The Season Of No

I just started reading the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and it has inspired me to get back to my writing and carve out more time for myself and look at my life in a very different way. Now that I'm 40 and terribly wise and terribly adult (cough), I can look back on my life through the decades (Dear God! Am I really that old?), and I can reflect on the themes of each decade.

My 20's was the decade of "Sure! Why Not!" 

Sometimes even, "Sure! Why The Hell Not?!" There was a lot that happened during my 20's that was a result of me thinking or saying, "Sure, why not?!" A lot of it provided the backdrop to many great memories. Looking back on it now, some of it fills me with incredible panic and fear and I thank God it all turned out OK in the end and some of it makes me long for those days again. Mostly because I didn't have kids back then so I was able to take a nap whenever I wanted. I long for the days of extra sleep, getting a good night's sleep, sleeping in, napping whenever I needed it, not getting woken up in the middle of the night by a baby who needed to nurse and just sleep, sleep, sleep in general.  Sleep, glorious sleep. However, I don't think I actually slept that much in my 20's. I am now regretting that I burned the candle at both ends so many days and nights. What was I thinking?!

My 30's kind of fell into the theme of, "I probably should..." 

Or "I guess I should," or "I really should because they did that nice thing for me once and don't I have to repay them even though I have to make great compromises in what I need or my family needs to help them?" Or "I feel like I have to even though I don't want to."  You get the idea.  Martyrdom at it's finest. There were many things I felt very obligated to do in my 30's, and I did them most of the time. Things for other people, things because of other people, things I didn't really want to do but felt like I had to. Mom's Club things are coming to mind as well as lots and lots of volunteer work at school.  Even when I was sick as a dog and incredibly run-down from being pregnant in my first trimester.

Now that I'm 40, I'm starting a new chapter. This is the decade of, "No." 

A polite no, but no nonetheless. Polite yet emphatic. How that will actually end up looking I'm not sure, but I'm no longer going to put myself into the position of feeling obligated or put out because I don't want someone to think bad of me. Even if doing the thing makes me feel bad about myself. I'm not going to risk letting my children down or my husband down or myself down because I don't want to let a stranger down. How ridiculous is that? Yet it happens. I'm no longer going to feel like I need to please other people just for that person's sake, even if I care deeply about them. Whether that person is a stranger, an acquaintance, a parent on the PTA, a friend, a family member, a fellow mom in a mom's group, a therapist whom I'm paying to help me vent and work things out, even someone who has done something nice for me in the past and wants a favor from me, whoever. I am no longer going to feel obligated to do something for someone regardless if it works for me, fits in with what my family is doing or going through at that time. And that needs to be ok.

Actually, I'm giving myself permission that it is OK, and it doesn't need to be OK with anyone, because it's already OK with me.

Sorry for the overuse of italics during my ah-ha moment of clarity there. But if you've ever been a people pleaser, like I was raised to be, then you are totally nodding your head in agreement with me right now. You might have even blurted out a, "hell yea! Me too!"  If you did, please let me know in the comments that I'm not on this journey alone. And neither are you.

I'm giving myself the permission to be more selfish with my own time and desires because I know deep down that it will make me a better mother and a better person in the long run. I'm not doing anyone any favors by getting run down and depleting everything I have inside of me just to do someone a favor or even return a favor, or to protect someone's feelings or to make sure someone still likes me and doesn't think bad of me. A therapist told me once when she knew I was doing too much for too many people (including my own family) and not taking any time for myself to recharge, "Put your oxygen mask on first, Mama. That's the only way you can help your children and be a better mother and wife is if you put your mask on first."

I'm still figuring out how to do that.  I need to find the balance of taking care of myself and taking care of the kids and getting everything done. As a stay-at-home-mom I really feel the need to carve out my own time or else it just doesn't happen. I will post about it as soon as I start doing it. I also look forward to reading more of Big Magic and putting her thoughts and ideas into action. I love Elizabeth Gilbert (author of many books, Eat, Pray, Love, The Signature Of All Things, etc.) Please let me know how you do it for yourself. What does taking care of yourself look like to you?  Comment below!

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Dog Days Of Summer - The Art of Doing Not a Whole Heck of a Lot

It's getting towards the end of July and the reason I know this is because the TV and stores are now bombarding us with back-to-school shopping ads. Oh and I was in Costco the other day feeling pressured to buy a thick, furry rain coat for my child because if I don't get it now they will no longer carry them when I actually need it - in about 6 more months. (I didn't buy one.) I know when I go there in a few more weeks (in Aug) I'll be able to pick out my child's Halloween costume if I so desire and a week or so after that I'll be able to buy my fake Christmas tree with all the trimmings. 

Can we just be done with speeding through life already?  

I know I'm fighting a loosing battle because that will never change, as annoying as it is. But for now while I am a stay-at-home-mom creating a little, tiny bubble around my little, tiny family we can ignore all of the pressures of society - as much as possible anyway. As my kids grow older and we are out in the world more (like kindergarten), I am really noticing this push to do everything, be involved with everything and learn everything as young as possible so you have several years to hone your talent before you start making your parents millions of dollars. OK, slight exaggeration, or is it?  All you have to do is take one class with your child to witness first hand the parents who are trying to get their child on track to excel in that particular thing whether the child wants to or not. 

As a kid I had a good friend who literally did everything. She had no down time whatsoever because her time was filled with several commitments a week and she was never, ever available to do the typical childhood things on the weekends due to these commitments even though she desperately wanted to be a regular kid. She couldn't go to sleepovers because her weekends started very early in the morning with various practices, competitions and recitals and for this same reason she couldn't go to birthday parties in general, or any playdates for that matter. However, when I was a kid we didn't call them "playdates."  We just called it "playing outside with the neighborhood kids." 

Now that I'm a mom I'm very careful not to schedule too many things at once, even fun things they want to do like dance classes and swimming lessons. First of all it's expensive. But when you have more than one child doing more than one class a week you can see how your days and weeks get away from you and they no longer belong to you - they belong to the schedule. 

It's important to know your child's personality type to see if this is a good thing or a bad thing - for them. Notice I didn't say to pay attention to your own personality type. Many times we are very different from our children even though we may not want to admit it or "deal with it." Just because a parent likes to be super busy and on the go with several things scheduled at all times, this doesn't mean our child thrives in this situation and vice versa. Just notice your child's daily/weekly tantrum level to see if this is the case. (Even older kids have tantrums in their own ways.) Most tantrums are thrown by children who are overwhelmed, over tired, over scheduled and over stimulated with no room for transition time between activities. If you find yourself running from activity to activity, eating restaurant meals in the car or on-the-go, your kids are doing homework in the car or prepping for the next class and your only "down time" is the drive to the next function (whew that makes me tired just typing it), you are very likely over doing it and setting yourselves up for failure. Kids need down time to discover who they are are, what they like and what they are capable of doing on their own. 

When I was a kid 30+ years ago, our summer days looked a lot like this:

• Wake up lazy
• Have breakfast
• Pack a picnic lunch (my mom put in a lot of time packing awesome, healthy summer picnic lunches)
• Head to the beach or the park until dusk
• Get an ice cream at Thrifty's (back then it was only 25 cents a scoop)
• Fall asleep the second our heads hit the pillow
• Repeat the next day

That was basically it. 

If we went to the beach we'd take boogie boards and sand toys, beach chairs and an umbrella.  If we went to the park we took bikes or roller skates/skate boards, and maybe a board game or a deck of cards. We never, ever bought food at a snack shack because my mom had that covered. She even made extra sandwiches to last us throughout the several hour beach day. That didn't keep us from asking for snack shack food of course, but we never spent money we didn't have. 

The only time we'd ever get anything at a beach snack shack was when my grandparents lived walking distance from the pier down in San Clemente. To this day San Clemente is my very favorite beach of all time - even after living on Kauai. I have so many great memories of San Cle. When I was a kid the snack shack down at the pier had the best cheese burgers around. Kind of like In-N-Out Burger if you are familiar with them and their fries were great too. So this was the only time we splurged at a beach snack shack. 

How can you do nothing when there are chores to do?

As a mom, my goal is to fine tune my house keeping so that I'm not bogged down the entire weekend with piles and piles of laundry and dishes. The following has been a good system for me so far, but stick with me til the end because it might sound crazy at first if you have been accustomed to the weekend filled with hours of laundry:

Every morning I put in 1 load of laundry. We have a laundry sorter in the garage next to our washer and dryer so I gather up the clothes in everyone's rooms each day to take them out to the main sorter. At this point it's usually just a few items since I'm doing this every day. When that 1 load is finished washing I put it in the dryer or I hang it on the line (depending on the time of year) and this is the biggie: I do not start another load of wash. However, I do make a mental note of which load I'll be doing the next day. When that load is done drying I take it in and fold it right away and then I put everything away. Because I have only 1 load to do this takes very little time and effort and I'm almost 100% successful at it each day because it's one complete load of laundry from start to finish.

I do the same thing for the dishes however, it varies slightly. We usually run the load of dishes throughout the night. If time permits my husband empties the dishwasher in the morning before work and I fill it throughout the day. I cook at home and make homemade meals for dinner each night so we always have a ton of pots and pans to wash. In a perfect world, the drying rack gets put away as well as all pots and pans that are drying on the stove. This doesn't always happen, ok it rarely happens, but that is the goal if I want a clean kitchen. 

A preschool teacher we had made this great suggestion that I have found to be useful: wipe down all bathroom counters each day with a paper towel and spray cleaner, very quickly swish out and wipe down the toilets with cleaner (everyday!) and get rid of all bathroom clutter (ie; hang towels, put things back where they belong, etc.) Depending on how many bathrooms you have, you could get this daily task down to about 15/20 minutes or less a day. Because you are wiping everything down everyday it doesn't get the chance to gather any gross bathroom funky build up that takes a lot longer to scrub. 

If you are super organized (I'm not) you could accomplish this with your kitchen/stove top and counters every day too. My kitchen has become a catch all because we don't have a proper office so this is harder for us - but we're working on it.

These are just a few tips I try to do daily to minimize and eventually eliminate the long weekend cleaning days. 

If you only do one of these things every day I suggest doing the laundry thing. 

It makes a huge difference!  Especially when you have multiple people living in your house. Resist the urge to do more than one load a day if possible (I know it's hard because that is not how we are trained to do things) because when you do many loads at once, chances are you will not be able to successfully wash, dry, fold and put away multiple loads of laundry - and seeing it to the very end (clothes in closets and drawers!) is really the daily goal. When I get backed up from life getting in the way it only takes about a week to get back on track where the majority of our laundry is clean and in drawers or hung up. There are even some days were I'm actually looking for something to wash for that days load if you can believe that. That is when we do bigger things like sheets and stuff. 

I remember seeing an episode of Oprah were she said she has fresh, clean (and ironed!) sheets on her bed daily!  I don't know about you but I was kind of shocked when I heard this as were most audience members because they panned out across the audience to wide eyes and all mouths agape. She even looked kind of surprised (and sheepish) at the audience's reaction to see that most people do not change their sheets daily, let alone iron them. Someone in the audience made a reference to her having housekeeping help and even she agreed and said, yes, that makes a big difference. That must be so nice to have someone cleaning your house regularly!  

Ahhhhh....just give me a second to dream.... 

Imagine the free time you'd have?!  

Well, do my laundry trick and I promise if you keep it up all week and stick to the 1 load a day rule until you get a firm handle on it you'll feel a bit of freedom from the piles and piles of weekend laundry. This of course only really works if you don't have to go to the laundry mat, or share a common laundry room in a complex of some sort. Been there done that and I feel for you in that situation with a family, I really do. 

As far as not doing much during the summer because I kind of digressed a bit there, if you can get a handle on the household chores you have more free time to do not a whole heck of a lot. I don't mean spend the day watching TV, playing on the computer or playing any type of electronic device for hours on end. I mean spending time outdoors doing basically nothing. When I say "nothing" I mean where your child's day is not scheduled out for them with a class or anything structured and they get to make their own fun using their own brain, their own creativity with maybe a few things provided like a bike at the park or a ball, sand toys at the beach or something like that. But no cheating with electronics!! Hopefully you get exactly what I'm getting at here.

Here is a list of what nothing looks like for us:

• Going to the park, setting out a blanket, taking a lunch and just letting the kids play and explore. 
• Going for a nature walk in the neighborhood and discover the world around you.
• Taking a lazy stroll or slow bike ride/scooter ride through the park, beach trail or neighborhood.
• Lie on the grass and look at shapes in the clouds.
• Go to the library and discover something new, attend a FREE toddler/preschooler story time or get involved in a reading club.
• Turn on the sprinklers in the back yard, fill up the water table, play in the sandbox and have a picnic outside.
• Garden, dig in the dirt, plant something.
• Look into FREE things through your local parks and rec like public wadding pools for little ones and concerts in the park in the evenings and different events for Holidays like the 4th of July or Easter Egg Hunts, etc.
• Have a backyard family camp out.
• Have a night time family movie party (the kids pick the movie) and get a pizza or make something fun to eat and put out a blanket and let the kids eat in the living room picnic style while watching the movie. This will be a huge, fun treat if your kids never get to eat in front of the TV. (That is a good thing btw!)
• Reading!
• Painting with watercolors
• Arts and crafts
• Exploring the wild outdoors
• Most importantly - slow down.

Have fun discovering what your family likes to do that is not a structured, scheduled, indoor event. Those have their time and place in our lives too but they should be the exception, not the daily agenda. We have a rule in our house now with extracurricular classes scheduled through parks & rec (especially since we have baby #3 on the way): Each child gets to take one class at a time and we take a break in between sessions. The classes we usually take are once a week for about an hour and at this age we have been able to combo some classes like tumbling or take them the same time at the same location but different teachers like swimming lessons, or back-to-back on the same day with the same teachers like soccer. (I had a very strict rule that there was to be no electronic devices used during the soccer class while the other sibling had class. Their options were to actually watch their sibling play and encourage them while doing so, or find their own fun running around looking for bugs and leaves and chasing birds at the park. Sometimes we took supplies to color or draw. It was never an issue. Mom stuck to the no electronic device rule too because as you know, you teach by example as opposed to just using words without backing them up with an example.)  

This summer is a bit different since our daughter is taking a kids Science and Nature Summer Camp at the Nature Center and these summer camps run for a week at a time from 9-noon. So far we've taken two different ones and have one more week on the schedule. So for now she is the only one who is taking a scheduled class because the ones for preschoolers filled up too quickly and we didn't book them in time. We've learned our lesson for next year! However, my little guy is doing plenty of fun things because we have a pass to our local water park and usually go several times a week for a few hours or so.

If you need any more ideas of things to do in the summer I wrote a Summer Bucket List a few years ago. Some stuff no longer exists like the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, but you can fill in your own activity in that one. 

Here are some lazy family pics of us doing "nothing." 

Learning to surf from daddy at Doheny Beach, California

Exploring the stream at the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach, California

Exploring the trails at the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach, California 

Splashing in the wadding pool at a local park.

Making up their own games with their own rules.

Taking a scooter & bike riding detour to throw sticks and leaves in the stream at a local park.

Exploring a local water fountain after having lunch out.

Mom's Night Out! Mama's perfect version of doing nothing!  (This one is a solo act btw!!) 

My favorite beach of all time: San Clemente, California

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Why I'm Deleting Facebook The Day My Child Starts Kindergarten

Once upon a time there was a site called Friendster. Friendster was unique being the first social networking site. We thought we had struck gold. It was pretty cool because you could see all of your friends in one spot - online!  All hours of the day! Without having to send an email!

Soon Friendster had some friendly competition when along came Myspace. Everyone flocked to Myspace like he was the first guy in 10th grade who had his license and a car! It was hip. It was cool. All of your friends were there, all of their friends were there, you could post pictures, meet all sorts of new people from your friend's friends, you could discover cool music. It was like a college frat party on the internet.

Myspace got kinda big for it's britches and thought it was untouchable. Then I got a message on Myspace from a friend of mine who said, "You should try this new site called Facebook. You have to use your real name so it's not all overcrowded with a bunch of posers using fake names and made up profiles. It's just like hanging out in real life and it's so much better than Myspace!" 

The End.

It was 2004. I wasn't married. I had not even met my husband yet. I was living in Los Angeles waiting tables at a snobby French restaurant pursuing acting and writing and I had all the time in the world to be on a social networking site.

Fast forward to 2013. I've moved 7 times since 2004. I became a very busy Pilates Instructor at a fancy studio in WeHo (West Hollywood). I got engaged. I got married. We moved across the Pacific Ocean to Kauai one month after our wedding. We bought a house (my first house and our first house together.) We celebrated our one year anniversary on Maui. We got pregnant. We had a baby. The economy crashed and millions of people across the country were out of work and loosing their houses. We lost the house - our first house. All three of us moved back across the Pacific Ocean to become mainlanders once again. We started over from scratch. We saved every penny and ate 99 cent mac and cheese. We bought a brand new car that was safe for our growing family (a minivan). We had another baby (this baby was born in a warm pool of water in our house caught by me.) My husband got his dream job. We moved again (lucky #7) this time we were looking for things like parks near the house and a good school district with an elementary school that was walking distance from our house even though it seemed like years and years away that we'd be starting school...and now our first born is starting kindergarten in two days!

I've been on FB (off and on) for 8 years. EIGHT YEARS!  It's hard to believe that I have lived this entire adult (family) life yet before it all even started I was on Facebook. I feel like I've been a mom forever and that I have been married forever...but it's still not as long as I have been on Facebook. That is mind boggling to me that this social networking site has been in my life longer than my husband or my children. This actually does not sit easy with me. I have had a love/hate relationship with facebook for many years, yet I'm still here. Why is that?

I left in 2009 and wrote this which basically started this mom's blog.

This was when I really realized that Facebook doesn't care about it's users at all because it was making changes that was limiting your privacy more and more...yet I stayed there...

I wrote a post here 2 years after I left the first time talking about how negative I feel Facebook has become.

I've gone Screen Free a few different times just to take a break from the time suck that is Facebook and to make more of an effort to get back to what is important.

I even wrote this a few days ago which I consider to be my rock bottom in my Facebook addiction.

This is a lot of time and energy spent on this thing called social networking. It's become a person in my life who can be just as demanding as a toddler. Back in the day when it first started there wasn't a real time ticker tape of what people were doing constantly. Remember when we were all protesting that?  Smart phones were not invented yet (IKR?) so if you wanted to post a pic or check in on what your friends were doing you had to be sitting at your computer. (This was pre laptop for me, so I was actually at my computer desk that was plugged into the wall.)   This is like ancient Egyptian messages scribbled in a cave compared to what we have now.

And now it's too much. Too many alerts, too many notifications, too many ads. Remember when there weren't any ads? I feel as if Facebook has caused me to have ADD. Life is forced to evolve with technology and technology is moving faster than it takes to make a handcrafted caramel cappuccino these days. The more technology we accumulate that pulls us away from real life the less we are living life in the moment. The less we are stopping to smell the roses. The less we are making real connections with real people in the flesh.

I'm not going to go on and on about how negative I think Facebook has become or that it has taken over my life in certain ways because I am now thinking about things on Facebook while I'm doing mundane tasks like washing dishes and folding laundry, taking a shower, sitting in traffic. Those used to be the times where I'd dream up new characters of a story I wanted to write, or what music would go with what scene in a screenplay I was writing or even thinking about my To Do list, shopping list or Bucket List. I'd come up with the perfect one liner or a funny scenario I wanted to remember so I'd scramble for my notebook before the thought left my brain. Time spent dreaming the day away is hard to find when you are a stay at home mom to two little ones. Now I'm spending those free precious daydreaming moments mulling over a negative post, comment or something someone said on a parenting page or mom's message board. Or I'm thinking about how guilty I feel for not doing the new parenting "thing," technique, philosophy, or Pinteresty craft/recipe, that everybody else on Facebook is doing posting about.

That brings me to another point (that I won't be going over in this blog post) about why I'm leaving Facebook. This was one of the things we brought up last night in my yoga class when I talked about deleting my Facebook account the day my daughter was going to start kindergarten. We were all in agreement about how a lot of people present themselves and their kids on Facebook in only a positive light in order to avoid judgment. Facebook posts do not equate to real life happenings. Facebook posts are the clean house before company comes over, the clean house before the housekeeper comes over, and the staged area you prep free of dirty dishes, dirty laundry and a cluttered floor before you take a picture of the kids that you are planning to post to Facebook. Facebook posts are the couches and coffee tables in the front room that is there only for when company comes over. You don't actually get to sit on them. They are the fancy ones we save for good. Facebook posts are the clothes you wear to church, the party dress with the frilly socks you can't play in and the shinny black shoes you wear for weddings or family pictures. They are the pumped up resume you write for a new job and the exaggerated essay you write to get into your dream school. Facebook posts are the holiday letters we send to all of our friends and family to inform them about how amazing our lives are, all of the wonderful vacations we took during the year, all of our children's school and sports victories, the milestones our babies are hitting way ahead of schedule of course, and the promotions we're getting at work. Except the difference with holiday cards is, we expect to only hear the good things from everyone because it's once a year, it's Christmas and it's cheery. But Facebook posts occur daily, even several times a day from tens to hundreds of our friends and pages we've liked all hours of the day.

So several times a day we are reminded about what we are not doing. We are reminded about what our kids are not doing, what our husbands are not doing, the crafty homemade birthday party we did not throw for our child, the amazing gourmet dinner we didn't make for Thanksgiving using only organic foods grown in our garden - basically what our lives don't look like in comparison to the rest of the hundreds of thousands of posts and comments we are reading at any given moment.

Just like the media is making young girls think they are fat and that young boys need to be super macho and excel at every sport or else they have no value in society or how there is an entire generation of pre-teens/teenagers and young adults who think that "being famous" is an adult aspiration and getting your own reality show is somehow a job - Facebook is making us feel like we are not enough and not doing enough in our career, in our lives and in our children's lives. It's not based in reality at all.

Before it sounds like I'm getting all high and mighty I want to say that just like the rest of the world, I'm guilty of this too. I don't post pictures of my messy house, or about how I was just yelling at my child to finish her homework. (The homework that was assigned to be turned in on the first day of school - to be completed during summer vacation. Did I mention she is 5 and is going into kindergarten???!!!) Are we expecting too much too young from our small children? Another post for another time. 

I'm not saying that every post is like this from every person every day. I have a good friend, Leah who is always posting something interesting like bands playing, local street festivals happening, new restaurants opening. And she actually goes to these things!  My cousin Kelly is always posting cute funny, light hearted things she is doing and seeing throughout the day and considering she is a big kid at heart it always gives me a laugh. And many other positive things and positive people are happening on my page so I'm certainly not saying that all things give off negative energy all the time. Not all posts create anxiety like you're not measuring up, but many of them do. Even the happy, positive ones. And we have to ask ourselves, how healthy is Facebook on our psyche?  I'm sure I'm not the only one mulling over facebook posts while I'm cooking dinner, or feeling defensive from a comment someone wrote in response to a parenting or birthing choice I made for my family that differs from the norm on a mom's message board, or checking my notifications before my eyes even totally open in the morning because I can do it from my smart phone.

But like I said at the beginning of this post, I'm not going to talk about all that.  (wink)

So, I've decided to take a journey along with my daughter starting the day she starts kindergarten. It will be a day of new beginnings, new transitions, new routines, new people coming into our lives. It seems like the perfect time to say goodbye to old ways, old habits, old insecurities, old time sucking addictions. It's time to shed the negativity and welcome new changes.

Eight years is long enough to have a love/hate relationship with someone or something. Eight years is long enough to have a frenemy. Eight years is long enough to feel obligated to certain aspects of my Facebook life including my friends list. That is a lot of wasted time. I don't even want to try to add up what that looks like in hours. In eight years I could've become fluent in a couple of languages, written the great American novel or two, learned how to play the guitar and the piano, written a movie, made little movies from all of our videos and pictures for the kids to watch, written more children's books, heck I could've gotten a PhD! (All things on my Bucket List by the way...except for getting a PhD, and all things can be completed during the hours one is usually on Facebook.)

Editors Note: In 8 years I could've learned basic math since it's actually been 9 years. 

It's time to start a new chapter of my life, of our lives. One without the constant pull of social media tugging at my brain while I'm trying to clean the house or do some freelance writing or while I'm playing with my kids, trying to get out of the house or trying to do anything that is not checking Facebook. It's time to explore what life would be like at a slower pace - like my life as a child.

Another reason why I'm deleting my Facebook account the day my daughter starts kindergarten besides wanting to be more present and in the moment with my life, is that everyone I know with older kids tells me how fast it all goes. In the blink of an eye your child is born after what feels like a million years pregnant, then all of a sudden it's their first birthday. After that they are off to preschool, you blink again and you are registering for kindergarten. Next time you blink they are off to middle school. You turn your head for a second and they have taken the car keys. Next thing you know you are applying for colleges and sending out graduation announcements and then bang!  Off to college or off to bootcamp or off to start a new career, get married, start a family and then you are in a store buying baby onesies for your first grandchild.

The days are long but the years are short. 

Life is short and when you have children you get to see first hand just how fast it really goes. Better get on it!  Better make it count. Better not waste the minutes that turn into hours and days and years.

Like Red* says, "Get busy living or get busy dying."

I'm excited!  I'm not stressed out like I was for Screen Free Week because I'm approaching this in a different way. I'm not "going on a diet," I'm making healthier food choices that will affect my life in a positive way. I will still be blogging here as much as I can and sending them out into the universe via twitter if you'd like to follow me there. I'm also assuming that I'll be back on Facebook at some point along this journey. However, there is a part of me that is pulling for the scenario that I don't come back, that I will no longer need it, that I get my fill by reconnecting with my friends and loved ones using old school methods and no longer feel the need to see what acquaintances are up to every second of the day. I ask myself this question a lot: "if you have no desire to get together with someone for coffee or a movie or just to chat on the phone with them because they live too far for a visit then why are you using your precious free time to comb through their pictures, and read and respond to things they post?"

I still don't really have an answer to this. I think this is becoming the norm of our society though. Wouldn't you say that? I don't know.

I look forward to the new changes I'll be seeing in my life and I invite you to find the changes you feel you need to make to better your life or the lives you are responsible for as well.

I welcome the positive energy with open arms!

Continue spreading love. Our world needs more love.

Love,
Coco

Poipu Beach, Kauai - 2008
This is where our parenting journey began.
I was already 5 days overdue and now our lil girl is 5 years old.
Time flies!

*For those who might not know, Red is the character played by Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption. One of the best movies of all time. 

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Can You Do It All? Do Super Parents Exist?

My husband and I are big fans of a funny parenting blog and facebook page called HowToBeADad. I'm sure you've heard of it. Charlie and Andy (The Dads) are very silly, creative, funny and witty and have even been accused of being heartfelt and touching from time to time. Even though they will try to convince you that they are purely an "entertainment blog!" But the love they have for their children and their wives is apparent in their writing and you can just tell that they have the utmost respect for their family. It shows in how they speak so highly of them. Honestly, as a women with a similar-minded hubby, I can fully appreciate and champion that sort of mutual love and respect a husband and wife share for their family and this is what keeps me coming back to their blog regularly. That and they have some super funny reader/commenters too. I've never been so thoroughly entertained by user comments before as I am with the funny folks who enjoy their blog/facebook page. There is just a lot of positive energy going on over there and I like that. Making the hardcore trenches of parenting look fun.

Oh wait....you mean it's...  Nevermind.

So this was posted on their facebook page today and it inspired me to write a blog about it. Besides, this was waaaay too wordy of a comment to leave on anyone's facebook post - even my own! I don't think anyone would really appreciate that kind of gratuitous verbiage as a fb comment. So I thought, "Hey! Wait a sec...I know where I can speak freely and not worry about a word count!  My own gosh darn mom's blog!" (Said in the voice of, Merida from the Disney movie, Brave.)

So here's another post for you to read, mom.  (I'm pretty sure you're the only one left still reading this thing, haha. My faithful, tireless supporter. My mom.)

Charlie from HowToBeADad writes:

"On a daily basis, I'm confronted with trying to be the parent who provides or the parent who is there. How do you deal with it? Cloning? -charlie, http://howtobeadad.com/"

Here are my thoughts, for what's it worth-

Coco Cana from My Tales From The Crib writes:

I think this is probably one of the biggest issues mothers of newborns face after having a baby. Especially if they are on maternity leave from a career they've either worked really hard for, or need to return to due to money issues or both.

Should I stay home or should I go back to work?
Should I work part-time? Full-time? From home?  
Can I even stay home (financially) if I want to?
Can I even afford to go back work (cost of daycare, etc.) if I want to?  
What if I don't want to stay home?  
What if I don't want to go back to work?
Will my career still be there when I return?

I think it's about finding the balance and I think that it can be possible to do both - provide as well as be there. It might not be in the exact form you want it to be or have imagined it to be, but it can possibly be possible - if that makes any sense.

I think it's about being present and in the moment when you are home with your children and making the most of your time together so that when you are away from them working, etc. you can feel confident that you are doing all that you can when you are face-to-face. 

I've been a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) since the day my oldest was born over *4 1/2 years ago. We have a *2 year old too and during this process of navigating the world of being a full-time SAHM, I've been trying to find pieces of my "old" self again through some freelance writing, keeping up with my mom's blog as well as a couple of new adventures of writing children's books and doing some funny screenplay writing with a super funny writing partner. So in a way I've become a work-from-home-mom, which presents it's own set of challenging aspects. When I'm away from them writing on my own or with my hilariously funny writing partner, Kristin (which is a few hours a week), I'm trying to make the most of my creative time away from them. When I'm home I try to make the most of my face-to-face time with them. As well as find time for my husband and time for me and time for family and time for cleaning and time for grocery shopping and dishes doing and laundry folding and time for friends ...and time for my therapist to deal with all of this constant pulling and tugging at my life on an hourly basis.

*(EDITORS NOTE: Depending on when you are reading this, my kids have aged, bittersweet as it may be. My oldest was born in '06, baby in '10.)

Finding the balance: Easier said than done of course and it doesn't really play out like that everyday. Nobody can accomplish this all the time.  And in this economy, it is becoming harder and harder to live solely off of one income if you want to spend more time at home while the kids are young.  We are on a serious budget just to make it work week-to-week and there are times, oh-so-many-times where I just want to clock out and eat lunch alone listening to "my music" and partaking in some adult convie without all eyes and ears focused on my every everything. And let's face it - it's nice to poop in peace without answering a barrage of questions surrounding your whereabouts.

Can I get an amen?

My struggles with finding the balance: There are always things I can work on to be a better, more present parent; like turning off the computer more when they want to play, or sit on the floor and play trains more as opposed to folding yet another load of endless laundry. But again that is the "balance" I'm talking about. Sometimes certain things need to be done or should be done, but they don't always have to be done right that second. The laundry can wait, or reading an article or commenting on a friend's facebook picture from their vacation can definitely wait. Checking your bank balance can't always wait if you need to make a last minute online panic transfer, or something cooking on the stove can't always wait unless you just planned on ordering a pizza anyway. But a lot of stuff can wait. I know I keep saying it, but we've just got to try to find the balance. It's hard to find it, and somedays are much harder than others, but on the days where it clicks, it's awesome.

And we rarely regret the days we spent playing at the water park all day long as opposed to mowing the lawn, cleaning out the garage, pulling weeds and scrubbing the kitchen floors.

My Partner In Parenting: My husband is the one who works full-time in our house and I'm always amazed at how he can turn on his "daddy brain" the second he takes off his motorcycle helmet and walks into the house - regardless of how taxing his day was at work. He's a very fun, funny, playful guy in general and I think it keeps him young and enjoying life with our young children. His face lights up when he sees them and they can feel that. He's always down on the floor giving horsey rides, or baby wrestling, making up silly songs to squash tantrums, etc. and he tries really hard to make a point to  turn off his phone/computer whenever the kids want to play with him. There are times where they'd rather play by themselves and that is when we feel like we can sneak in a few minutes on the internet or me time or whatever. (Or we sneak it in and go do it in the bathroom........the internet I mean...ahem...cough-cough.)  There are many times of course where we can't be present every second we spend with them which isn't realistic or even what they want from us anyway. Sometimes parents just have to do other stuff when their kids want to play and that is reality, but for the majority of the time we just try to do our best and make our time with them count.

The Days Are Long But The Years Are Short: I have a nephew who is 16 now (Wow! Crazy!) and sadly, he lives very, very far out of state so the precious moments we get to spend with him are unfortunately, few and far between. There was a time not too long ago where I was the "cool Auntie" and he enjoyed spending one-on-one time with just me hanging out. (I taught him how to make a chocolate birthday cake from scratch.)

But now he has a very, very busy life of playing sports full-time and basically he's a typical teenager with a girlfriend and lots of friends who are all busy doing the typical teenager stuff - which pretty much means avoiding any long-term contact at any one siting with anyone over the age of 18.  And that's OK, because we all went through it. But it does strike a hard blow to the gut (and the ego) when you think back to them as a teeny-tiny little baby you took naps with and a fun little toddler you taught colors too and a cool little dude you surfed waves on Kauai with. To you it feels like a few years ago and they can't even remember a lot of it. Especially the baby years. But to them, that was them being a "kid" and now they are not a kid. I repeat, a 16 year old teenager is NOT a kid!

So when I feel like I'm having a hard time being a mom to my own very small children who seem like they will be very small forever, I think back to the quick-as-a-snap childhood of my over 6 feet tall nephew and it just seems like yesterday we were teaching him how to boogie board and ride a dirt bike and he thought we were the coolest people in the world wanting to spend all of his time with us when he was visiting...and that time is long, long gone. It's gone in a blink of an eye really and it will never come back. You will never be small enough to fit in the crook of my arm again, or 5 again, or 8 again, or 12 on the verge of being a "rad teenager" again. And suddenly you realize that a person's childhood is so short. So, so, so short. I can already see my own sweet child o' mine changing from a cute little chubby faced toddler to a tall, long limbed big girl with her own funny personality and unique style and talents who's going to be starting kindergarden soon. And "the baby"... forget it. He's already rejecting all things baby and is now addicted to anything with wheels, and making sound effects to every action, running instead of walking and wanting to be a "big boy" and stay at preschool when I drop off sissy as opposed to coming home with mommy. *sniff sniff*

(I win that one though....for now.)

So I think as a parent, you just have to make the most of it, try to create moments and memories as much as you can, be in the moment more than you're not and try to spend your "at home" days giving your all so that you have no regrets when you have to be away.  ...As well as get stuff done around the house of course. Balance.

Reign It In With A Quote: Just the other day I found this quote (pictured below) and it spoke to me so deeply I painted it for my kitchen with my daughter's watercolors one sleepless middle of the night.

Momsomnia.  

Lately, I have been feeling like I need to put more time and energy into somehow making this mom's blog o' mine as well as the facebook page that goes along with it (drum roll please) "more popular." It's stressful actually. I don't know how "big blogs" like HowToBeADad do it. It's a lot of work, time and energy in a very fickle online world of millions of funny parenting blogs. Sometimes no one comments or "shares" or even hits "like" and then you'll read a post from a blog like, The Pioneer Woman who literally has had 35,000 COMMENTS on ONE post.

Me: (disbelief) No.
Me: (shock and horror) YES!
Me: (indignant) Come on. You're exagerating. It's the Irish coming out in you again.
Me: (indifferent) Go read it yourself.  
*clicks link provided*
Me: (shock and horror) Are you frickin' kidding me?  
Me: (IKR?!) No, no I am NOT kidding you!  
Me: (shock and horror)Wow!
Me: (nodding - subdued shock and horror) wow.

The Pioneer Woman. 639K facebook likes alone. Shit just got real, Son.

It's enough to make a no-name baby mama writer like myself go batty just getting people to read, let alone have any back-and-forth dialogue about it.  My average reader comment is 0. That is not a typo.

But--- then I found this quote...and *exhale* ...it just fit. It put things into perspective for me and made me feel a bit less "cray-cray" about generating more and more and more of a blog audience.

So now I'm back to just writing silly ol' lil tid-bits here and there for me mum.

So Charlie from HowToBeADad (who kind of resembles my brother-in-law a wee bit)~this one's for you too. For what it's worth.  

Will Work From Home. Painted quotes for sale.
...baby's gotta eat.

Oh and before I go, you can all take this visual with you and break it out whenever you need it. This is from my funny hubby. Do you remember that poster that used to be in your childhood dentist's office and it had a fuzzy baby cat hanging by two paws from a tree branch and the caption read:

"Hang in there!"

My husband does that to me whenever I'm feeling overly stressed about being a SAHM to two crazy kids who like to fight over toys they didn't care about til the other one started playing with it, and who don't want to eat their scrambled eggs and cheese and I'm standing at the kitchen sink up to my elbows in dirty dishes - so pretty much daily - and as he's heading out to work he'll make a funny "oh crap I'm falling. I can't hang on any longer" face and hang his hands on an imaginary tree limb and say, 

"Hey Babe, Hang in there!"  

Then the door closes and I can hear him "meow" as he heads to the garage.  

Moral of the story: It's good to know funny people, marry funny people, give birth to funny people or be a funny people yourself. 

Hang in there everyone. It's almost Friday!


Your pal,
@Coco_Cana

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