It’s May 1st-ish as I’m writing this! Life has been chaotic in almost every way that I really haven’t been doing my usual reflections. So, I’m taking pause here in this space, as I hope you will find moments to do so as well.
My boys are 5 and 3! My favorite line recently is, “time is a thief.” It really is. I’ll have little deja vu moments that bring me back to their newborn days, but get snapped right back to present when I hear their oh-so-cute little voices arguing with each other. Sometimes I pull up my old blog posts here and here, finding that the tips I wrote for myself are very much applicable today.
These ages are as precious as they were when they were newborn. While arguments over toys come up all the time, they also play and laugh together so much more. The best line I heard: Em said to N, “Nathan, I still love you even when I’m being mean to you.” Yep. Some worries about their physical independence have been slowly going away while new worries, like “how do I teach them to be good human beings?!” are quickly becoming my biggest task in life. Tying it back to my small business here, it’s been fun giving my boys sneak peeks into mommy’s artsy stuff. The upside: I don’t have to worry as much about squeezing in time between naps to stage photos since they’re now both capable of not messing up my work (most of the time anyway).
A lot of the tips I gave myself during those first three years still hold true today. If anything, I’ve lost sight of some of them recently on this journey of mommahood. Mostly, I feel like I’m running a marathon, except as a not-so-good-runner in real life, I’m not consistent with taking the breaks and pauses that I need. Here I am again reminding myself (and you, if needed) some forever tips:
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Giving grace. One of my biggest struggles is how I very naturally tie my self-worth to my productivity. Even though I know and remind myself that I do so much, some days I still find myself feeling lesser than. I continue to work on giving myself grace.
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Embracing, but not abusing this stamina. I certainly feel like I’ve built up a lot more stamina to handle the unpredictable schedule of having little ones. I used to feel annoyed when we’re off schedule for say, not prepping dinner by a certain time, because it delays everything else for the evening. I have a lot more tolerance now for the daily instances where things don’t go the way I want. With that, I try to embrace this developed stamina as a mom rather than abuse it - which in my case, always ends up being that I take on more tasks.
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Staying present. I used to say that the 1.5-2yo phase was so fun, but I am honestly enjoying their current ages just as much. Chatty, curious, humorous, all of the things. The do-er that I am needs to stop doing things (or even think about doing things) and be present, allowing myself to get lost in their little adventurous worlds.
As always, thank you for following along. <3
