Starting New Family Traditions

Coffee is essential to my life. I drink coffee like water. Lorelai Gilmore might be a kindred spirit.

If you don’t get that, you definitely weren’t born in the 90’s,

I’ve been exhausted lately, but I must persevere on. My sanity depends on it.

And…the kids might take over if I don’t. It’s kinda important that doesn’t happen. So I’ve been keeping them busy while I’ve been burning the midnight oil. I’ve been writing/typing so much my fingers are starting to calus. Not that this is a bad thing. It just means I’m tired. Constantly.

Hence coffee being my BFF. Now we’ve come full circle.

To help keep them busy and me keep what’s left of my sanity, we are starting new traditions for the kids. I hope that doing this will help them get adjusted to the new house and our change with me staying at home with them everyday. I started thinking of the little things that might stand out to them as they grow up. Really, I’ve been busy without even realizing it. We’ve done arts and crafts, played outside in the sprinklers, gone on outings. It’s starting to add up and it makes me feel a little better about my decision to stay at home with them.

One of our new traditions is Disney Movie Night. Every Friday, we are going to watch a Disney movie and eat junk food. Well, my kids consider kettle corn and sugar-free chocolate pudding with strawberries in it junk food, so I’ll consider myself lucky. This week we are going to start with Up. One of my favorites!

What kind of family traditions does your family have? What are some of the best traditions you’ve heard?

I think I lost my cape…

Yesterday I planned on being the worlds coolest mom, a supermom. Instead, we watched four hours of television and had a failed attempt at making silly putty. My trusty friend Pinterest and I found a great recipe, or so I though. Don’t get me wrong, it was awesome making a huge mess with the attempt, but it was nowhere close to silly putty. At least the kids seemed to enjoy it.

This kept us busy for almost an hour. Luckily my mom was here to help out or I would have had a problem with helping both the kids. Or keeping the rest of my house silly putty free. And keeping them from clogging up the sink while we scrubbed the mess off of them. Don’t try the recipe using cornstarch and dish soap, because it doesn’t work. We tried several different variations and it just didn’t want to come together like it should have.

Staying at home and being supermom aren’t quite working out the way I thought they would….At least my freelancing career seems to be on track. I have two feature articles that come out in July and I’ve started copywriting for a few different companies.

When Do You Start Pushing Back?

Today I feel like a failure as a mom. I got up, I got M ready for her Psychiatrists appointment, I went to the appointment, I waited an hour to see the doctor. Then, I took M to get a happy meal, all while I carried around that beautiful prescription that was supposed to fix all our behavioral needs. We came home, waiting for the counselor to come, dealt with fit after fit with M because her routine was off today, so of course she’s testy. I went to drop off the prescription while she was seeing her counselor, but I decided not to wait because I wanted to make sure I was back by the time she was done and not make the afternoon worse because her routine would be even further off track. I fixed dinner, I wrote an article and then an hour before bedtime I drove the five minutes to pick up the medicine with M in tow. I walk up to the counter and I can immediately tell that something is amiss as soon as the nice tech brought back the paper in her hand with a grim smile on her face. What? Our claim has been denied due to M’s age and do I have additional insurance to cover the cost? I’m heartbroken. Crestfallen. This magical little pill was supposed to make my life easier, allow me to have more free time, allow M to have focus and be able to go to school without having an Independent Education Plan.

I’ll start again tomorrow. Make calls to the doctors office and the insurance company to try to get our daughter the help she needs. But for now, I’m still trying to fight back tears of disappointment that relief is still one day further. I just need some alone time to sort my thoughts. Maybe tomorrow will bring the positive thoughts, but tonight I just want to wallow in self pity and have thoughts about how horrible of a mom I am because I can’t wait to give my kid the pill that will help reel in her behavior. I’ll start again tomorrow because maybe it will be a better day.

Free for all Writing

Starting my freelance writing career is consuming my life right now. Well, almost, taking care of my kiddos is definitely front and center, but if I don’t have some other outlet, I might just go nuts. So I’ve been writing. A lot. Tons. In college I freelance wrote, but I didn’t do it often and it was always ghost writing. I’m not so sure that’s what I want now. My words have value, and if I can help someone who’s going through something similar or put a smile on their face, I’ll put myself out there for everyone to dissect. I’m loud, outspoken and have a tendency to cuss way too much, but if people want to judge me on that, I say fuck em’.

I’ve been secretly working on a novel for about two years now. (A sappy romance novel, but at least it has a plot and isn’t erotica.) Amazingly, my husband was on board with the idea of me pursuing something that I had never told him I enjoyed and spent free time doing. I think he just wants to keep me sane so I’ll continue staying at home with the kids. I’ll post more on my research to get started (restarted?) on my freelance work. Fingers crossed I can get some leverage and have something bringing in money soon!

The Reluctant Stay-At-Home Mom

One week ago today I quit my job to become a stay-at-home mom. I can’t say I’m excited about this prospect, but for our family it has to be done. In December of 2014, my husband and I adopted our two children. We have a beautiful daughter, M. She’s 4, almost 5 and she will start kindergarten in the fall. Then we have our son, J, who just turned 3.

Our family didn’t start the traditional way, because I never do things the ‘easy’ way. We took an emergency foster care placement, and two years later, we were able to legally adopt our kids. We knew there were major risks when we took in our children, but until the adoption was finalized we never experienced any issues. Luckily, we have an amazing councillor that visits us twice a week.

M has had minor behavioral issues during our journey, but only recently have we developed some major concerns. She was kicked out of two daycares in two months, meaning something was most definitely wrong. After the last daycare incident, we decided to make some major changes.  Here comes the part where I get to stay at home everyday with my crazy, loud, insanely frustrating and energetic kids.  All while we see psychologists and psychiatrists and specialists to ensure we get the help that M needs.
So join me for a very large glass of wine and I’ll tell you my story…