I’m not sure about you, but the NUMBER ONE question my kids seem to ask is: Can I have a snack? I’ll be honest – this question drives me bonkers. “You just ate like 5 minutes ago. How can you be hungry again? You haven’t even finished chewing that last bite.” The snack basket idea has officially saved my sanity.
I often wonder why so many details were left out of the early parenting books I read, like What To Expect When You’re Expecting. Teaching your kids the hard things is almost entirely avoided. They don’t even cover things like:
Without exception, a common question that Barry and I get every single school year is: “Why did you guys decide to homeschool?”
When we first started out, we didn’t articulate our answer all that well, but the answer hasn’t changed. Simply put, we don’t believe you can separate God and education. Ever. This is our sixth year homeschooling, and we believe this now more than ever.
Most of you probably know, I have 4 children between the ages of 10 and 3. And y’all, my oldest, Annie, did not sleep the whole night through until she was nearly 5 years old. That’s right – just month before her 5th birthday! I tried nearly every sleep tip under the sun – I was desperate for sleep!
Without a doubt, that’s the question I receive the MOST often: “But Stacy…what do you do with your kids when you are ____?” (cleaning the house, making the food, folding laundry, etc.). Working with kids at home isn’t the easiest thing, but it IS possible.
For the first time in my parenting career, I had help this summer. Our family friend, Lillee, came over to watch the kids for a few hours each week (Mother’s Helper type) so I could work on my two online businesses. It has been wonderful to have that help working with kids. For 10 years I didn’t have that help.
As a dad of four young kids, I’m in awe of what it takes to be a mom. I’m definitely not capable of doing what most of you moms out there accomplish. I regularly tell people that Stacy is a superhero…and I mean it. But here’s the thing, ladies – you are way too hard on yourself. Every mom fail matters!
However, using someone’s cheery social media feed as your standard, you’ve decided that you can’t measure up and that you’re a complete disaster. In doing that, you’ve set an unrealistic expectation that you literally will never be able to live up to.
Let me preface this by saying I am not a doctor – shocker, right? I’m definitely not a psychiatrist, psychologist, or any sort of expert in these types of things. But I have done a lot of reading on the topic of conscious language and have all sorts of thoughts to share. Spoiler Alert: Conscious Language has changed a LOT (for the better) for us.
Guest post by Lisa Mullen, author of the recently-released “The Every Mom’s Meal Solution Handbook,” available now!
There are many challenging parts of being a wife, mom, and homemaker, but one of the most difficult can be figuring out what in the world to feed them day after day after day. And feeding them isn’t one of those things you can put off for a few days (or weeks) like laundry or windows, either. Oh no, they’ll hunt you down if you forget for even a few hours!
You may have heard me talk before about the busy bags we take to church. Each and every Saturday night, I fill our busy bag with all kinds of goodies to keep the kids occupied during church. I have a box full of crayons, markers, coloring books, sticker books, activity books, different small crafts and activities that I store in our basement and can choose fun things from.
Since I get asked all the time what’s inside those church busy bags (specifically), I did a quick video on Facebook showing a sneak peek. But I also wanted to share over here since some of you prefer to read instead of watch a video. So…what’s in the busy bags?
I know famous people, y’all. Jessica Smartt is my friend, a fellow blogger, and now, she’s a published author too. She wrote a real live BOOK! So now I am basically friends with a famous celebrity. Well, I mean, not exactly a celebrity, but it’s still kind of a big deal, right?
Before you start going down a bad path…this book is not going to make you feel like a failure as mom. Nope! I’m not about mom guilt and neither is Jessica! Can I tell you something?
