In nearly 11 years of blogging, I’ve never talked about matters of spirituality or religion. Today I am excited to dive into it a bit as part of the next installment of our Real Talk with Real Mom series. Today we’re all chatting about religion, spirituality and how it relates to parenting. Are you raising your kids with religion? I am not and I thought I would share a bit about why.
Parenting
When I saw the topic for this month’s installment of our Real Talk with Real Moms series I’m pretty sure I actually laughed out loud. As a point of order, I have about zero tips for children and sleep these days, but surviving toddler sleep regression? That I can speak to! So buckle up. It’s about the get real.
Emerson had the flu last week. When she spiked a fever on Wednesday I pretty much knew our fate since she’d been exposed on Monday, so I immediately scooped her out of the house for a flu test. While she sat on my lap in the waiting room, crying to go home, she complained about how her eyeballs felt like they were fire.
Some of you may remember a couple of years ago when I was part of the Real Talk with Real Mom series along with a bunch of my favorite ladies in the blogging community where each month we would share our personal experiences related to motherhood and parenting. After a long hiatus, the series is back and I’m so excited to dig into some of the really tricky topics we all think about so often as mothers and parents. Today we’re dishing on growing families – going from one kid to two or more or, in our case, an unexpected addition to your cub pack.
My alarm went off for the first time at 4:30 this morning. The room was still dark, fans blowing every direction to keep the bedroom cool since our big old house is sadly want of central air. My husband slipped out of bed, reappearing briefly a bit later smelling of toothpaste and freshly applied deodorant to plant a kiss and whisper “I love you, baby” before he was off, still long before dawn. A couple of hours later I woke again to the sounds of a little voice calling for mommy through the baby monitor. I roused the dog who had climbed into her father’s spot on the bed shortly after he left it, and walked into the room next door to fetch a snuggly toddler still encased in blankets. And so, the day began.
It’s been a minute since I last shared a baby update and somewhere along the way my baby morphed into a toddler without my ever slowing down to acknowledge that fact. Friends, this motherhood journey never fails to amaze me with how beautiful and hard it can be, all at the same time. Our little girl is now a little over two and half years old, and over the last six months she has grown and matured so much that it’s actually pretty emotional for me. I’m the mom who cries regularly (read: many times a week) over everything from how much I love my kid to how quickly she’s growing to how smart she is to how much of a pain in the ass she can be some days. (Let’s be honest with each other on that, ok?) At two and a half she still stays home with me full-time save for busy shoot or prep days when she’s generally with a sitter. This fall she’ll be starting pre-k (more on that later) so I am feeling really emotional now that we’re in the final stretch of this time where it’s just been Mommy and Bébé conquering the world. So here we are, at two and a half, full of spunk, melting down a few times a day and as obsessed as ever with her daddy, her big brothers and her puppy Harper.