I can remember as a young girl, daydreaming about the day that I would become a mom. I dreamed of baking cookies with my children. I dreamed of building forts in the living room. I dreamed of camping out in the backyard. I dreamed of kissing bobos and wiping tears off wet cheeks. And in all these dreams, I saw myself with this glow, almost like an angel, with a soft smile on my face, hair perfectly in place and laughing often.
A few years ago a friend suggested that I try the "no-nag technique." According to this technique, you simply tell your child to do something one time, and when they don't do it, you enforce a consequence. You do not tell them to do something over and over again. You do not try to control your child's behavior by threatening their lives if they don't do it. You simply say it once, walk away, and then enforce a consequence if they disobey.
When I first started this blog in 2013, I knew that I wanted to utilize the word “Headquarters,” because let’s face it, it’s punny. And funny. So I guess that would be pfunny? And we have always called our home our Headquarters.
Being a bit Type A, I knew I needed to use an H-word to go along with it. (Remember how all of my kids’ names start with E’s?) ‘Humble’ sounded too religious. ‘Honest’ didn’t provide the alliteration I was hoping for. ‘Hilarious’ set this blog up for disappointing the readers, since many times it’s serious. ‘Homey’ sounded a bit “urban.” So I settled with the word Happy. And I love Happy because I love cheeriness, and frankly, when I think of our home, I want it to evoke (not invoke, for all your grammar nerds) feelings of happiness.
I am 8 weeks postpartum today, and this is what I look like. I still have a nice sized baby bump, I am still holding on to about 15 extra pounds, and I still can’t wear many of my pre-pregnancy clothes. In fact, I was only just recently able to start wearing my wedding rings again!
Yesterday was a really hard day.
My baby didn’t sleep the night before, so I was awake from 2am on with a short catnap here and there. She was very fussy and cried ALL DAY. My check engine light came on. I was short on patience and kindness with my older two. Oh, and did I mention that my husband is gone?
I know for some people, they try for months and years upon years to get pregnant. For us, this has never been an issue. Emerson was a surprise, and Etta Jayne was, well, a one shot wonder :) With Eliza, however, this was the first time we were "trying" to get pregnant, and it took 4 months for us to be pregnant with her.
If you didn't know this about me, I am an extroverted introvert... meaning that I can manage pretty well in a room full of people, but I need my alone time. In fact, I crave alone time. I know I know. I seem outgoing and bubbly - and that is true to a certain degree. But ever since I could remember, I have always needed me time.
Hello blog world!! It has been waaay too long since I have written last. I have had all kinds of things to write about, yet no time to do it. Since I last wrote, we found out we are having baby #3 in August, we sold our house and bought and moved into our new one! Today, my sweet hubby finally had some off time so I was able to get my hair done (hadn’t been done since December… yikes!) and he let me have the rest of the day to myself. He asked me what time I would be home, and I told him not to put that kind of pressure on me ;)
Today I am FINALLY going to post about Emerson's birthday party. I tried to write about it a few weeks ago, but we all saw what happened then.
But today, I will stay on track... or should I say train track? :)
Trice and I got back from our 6 year anniversary trip THE NIGHT BEFORE Emerson's party. That's right. THE NIGHT BEFORE. We couldn't have pulled it off without Team Awesome: GrandMere, Aunt Lacy and Aunt Money. Thank you all SO MUCH for your help and creativity with Emerson's party! We got to throw his party at our house this year, so my little mommy heart was so excited! Here is what we did:
Well, this was supposed to be a post about Emerson's birthday party, but then my fingers started typing uncontrollably and I got all emotional. Go figure ;) I'll post about his birthday party soon!
My sweet little Emerson turned FOUR on August 16th. FOUR! Can you believe it? That means that I got pregnant with him almost 5 years ago. When I say that, that really makes me have to catch my breath for a second.
I always knew I wanted kids one day, but that one day snuck up on me when I was least expecting it.
I have been an emotional basket case lately! Trice has been traveling a lot, and I’ve been overwhelmed by all that goes into parenting two toddlers all on my own. And so often when I am overwhelmed, it's so easy to just go numb. BUT GOD. But God in His goodness faithfully met me right where I was last week and started pouring out fresh perspective for me. And the tears. They just. Keep. Flowing.
So much so that when Trice was home the other day, we watched this Zillow commercial about this family finding the perfect house with a tree house for their son, and I lost it. Trice could do nothing but laugh at me. But YALL. That boy’s face. That music. That scene. It was just so precious!
Brrrr it is frrreeezing here in Texas! The last couple of weeks have been tough, and I'm not going to lie... I feel like I've been going a little cuckoo! First we all took turns getting sick, which means we were quarantined from the outside world. And now we have been stuck indoors again due to frigid weather. That being said, I thought I'd put together a unique list of activities that would be great to do on a snow day. These are activities that we have had a lot of fun doing together with our kiddos.
Last week we celebrated our sweet Etta Jayne’s 1st birthday. I feel like it was just yesterday that we brought our baby girl into the world. Time is really flying, and I don’t know if I am okay with it or not! Our girl is so close to walking, and she loves to clap her hands and wave to every passerby she sees. She’s such a sweetie!
So God has done something very cool in my heart the last couple of weeks! To be real, for the longest time I viewed my family as a hindrance to the calling that God put on my life. I wanted to be on the front lines of fighting human trafficking and traveling around the world with Trice as missionaries for Jesus. With “Achiever” as my #1 strength, my bucket list and to-do list were ever growing. After having Emerson, I tried to set aside my dreams for a little while, and I thought I was doing a good job… and then I had Etta Jayne! Having a new baby again comes along with no me-time whatsoever; and having two kids means less energy and time that I have to pursue my dreams and visions. The last few months, I lay in bed at night so frustrated because I kept waiting for my BIG moment, and it seemed that my family just kept. getting. in. my. way! I know it sounds awful, but hey, I’m just being real!
Hands down one of my favorite purchases for Emerson thus far has been our Learning Tower. When I first heard about these, I knew we needed one! Basically, it is a tower that you can pull up to your countertops that your kids can safely stand in and, well, learn! Instead of pulling a chair up to the counter and potentially falling off, Emerson can scoot his tower wherever he wants to go safely.
I went and spent some time with my friend Kari a couple of weeks ago. Kari is a huge role model of mine. She is an amazing wife and an amazing mother to 5 beautiful kids. [Check out her blog HERE.] I couldn’t help but wonder what Kari’s magic secret was to parenting her kids so well. So while picking her brain about different topics ranging from spanking to baby schedules to education, Kari said something that really blew me away. She said that parenting is a journey. All parents are on the journey, whether we are in the baby phase trying to choose between breastfeeding and formula or in the adolescent phase trying to decide between public school, private school and home school. There is no cut and dry perfect formula to being a parent. As Kari told me, 1 + 1 does not equal 2 in the parenting world. It is all a journey, there is no magic secret, and we are constantly learning what ideas and techniques work best for our family.
Here in our Headquarters, we don't believe a child is ever too young to start learning about responsibility - specifically in the area of chores! Etta Jayne is just shy of 5 months old and is already responsible for vacuuming the floors... Okay, I kid I kid. She is only responsible for eating, sleeping and pooping :) But Emerson on the other hand started helping with little chores probably somewhere around 18 months. We have always made it a point to involve him with housework, even before he could do a lot of the things himself. We want him to know that he has an important role to play in this family.
I used to think that my primary job as a mother was to be my kids' playmate. And I truly used to spend every waking minute with Emerson, my firstborn. But after a very exhausting second pregnancy and having another baby that requires lots of attention, it dawned on me that I cannot be my toddler's playmate and my baby's source of life at the same time. At first, I felt serious guilt about this. I was putting way too much pressure on myself as a mom. But then I realized that this is just a part of life, and sooner or later, Emerson was going to have to learn that the world doesn't revolve around him :) I still interact with him while he is doing different activities throughout the day, and I also try make time to read books with him or play choo choos while his sister is sleeping, but I just cannot devote the entire day to him anymore. And some days may go by where our one-on-one time is slim. But I no longer feel guilty about this. It's just the reality of being a mom to a baby and a toddler.
Since relaying to the world that we had a home birth, there have been so many people asking us to share our story! People have wanted to know every detail, so we figured it would be easier to write it once and share it with everyone. So here is Etta Jayne’s birth story, all details included :)
First of all, home birth was not a “SuperMom” thing for me. I didn’t have anything to prove. I just didn’t have the best experience in the hospital with Emerson’s birth and had complications for several months after. So why not look into other options? We started looking into the midwife route and the more we learned, the more we knew that was the route to take this time!
Well, my sweet little Emerson just turned two years old this weekend! I cannot believe it. I have run the whole gamut of emotions - from happiness and joy to nostalgia to boohooing to "what in the world is happening to the time?" freakouts to more happiness and gratitude. The truth is, outside of Jesus, Emerson is the best gift that God has ever given to Trice and me. How neat that God entrusts to us this precious little boy to raise, who brings deep joy to our hearts and teaches us about life? Every day is a new life lesson when it comes to child rearing! AND WE GET TO HAVE ANOTHER ONE! Eeeeek!
So a couple of weeks ago, we had the exciting opportunity to find out the gender of our baby! We debated over exactly HOW we wanted to find out, but decided in the end to throw a gender reveal party where everyone (including us!!) found out together. And we were overjoyed to learn that we are having a LITTLE GIRL!
So how did we do it?
So, it is true. We are having another baby! I am about 9.5 weeks along and my due date is November 17. EXCITING!! And we thought it would be fun to make a little announcement to share the news to our friends and extended family. My sweet friend over here in Texas, Danielle Birkbeck, snapped this cute picture of my cute boy and put together this cute little graphic! Thank you Danielle! And we had to use our name as a pun of course :)
I remember reading this article by Frederica Mathewes-Green a few years ago, and this thought stuck with me:
“Nobody wants to have an abortion. And if nobody wants to have an abortion, why are women doing it, 2,800 times a day? If women are doing something 2,800 times daily that they don’t want to do, this is not liberation we’ve won.”
Is abortion really empowerment? No. No it is not. Telling a woman she cannot succeed unless she kills the life that’s inside of her... that’s not empowerment. That’s victimization. Big difference between the two.
I want to be a person who tells women that even though the right choice might be the hardest choice at the moment, that they are BRAVE and CAPABLE of doing hard and right things.