Personalitenacious

So, cue the “wow its been awhile since I wrote here” opener that seems to pop into my head while I sit here to write.

What IS a personality? Non-physical characteristics that identify you from others. The way you talk, the sway of your walk, the kind of jokes you tell, the kind of stories you write. Your friends, your past, your future, your drive, your goals, your story.

I catch myself often thinking that I don’t have a personality, that motherhood has softened me to the point of mush. I feed the kids, I bathe the kids, I pretend to play with the kids while I daydream about lives I’ve lived and those I never will. That’s not to say I’m ungrateful for the privilege many are denied, but more to say that monotony has winded me.

This blog was started for the same reason, to express the feelings of loneliness that comes with living in the middle of nowhere and now with the isolation of the pandemic still lingering, I struggle to find myself here.

I am NOT only a mother. In fact that is one of the least interesting things about me.

Holidays in a pandemic: twin edition

Just a little holiday PSA to start us off

So the twins are four months old! Their big sister has been such a trooper through all this. What with the whole covid thing, she hasn’t been able to do the things she normally does, on top of having a new brother and sister, she’s been through a lot this year.

Sometimes I worry she’s going to be stunted from this, such an emotional transition to big sisterhood and then losing her out of the house fun. I don’t know if I would have been as resilient as a kid. She’s my hero, so strong. It brings me comfort to know that every kid her age will have went through the same thing more or less, and hopefully they can bond over it when they grow up. Or maybe the government will have stimulus therapy programs haha!

The twins are growing so fast. Their four month checkup and shots is this afternoon and I’m going to be taking them on my own. My husband switched shifts last week and our doctor is super busy and we couldn’t reschedule so I’m just going to have to get good! I’ve been working on those mommy muscles so I think I can handle it 💪

That’s all for now, hope you all are doing well. And remember, WEAR A MASK AND WASH YOUR HANDS ❤️

November Monthly Calendar Free Printable

So I made a cute little neutral November calendar with little places for notes on the sides. Prints standard paper size, pin to your fridge or punch holes for your binder! DOWNLOAD HERE FROM DROPBOX

Thanks so much guys, let me know what you think!

Doodling in Procreate! (Yes I switched teams)

So I finally broke down and got the new iPad Pro. I’ve never owned an iPad before, and I have to say that it really is worth all the hype. It cost about as much as my phone did, so it didn’t seem outrageous. Merry Christmas to me!

I bought the procreate app and have been having a lot of fun experimenting with different techniques. I’ve never been much of a ‘drawer’ but always had the itch to create. Crocheting, cooking, doing hair, birthing children. I love to make something beautiful that never existed before.

I struggle a little coming up with things to draw, so I’ve been perusing the good old Pinterest for inspiration and tutorials and I’ve been having a ton of fun!

I love lettering and have already improved significantly with it, so I may be creating some freebies or something for practice. Maybe a planner page here, a meal prep page, fancy little decorative wreath drawings WHO KNOWS!!!

The sky is really the limit. Stay tuned!

Twinning!

Wow twins huh? Who would have thought, me, with almost no recent family history of twins, would have given birth twice in the same day.

This picture could never do this justice.

The morning they were born we drove to drop my daughter off at my mother in laws before we went to the hospital. As we were driving it was so peaceful, 6:30am sun shining after a rain storm and the most vivid rainbow dead center of the country sky.

You can’t make this crap up, I cried like a baby half the way there. Labor was quick, scary, mostly painless (I think my hormones have made me forget already how bad it hurt) and next thing you know I have two more actual human children. Wild.

First, a girl, she had trouble realizing that earth is a planet where we have to breathe oxygen and needed a little squeeze but she was mostly back to pink healthy funny alien head baby. The second, a boy, almost didn’t want to come out until the doctor had the glint of “I might have to cut him out” in her eye. He shaped up real quick and with one last mega push, he literally flew out and thankfully was caught.

I’ll spare you the gory details about what stitches went where, and how much it sucks to try to hold two floppy newborns and get them to latch at the same time but suffice to say, we are a happy healthy bottle feeding family now.

They sleep. I tried to find an adjective to describe how they sleep but really it’s fine, my Fitbit says I get six and a half hours of sleep so that’s all that matters.

All in all it’s not so bad, even in the age of covid, I get my groceries safely and we have plenty stocked up for winter and have lots of frozen meats and vegetables. Fingers crossed I get that deep freezer I’ve been asking about for Christmas.

I’m thankful for my children and my home, I am so happy. Me and my husband were reminiscing about when we met and how perfectly our lives collided and I’m just mind blown at how things have come along.

I hope you guys are doing well and I plan on writing again to you soon!

Falling together

So last time we spoke, I was pregnant with twins and in existential crisis over the future.

Fast forward a few months and I have given birth to both babies and we are falling into a nice little routine here. I switched teams as far as my cell phone (team iPhone now) and got the new iPad Pro!

Free time is in short supply but all my babies are good mappers so I’ve had a bit of time here and there to play in procreate and I’m having a blast.

Just wanted to put out a small update for those wondering, and I’ll be back real soon!! Bye!

Pregnancy and the Pandemic

Well.. long time, no chat. A lot has happened since my last post. I’m now pregnant, about six months along with twins, and the entire world is upside down.

My four year old and I are usually homebodies and my husband works at an essential factory, so honestly not much has changed for us. My body, on the other hand, has changed a lot.

Since having children, sustainability during a crisis has been something I’ve really valued and tried to keep up with. I make my own bread, we cook from scratch, and I’m teaching my daughter (and myself) which yard weeds are edible and which aren’t. She loves dandelions and wild violets and thankfully our yard is totally full of both.

There’s a birds nest by the back door that we’re keeping an eye on and we have a squirrel that tries to eat our doorframe. Any advice on humane ways to get him to quit? There’s a whole acre of woods behind our house and this squirrel decides he needs to eat our house haha.

As socially isolated as we have been for years, it’s extra during this time and having the option to wander around target for no reason taken away from me is more psychological than anything. We go for drives to see the budding trees and buy our groceries through drive through pickup. We video chat about twice a week with as many grandparents as our bandwidth can handle, and that has kept everyone’s spirits up. We look forward to that more than just about anything.

The hardest part about this whole ordeal is trying to remember to stay grateful. It’s so easy to complain about being bored, or overwhelm yourself with the 24 hour news cycle. It’s hard to understand the scope of the changes that the whole world is going through. We are all going through this, in one way or another. Not a single life on this planet is unaffected by this pandemic and everyone is being challenged in different ways. All together at once.

I am so incredibly lucky to be in the position that I am. Financially we will be okay, we are all healthy (all FIVE of us now, we went from 3 to 5 pretty quick haha) and most importantly, we have each other.

The uncertainty is hard on everyone. I don’t know how the world will look on the other side of this. I don’t even know if there is another side. Am I going to be afraid to send my kid to her first day of school? Will I be able to have visitors in the hospital when I give birth? Will my children ever know a world where we don’t sanitize our grocery bags? When they grow up, will the smell of Lysol and hand sanitizer trigger memories of their childhood? Will they be happy memories where they remember that we did things as a family, or will they remember existential fear of invisible enemies they didn’t understand? Will my great grandchildren mock my butter-tub and toilet paper hoarding habits like I did to my great grandma?

We may not know what will happen in a month or two or 18, but what I do know is that this has changed me. My pregnancy has changed me, and this pandemic has changed me. Maybe it was meant to. I mostly feel bad for the people that haven’t changed. Who live their lives less in fear of disease and mortality, but fear more the change to their lifestyle that some part of them can’t give up. The people who view the risk of catching and spreading Covid-19 as worth it in the face of having to change their starbucks and retail therapy routines. I pray those people find out through this that they’re stronger than companies and private politics want them to believe they are.

We can do this. Together we are doing this.

Free Meal Plan Printable

I’ve made a free printable for you! This simple printable can help you arrange your thoughts and meals all in one place!

Click here to print or save now!

Best part is that it’s free! And that’s a great price!

Can be used in a binder or on its own. Here’s what it looks like in use by me- a real person.

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I’ve found that cutting it in half works really well, too. I can just take the list with me to the store and leave the meal plan on the fridge where everyone can see it!

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I love the place on the left where you can jot down lunch ideas or things you need to pick up or really anything! It folds neatly behind the list so you’re not lugging a full sheet to the grocery store.

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I plan on making more free printables, it was super fun to do and I really hope it helps you guys out. The printable has a little color to the middle line of dots, but my printer only does black and white, so it works great either way!

If you have any suggestions for other things I can make, please leave them in the comment section! I love hearing from you guys, so let me know!

I hope you all are having a fantastic day, thanks for reading and downloading my first free printable!

Wren Fledglings and Gratitude.

We’ve got a new family that moved into a flower pot on our front porch. A house wren couple and babies!

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First we noticed the two adults building the nest, and a few days later they had laid at least 8 eggs!

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Two weeks went by and a couple eggs had hatched, and I checked yesterday and it seems that the rest have hatched! Some of the babies are bigger than the others. I’ve never watched birds before this closely, so I’m not sure if that’s normal or not.

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My daughter has really enjoyed watching the babies and is learning a big lesson in self control. We don’t go near the nest when the mommy bird is around because we don’t want to scare her and we definitely haven’t touched the nest. I’ve heard touching the nest causing the mom to abandon the nest is a myth, but I don’t want to interfere in any way.

I’ve seen the dad bird bring the mom food and it’s been incredible to see the miracle of life.

This brings me to a deeper point, and what I feel the universe is telling me through these birds.

I recently went back to work at a salon doing hair after being a stay at home mom for three years and it was a big change for our family. It was only part time, but my work days are my husbands off days, so we haven’t been spending a lot of time together.

It’s unsustainable for me. It’s smothering me. I tried to quit, and my boss told me she would keep me on the books and just call if she needed cover, but that she wouldn’t schedule me anymore. It’s nice to not burn any bridges in that regard, but I wonder what I really was trying to gain by working outside the home.

It was a really spur of the moment decision to even apply for that job, and I definitely am realizing that it may have not been the correct decision.

I’m one of those people who like to make their own mistakes, a “can’t tell me nothin” kind of person. What comes with that, though, is the pain of realizing you made a mistake that negatively impacted not only you, but your family.

That’s not to say that my husbands job is more important than my career (I technically made more than him with less hours) but that I lost my gratitude. I lost the love for caring for my home and family, and I didn’t even realize how important that was to me.

The other side to this situation is that I volunteer for a non-profit kindergarten readiness program for at-risk children, and have for almost two years now. I really click with the director and she recently offered me a position as half volunteer coordinator and half home visit teacher. We have very few English speaking families and I would be the only non-Spanish speaking teacher. I never went to college, but the director seems to think I’m qualified.

So this dilemma of leaving a job making money for a company and fake smiling my way through 30 different haircuts in one day and selling products I don’t believe in, jumping to a position that scares the crap out of me.

Back to the birds, they have really been encouraging me to slow down and focus on what matters. The parent birds are solely focused on providing for their babies, and probably make decisions based solely on the well-being of those fledglings. I am no different.

I believe with all my heart that the most important thing on this entire planet is nourishing our children. Every baby is born with the potential of the entire world inside them, and nurtured in the right ways, has the ability to do anything.

I’m not a Christian, but a phrase I heard once went something along the lines of “You could recognize the mother Mary if you saw her, but would you know the Christ child if you saw him?” Every child has that potential. I believe that with everything in my heart.

Ok, now I’m crying and lost my train of thought, but I just wanted to update the blog with what’s on my mind, and I appreciate you reading what I have to say.

I hope this finds you well. xo