The adventures of a girl aspiring to be many somethings, including (but not limited to) a pretty good wife, a passable mom, a decent human being, and a humor blogger whose posts you actually want to read.
This is a sponsored post for The Airport Playground at Currie, but all opinions are my own (and my kids'!) As a mom of two kiddos under three, I'm always on the hunt for awesome playgrounds where my little guys can explore with as much independence as possible, and for as long as possible. I'm [...]
This post is affiliated with Wayfair.ca. All opinions are my own! I'm knocking on wood, holding my breath, and crossing my fingers as I write this, but it seems that spring might ACTUALLY be here to stay in Calgary. We've survived winter and second winter, the birds are singing and all of the snow has melted [...]
Sometimes it's hard living 3 hours away from my family, especially now that we have kids. I've been fortunate to sneak in a lot of visits with my parents over this past 11 months since I've been on maternity leave with our second baby. After my mom and dad left today, I was reflecting on [...]
A friend of mine recently posted an Instagram story featuring some of the lies she has told her kids to make her life as a parent a little bit easier and a lot more entertaining. When I saw her post, it inspired me to do a little digging to see what kinds of stories other parents are telling their kids to help them get through the day with a chuckle or two. When I originally posted the question, I thought I was going to get a huge variety of crazy answers, but what I found instead was kind of fascinating. Imagine my surprise when, over the course of a couple of days, I started to realize that we are all lying to our kids about the same things.
Some days, it's hard to get out of bed. I certainly don't get paid enough for some of the things this job entails (and by enough, I mean at all), but something keeps me coming back.
I have to imagine that one of the greatest struggles of maternity leave has got to be finding the will and strength to leave the house. Actually, I don't have to imagine, because I know this to be true. When I was on mat leave the first time around, the seduction of Netflix, combined with both my fear of Mommy and Me groups, hatred of cold weather and just general laziness found my new baby and I spending the better part many winter weeks hanging out around the house.
This is neither a letter of celebration, nor regret. This is simply an acknowledgement of your presence; a simple note to say that, yeah, I see you, in all of your loose-skinned glory. I accept that you're here. I know that I spent 9 months cultivating you, eating cheeseburgers when I should have had a salad, taking naps when I should have done a workout. But I was hungry. And I was tired. It's not that I hate you; I just haven't learned how to love you yet.
I started to think of this unfair expectation that moms put on themselves in the context of our children. Would we ever belittle the accomplishment of one of our kids if they hadn't achieved it in the "typical" way? Would we ever tell them that there was only one "appropriate" or "acceptable" method to reach one of their goals and that, if they received any outside assistance in attaining that goal, it wouldn't count and they should be ashamed of themselves?
I've been on maternity leave #2 for the past two months. Of the last eight weeks, approximately six were spent with different family and friends coming to help out with our new baby, or coming to stay to help us celebrate the holidays. Once the excitement of Christmas was over, my husband returned to work [...]
In preparation for my second C-Section, I scoured the Internet for encouragement and advice on how to head into the operation with confidence. I soon found that a lot of the information out there is filled with doom and gloom, and was feeling even less excited about heading into the procedure than I had been [...]
THE ASPIRING SOMETHING 