems like every event there’s a conflict for me or is maybe not something I am interested in. Or it seems like plans would be made with a fellow mom friend and then we’d have to cancel because of the inevitable sickness. I’m also one of those people who could do one thing socially one week and then be OK for like 3 months being a hermit though lately I’ve felt the push to want to do more. I’ve had a lot of lonely days lately honestly.

I thought this year would be an opening – and it has been, but not as fast as I like. I’ve always heard when your kid starts elementary school, that’s a good place to find parent friends…well, that’s still very much a work in progress. Many of her classmates have moms who either have kids in higher grades so they’ve cemented friendships already or, as I’ve said before, they grew up here and aren’t too interested in expanding their friend group (or at least that’s how it feels on the outside looking in). I’ve done some mingling – I’ve joined the PTO so we’ll see. Frankly, I’ve actually had a bit more luck with Poppy’s 2 year old class. Part of that is because Poppy is a social butterfly. Not shy like Maggie and will play with almost anyone (though I must say I’m so damn proud of Maggie – she’s come so far and is one reason I’m working on making Mom friends).

I saw this social media meme recently that really resonated with me and I think that’s maybe why I’m feeling a certain way. With an almost 6 year old and almost 3 year old, some things are way easier and it’s easier to remember what I was once like.

I hope in a few months, I can report back that I’m starting to make a core group of friends. I admit, I’m not super optimistic – I’ve made some strides this year with opening myself up and also doing things for myself, but I’m pretty sure my therapist would be pushing for more if I could ever get into see her.

So, if you are a parent, how did you make friends? What did you do to care for yourself? I realize I didn’t really talk too much about self-care here…next time!

Categories
kids Life Parenting

I cry a lot but I am so productive Part 1

Taylor Swift fans will recognize the lyric which seems to resonate with a lot of people. While I don’t think I cry too much, I definitely get overwhelmed a lot but I am so.damn.productive.

It’s hard to know where to start. Maybe I’ll just start with a little background. After having my first daughter in 2018, I definitely had postpartum anxiety. Except I didn’t know what it was at the time. I would be fine with her going to daycare but as soon as work was over, I would speed to get her and I hated to be away from her ever. After she turned a year old, I saw a tberapist who basically was like, you need to get a life. I started to go to some yoga classes, getting all little more social and was feeling a bit better and then bam March 2020 and COVID happened. And we all know the isolation that brought.

I had to return to in-person work 3 months after and so Maggie returned to daycare but we were super careful and didn’t go out a lot or do things with others. I was also in the midst of fertility treatments for my second. Because of my age and the thought that I didn’t want to stay at my then job for a long time, we wanted to do the treatments because my insurance covered it…through the fall of 2020 and spring 2021 we were super careful even after getting our vaccines as I was pregnant. And frankly, I was busy raising a toddler, dealing with a hard pregnancy and working in addition to a global pandemic. I couldn’t handle anymore.

When Poppy arrived in August 2021 the world was slowly getting back to some normalcy but I still dealt with many daycare closures during my maternity leave and after due to COVID exposures and again, we didn’t do a whole lot that wasn’t an outside activity. And then right as Poppy was going to daycare, I got a new job – 100 percent work from home remote. Woo! The quality of life after working in a political office was and is refreshing but it can also be very lonely to work from home…

Stay tuned for part 2!

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Life

Why Am I Even Doing This??

Greetings! If you’ve stumbled upon this page, I’d like to either say thank you or I’m sorry. I used to have a blog devoted to our pup Tucker and then it evolved a bit when I had our baby girl. Then life just got too damn busy and I haven’t written for “fun” in quite some time.

Guess What? Life is Still So Freaking Busy that I’m not even sure why I’m starting this up again. I’m a working mom  of a 2 year old girl who is busy.busy.busy and an almost 7 year old golden retriever who is also busy.busy.busy. Add in a husband and a day job that involves a lot of writing and reading and well, that doesn’t leave a lot of time for anything else.

Of course, if you are here, you probably knew a lot of that already. So…why am I doing this? Will I keep up with it?

Well, the answer of WHY is like most everyone else, the last 5 months of restrictions have been hard. I’m an introvert by nature but we also spent 4 months working from home with no childcare help. Every night I got creative and did lesson plans for the next day for our toddler to keep her busy and us sane. I really enjoyed doing it and while tiring, it also energized me in a way creatively that had been missing from my life.  It was clear that like most who do a lot of writing at their job, my creativity for things in my personal life had taken a bit of a backseat. So, I want to try this again.  This blog is honestly not going to be centered on one thing – some days you might get my thoughts on the current state of affairs, sometimes you might get mom tales, sometimes you might get recommendations on kids and dogs products, and sometimes I might try and pull out my inner philosopher/life coach musings. I just don’t know.

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I also don’t know how often I’ll post. I’ve had a few days of vacation which is why I am doing it now, but when the toddler is home, there is literally nothing I do alone. NOTHING.

Also, I just want to put it out there – anything on my blog is 100 percent my thoughts and opinions. I don’t speak for anyone else but myself (I don’t even speak for my baby or my dog – they have their own thoughts).