Tag: toddlers

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kids Life Parenting

My weakness is I care too much

Anyone remember where that song lyric came from? I certainly did not until I hopped in the car last weekend as I was getting ready for my eldest daughter’s 6th birthday party. It’s from the Papa Roach song called Scars released in 2004 when I was 22. I thought – holy crap, yep, I care way too much about things! But I’m trying to let some things go and this post is all about self care and some things I’ve done to help me be a bit more balanced…

  1. Yoga Yoga Yoga – Throughout the years I’ve done a lot of yoga at various studios and at home – hot yoga, power yoga, restorative yoga, prenatal yoga. There’s the cutest little studio right around the corner from me and when it first opened, I tried to go to a bunch of classes but I’m one of those people that if I missed a class, I’d fall off the wagon and not go for awhile…so I rectified that and now I mainly do free YouTube Yoga with Adrienne videos. My approach to this is that my husband takes the girls to school/daycare each morning. As soon as they leave, I put a video on – some days I only have 10 minutes, sometimes I do 20. But I like her variety.

2. Walk this way – I’m all about the song lyrics today! I walk a lot – with the girls, with the dog etc but I’m not talking about those walks (though getting outside anytime definitely helps). Awhile back I realized on walks I do with Tucker, I’m taking care of him, making sure he goes potty, gets his exercise and doesn’t eat poop (I know, gross). But am I really taking care of myself? I guess I am a little bit but not as much as if I did it alone. So, most nights after dinner and before bedtime routines start, I’ve taken to doing a loop around the neighborhood and just taken everything in. It’s really been nice to have that breather after dinner and before bedtime battles begin.

3. Reading – I love to read – always has. I have a great imagination and books just help it expand. However, I definitely haven’t read as much as I’d like to in the last few years so one of my resolutions this year was to read at least 5 books this year. It’s mid July and I’ve already read 8! I try and read during lunch time or before bed and that’s also really helped with sleep.

Of course, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’d love weekly massages, unlimited pool time and some uninterrupted Netflix days, but I am doing what I can, when I can. Most days I’m able to do at least 1 of the things I mentioned above.

What are some things that help you?

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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!

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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

It’s been awhile…

More than 3 years since I wrote in this blog. Oops, sorry. I’d say life happened and that’s both true and untrue. Because while a lot of life has happened, I’ve struggled many a times with what I’m doing (or not doing) with MY life.

So here’s a very abbreviated version of what I’ve been up to for the last 3 years:

  1. That baby in my belly I wrote about last time is now almost 3. It’s a girl so we now have two girls (and the then 2 year old is now almost 6!) and a crazy golden retriever.
  2. During maternity leave – which was definitely not as peaceful as the first time with the fact that I was recovering from an unplanned c-section and also dealing with COVID closures of daycare, I got a new job where I work from home (yay!!)
  3. I sort of lost myself, sort of found myself, lost myself again…it’s an ongoing thing.

That leads me back to this blog. Truthfully, I thought I had deleted it/cancelled my subscription and then realized I hadn’t (thanks to an automatic bill renewal email!). I thought, well let’s try this thing again. Maybe I’ll find something I’m looking for. Maybe some sort of passion will be reignited in me. Because frankly, I’ve been doing a lot of living for two little ones the past several years and not a lot of living for me. Which I know is typical of parents of babies and toddlers. They sort of lose themselves along the way. So I’m trying to find myself again. Or maybe, find the pieces of my old self I liked and pair it with stuff my new self that I like.

I hope you’ll follow along with me on this journey – and hopefully my next entry won’t be in 3 more years but I can’t make any promises – I am after all, a work in progress.

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kids Life Parenting

When Life Hands you Lemons…

Make Lemonade! Actually, that’s probably the one thing we have not done during our COVID-19 quarantine! I did bake brownies with Maggie once and that was enough fun for me.

As I mentioned in my last post, with Maggie home from daycare from mid March to mid June, I knew we had to come up with some fun ideas to keep her toddler brain occupied. While she’s not one to sit and watch anything for a long period of time on TV, she is OBSESSED with the phone and iPad and watching YouTube kids (Hello, Blippi!) and I knew that I did not want her to have too much of that.

My mom got me these two books – Play and Learn Toddler Activities Book  by Andrea Thayer and the Rainy Day Toddler Activity Book by Krissy Bonning-Gould which contain a lot of great ideas for toddlers and even older kids. I utilized those as well as many Instagram accounts for toddler ideas and sensory play. I was also fortunate that her daycare teachers sent a long a lot of fun activities.

So, I really really suck at crafts. Like, anything I make rarely turns out the way I see it in a picture. But you know what? Who cares. I was doing it with a toddler who isn’t super verbal so she couldn’t make fun of me anyway. I could tell the dog was sometimes judging me though.

I started to get crafty with my ideas and learning – we had the very hungry Caterpillar book so I cut out shapes and had her make a caterpillar. She loves the Wheels on the Bus song so we did a bus craft. Ditto for the Crayons books – we made a crayons craft. I also made my own Play-Doh (and then bought actual play-doh). All the time I was thinking to myself: WHO AM I???? WHAT HAVE I BECOME?? and then racking my brain for the next day’s activities.

Of course, I never forced her to do anything – if she didn’t want to do a craft, she didn’t have to. If she wanted to play independently (which was rare, she usually liked me right there), she could. These were just things I had to get us to nap time or bed time. For us, if Maggie’s bored, it usually leads to meltdowns…

NO.ONE.WANTS.MELTDOWNS.

Here are some non-crafty ideas:

  • A water table is a MUST toy for you – Why? Because you can use it INSIDE OR OUT. I pulled it out of storage in late April and let her play with it in the basement and she loved throwing her toys in there. When it got warmer, it went outside for water playtime.
  • Plastic Eggs – We pulled these out before Easter and she would do little Easter Egg hunts.
  • Walks Walks Walks. She’s only now starting to get interested in digging in the dirt, playing with rocks (UGGGHHH) but she loves being outside. The downside is she’s not really into her stroller anymore so walking her and Tucker at the same time is difficult for one person.

What are some ideas you have that have successfully kept your kid’s attention? Let me know in the comments section!