As summer wears on into the second month, I’m looking to rev up our daily schedule a bit. Despite my good intentions there’s been way too much screen time. So I’m pretty much just dragging them out the door and figuring something out along the way. My goal is to leave the house in the morning and not return until late afternoon.

As someone who grew up on a farm in the country and played in the woods all day until I was called in for dinner, it seems funny to me that this is even a struggle. But, there you have it.

Here are some totally free ways I try to get my kids out of the house and promote family bonding.. this summer and year ’round. (more…)

I asked her several times if she was sure she wanted to do it. I’m sorry to say I even tried to talk her out of it. And she not only said she wanted to every time I asked, she said ‘of course’ she did, as if not doing it was the silliest concept she’d ever heard.

So race day came and we stood at the starting line about to set off on a 5K that would take us across a 34-hundred foot long bridge over a river, down two more miles of highway, then back over the bridge. In 90 degree heat. In July. In the subtropics.

As the starting horn sounded she took off like a bullet, stopping to take a break only after making it up the 55 foot incline and down the other side to the one mile marker. We walked off and on through the next two miles but my 6-year-old’s spirit never skipped a beat. (more…)

I’m kind of late to the stay-at-home mom thing. About eight years late in my opinion.

That’s how long it’s been since my first baby was born. 18 months later I had my daughter. The years after were filled with sadness, guilt, exhaustion, and lots of conversations about whether we could be a one salary family.

Finally last year the opportunity presented itself and we took the leap. I quit my high-stress, 24-7 career and we moved six hundred miles away where I became a stay-at-home mom.

But the irony is that when I could finally raise my babies full-time, they were no longer babies. In fact, I was working to teach them to be more independent and self-sufficient.

Without infants to feed and care for constantly, I was hit with a much different life than I had been dreaming of for so long. But it was a blessing nonetheless. I’m thrilled that I can always see them before and after school, I can take them to any extra-curricular activity they want to try (which is a lot), and I can control what they’re eating and kiss them goodnight every night.

But you don’t stop being you. Your mind doesn’t stop going 90 miles an hour. And old habits die hard. These are the reasons why I learned a lot of things not to do as a new stay-at-home mom. Unfortunately I learned them after I’d already done them. (more…)