by Guest Blogger on May 3, 2013
This post is part of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more about the series, read this post. To read all posts in the series, click here.
I am a planner. It’s a control thing. I think deep down I’ve always known that control is an illusion, but that didn’t stop me from pursuing it or from trying to plan as much as possible, even in the face of uncertainty.
Motherhood is a prime example of something I’ve been planning for as long as I can remember. I’ve always loved babies, and as a child my plan was to get married in my twenties, have four babies, and stay home with them. It didn’t work out that way, but I continued to deny my subconscious suspicion that the terms “family” and “planning” might just be polar opposites.
Undeterred, I came up with Plan B. [click to continue…]
by Kristen on May 1, 2013
This post is by Kristen Levithan, Happiest Home contributor and blogger at Motherese. You can read previous historical motherhood posts by clicking here.
Photo: Caitlinator, via Flickr Creative Commons
Would you be surprised to learn that Mother’s Day was created by a woman who was never a mother herself? I know I was. In fact it was a daughter, Anna Jarvis, who was so proud of her own mother’s life and work that she lobbied to create a national holiday honoring all mothers and the work done by women’s organizations. [click to continue…]
by Meagan Francis on April 30, 2013
I’m working with Minute Maid® Pure Squeezed on a series of posts about nurturing ourselves and our families. Click here to see more of the discussion.
During Spring Break a few weeks back, my seven-year-old son Owen seemed to become a little needier than usual.
A buzzing-with-energy dynamo even in his most relaxed moments, Owen isn’t great at filling long, open days. He gets bored easily, even (especially?) on the days I green-light nonstop video-game marathons. He jumps and wiggles and gets in my face. A lot. And his need to move, think, and DO becomes multiplied during school breaks, when routines and distractions and go-go-go goes out the window.
I try to burn off some of that energy by giving him jobs that get him out of the house (“Bring in the recycling bins! Take the puppy outside…again!”) but after a while it’s clear: what he really wants is my attention, and a lot of it.
So during that week, Owen and I spent more time. We played Monopoly (two-person Monopoly with a seven-year-old who doesn’t like to spend any of his colorful fake money? It’s just about as long a process as you’d imagine.) We drew together. We cooked together. He told me stories -lots of long, convoluted stories – centering around Pokemon, playground spats and hero quests. [click to continue…]
by Meagan Francis on April 29, 2013
Recently a reader, Julie, sent me the following question:
My question is about how in the world you manage your time to post to several blogs/monitor all the comments/write for other blogs/write books/and everything else, including cooking/raising 5 children. Needless to say I’m impressed and would love to know your secret.
I have a personal blog (just for family/journaling mostly) so I know how time consuming it is (the photos especially!). I have half started another blog, but frankly am not good at finding the time to work on it. And I only have 2 kids!
Please enlighten me to your tricks of the trade!
I get some variation on the “how do you do it all?” question pretty often, as I’m guessing many moms do. And while I hate to answer this so predictably, the first answer to the question is, “I don’t!”
However, I know I do have a lot going on, and it probably does seem impossibly overwhelming to contemplate from the outside…when you don’t see the full picture. Julie asked about time-management tips, of which I have quite a few. But first I want to address the circumstances of my life that make some of what I do possible: [click to continue…]
by Meagan Francis on April 27, 2013
Jennifer Margulis is a good friend of mine.
We first became acquainted about ten years ago, as part of an email list for writer moms started by Katie Granju. We’ve roomed together at conferences, email frequently and talk on the phone (more frequently when neither of us is under some crazy deadline) and meet up when she visits family in Chicago. A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting her mother (a renowned scientist) and strolling her baby Leone around Manhattan while Jennifer accepted an award at the American Society of Journalists and Authors conference.
My general rule – for obvious reasons – is that I don’t attempt to write critical reviews of my friends’ books. If I love the book and I love the author, I will gladly feature the book to help spread the word, but that’s not the same as reviewing it. Jennifer and I have a long history, so that rule was definitely top of mind when Jennifer’s publisher sent me a copy of her new book, The Business of Baby: What Doctors Don’t Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Before Their Bottom Line.
But when I read the book I knew I couldn’t simply give it a cheery “thumbs up!” here. The Business of Baby – and its subject matter – deserved and required a weightier, more critical analysis than that.
I wasn’t sure how to handle the conflict at first, and I fumbled a little along the way, initially trying to pass off the job to a neutral third party, our book reviewer Devon. (You can read her take on The Business of Baby on her blog, The Paperhouse.)
In the end, though, I decided that I had to break my self-imposed rule this one time. You all deserve to know how I feel about the book, and what’s more, I think the possibilities for conversation surrounding it are really valuable.
So what did I think of The Business of Baby?
Well…it’s complicated.
[click to continue…]
by Guest Blogger on April 26, 2013
This post is part of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more about the series, read this post. To read all posts in the series, click here.
It was shortly after my birthday when my boyfriend popped the question. It wasn’t a marriage proposal, but a baby one. He was twenty five and wanted to be a young dad and at twenty years old, I wanted nothing more than to be a mom. We didn’t tell anyone what we were planning. Our friends and parents already thought we were a crazy impetuous duo, having moved in together after just six months of young love, but hey, we’d known each other for two years!
It was ten long months later that I finally registered a positive on the stick. In that time I had become slightly, um, obsessive. I read everything I could get my hands on relating to conception and pregnancy and in my crazed state, I seemed to have lost my ability to count properly. Thankfully, once I figured out my actual ovulation dates, we were golden.
Throughout my pregnancy I continued to read, and form opinions. Opinions on the best prenatal care, the most natural way to give birth, how my baby would eat and sleep. As my belly got bigger, my social life shrank. I still had movie nights with friends, and I’d attend the odd concert, but their lives of partying and serial beaus seemed farther and farther away from my own in a committed relationship, contemplating my future as a mother.
Then, our beautiful baby boy arrived, and the friends? They disappeared. [click to continue…]
by Sarah Powers on April 24, 2013
This post is by Sarah Powers, Happiest Home contributor and Managing Editor, and blogger at Powers of Mine.
A year or so ago, I started saving glass jars. Inspired by the seemingly overnight rise in trendiness of the Mason jar, and coupled with a sort of obsessive satisfaction I get out of not wasting things, my little collection of old salsa, pasta sauce, olive and jam jars grew steadily.
The problem was, I had no idea what to actually DO with the jars. I turned to Pinterest and created a board called Inexplicable Jar Obsession, which I filled with amazing ideas – like twine-wrapped jars filled with floating candles and ombre tinted mason jars – only to realize when my pinning high wore off that I was never in a million years actually going to do those things.
(By the way, if you are the type to do these things with jars, more power to ‘ya. To paraphrase Meagan in her post about baking from scratch, I don’t do it, but I think it’s awesome if you do.)
It has taken a while, but I’ve gradually found very practical – and DO-able, for me – uses for repurposed glass jars in my home.
Here are 5 ideas for reusing glass jars that don’t require a glue gun, raffia, chalkboard paint, or a crafty bone in your body: [click to continue…]
by Meagan Francis on April 22, 2013
A few weeks back, the local paper got in touch with me hoping to do a story about my blog, my podcast, and feeding a family. I talked to the reporter about why I started The Kitchen Hour, how I manage blogging and life with five kids, getting dinner on the table more easily, and my work with ConAgra Foods.
And then a photographer came out to my house to snap pictures of me in the kitchen with the kids, which they totally dug. (The younger three, anyway. Jacob and Isaac hid.) [click to continue…]
by Meagan Francis on April 20, 2013
This post was written as part of a compensated partnership with Goldfish Smiles.
Yes, those ridiculous dimples are mine. ALL MINE! I take full credit for them, as well as the dimples in the cheeks and chins of my other four kids.
I also like to take credit for Clara’s imagination. Isaac’s sense of humor. William’s love of books. And the list goes on…
But sometimes, my kids reflect back not-so-great traits that I also have to rather sheepishly recognize as my very own. The truth is, our children are often mirrors of our least-attractive behavior. The trick is using those “reflections” to improve, rather than just getting lost in guilt. [click to continue…]
by Meagan Francis on April 19, 2013
I’ve always wanted to think of myself as the kind of mom who grows herbs indoors using a DIY seed-starting kit, turning toilet-paper rolls or egg cartons into frugal mini-gardens which nurture her child’s green thumb, creativity and resourcefulness.
In reality, I’m the kind of mom who intends, every year, to start seeds indoors eight weeks before the ground is warm, or start a windowsill herb garden, but always forgets to gather the supplies or set aside an afternoon for putting together a system.
So this year, I decided to skip all the usual “Oh man, I can’t believe I never got around to that!” and make things easy on myself.
Yes, it would have been a lot cheaper to scour the garden center for seeds and soil and repurpose household objects as planters, but I decided that buying a pre-assembled kit was worth the $15 – $20 it would cost because this way, the project would actually get done, and sometimes that’s counts most. [click to continue…]
