S'mores Life

Laura Reeve Photography I was going through my blog posts the other day, and stumbled upon this post about being a mom of two  and how it was all okay despite my fears, and I was reassured of that fact because of a sweet moment between my two girls. I guess it came at the exact right time, because right now in this season of motherhood? I'm tired. I'm burnt out. I'm cranky. I'm not handling things well. I'm beating myself up for every mistake. I'm yelling too much. I'm overwhelmed. My kids are cranky, tired, misbehaving, testing boundaries, being kids and some days I just think...how does anyone do this, well? It's easy to become a parent (if you're lucky), its relatively easy to keep them alive (much easier now that Haddie has glasses and isn't falling and running into things all the time...here I thought she just inherited my gracefulness) but it's so freaking hard to parent them well. It's a lot of pressure. I'm feeling jud...

If you haven't unfollowed me on social media by now, you're probably aware that I'm well into the 365 Grateful project right now. 324 days in, to be exact. I take a picture a day of something I'm grateful for. I post daily to instagram, and anywhere from 1-10 photos at a time to Facebook. And I'm done. You're likely wondering why. I'm SO close. It's a cool thing, to look back on a picture from every day of this year, and if I kept it up I could make a whole photo book of our year. Even as I type this, I'm wondering if I'm making a mistake. I started this project after a really, really rough 2015 . I thought it would give me something positive to focus on, remember small things to be grateful for, and try and be a glass half full kinda gal. The thing that I've learned is, there are a lot of things that I do struggle with, but being grateful is not one of them. I'm grateful for so many things. Even after the last few difficult years, ...

I am writing this on October 16, 2016. I am purposefully waiting until the election season is over to post this, because I don't want it to get mixed up in the screwed up world of politics. This may be a hot topic right now, but it is an important one.  Rape culture. In a strange way, I'm grateful that the world heard Trump's sick words about sexual assault. He represents a culture, that has little to nothing to do with American politics (I know just as bad has been said and done within the Democratic Party too), that women have known about all along. But his comments getting blown into the media are forcing us to finally talk about it. People want to know why his accusers didn't come forward before the election. Well, first off, BECAUSE YOU'RE ASKING THAT QUESTION. It's also for the same reasons a great deal of us haven't been vocal about this issue or our own experiences with sexual harassment or assault. What if they think I'm crazy? ...

Wogger = jogger+walker. Heavy on the walk, in this case. What pops into my head when I "run"? (Heavy on the quotation marks there, too.) Ok, you can do this. One foot in front of the other. Just, a little faster than you were going.  Pretend there are donuts being held in front of your nose. No, cookies. Fresh chocolate chip cookies. There ya go. You're running. And by running I mean I could walk briskly faster than this, but minor detail. I wonder if they make sports bras for my butt. It's bouncing just as much as my boobs. It feels like there's a lot of stretching going on. Does the bouncing create (more) stretch marks? Probably. Because, science. I can't breathe. I'm going to have an asthma attack. Except I don't have asthma. Or do I? They discovered my brother's asthma when he was playing sports outside in the cold. Maybe I do have asthma. What will happen to my kids in the stroller if I collapse? I should stop and walk, just for a...