Mom life – Being a Boy Mom

Hey there!  I am so glad to have you popping in.  

I may regret this later, but I want to share a bit about my crazy, fun-filled world.  

I hope you find some inspiration or maybe just solidarity in this crazy, mom life that so many of us are living.  

I mean it is beautiful, even if it is a bit messy at times.

One thing you will quickly learn about me is that I am pretty much completely transparent.

If I think something will help someone, I am likely to share what I think other moms need to know to improve their life. Even if it is uncomfortable. I want the best for everyone.   

Feel free to join me on this 1,000 foot view of my life as a mom. Other posts will dive deeper into these topics, but here is the broad perspective, for your reading pleasure.

I am a mom

I am a mom.  Just a mom.  

Okay not just a mom, but definitely being a mom is one of my proudest accomplishments.  

I am not sure why I feel like it is an accomplishment when my kids behave.

But when they are misbehaving, it feels like the opposite of an accomplishment, so why shouldn’t it feel like an accomplishment when I feel like everyone is behaving at the moment?  Am I right?  

I love my kids and they adore me.  Being a mom is great for the ego, because it feels like they think I walk on the moon.  

Really I just put my pants on one leg at a time like everyone else. 

But to them, I am their sun, moon and stars.  

Togetherness

We are together pretty much 24-7, as I work from home and homeschool them as well.  

No, I am not a superhero. I have lots of help.  

But I absolutely love being here for my kids.

I love knowing what makes them tick and what annoys the tar out of them.

My Mom – My Superhero

I have an amazing mom who is super supportive and often comes over for multiple hours multiple days a week to hangout with the kids while I work, or while I sleep because I carved out too many hours working in my nice quiet house the night before.

And I have an amazing husband who tries really hard to be supportive most of the time.  Some days are rough, I am not going to lie, but we have a great relationship and he is my rock.  

Homeschooling – the Ultimate Mom life experience

We have some amazing homeschool programs that the kids work on that are largely independent learning at this point.  

We pieced together the best parts of several programs in a way that just fits how they learn and our lifestyle.    

What I mean by this is that they use a distance learning app for several subjects.  

Then we pair that with a super-intensive phonics program.  

And math is a combination of video learning and workbook practice.  

I don’t sweat a ton of the small details because they have their core subjects covered and are doing amazing on their annual testing.  I know they are learning a lot.  

Lego Fun

My older boys are super motivated to learn efficiently because they carve out every spare minute they can to build the most amazing lego creations.  

I am constantly amazed at the creations that they free-create.  I almost hate that they get sets because it limits their freedom and creativity.  

This might not be the typical mom life, but it sure is the norm for me.

Tech Domination

I want to say that we run a tight ship and go tech free except for homeschooling.

But, we have kindles. And an Xbox.

The struggle is real. These items compete with my kiddos’ time.

We work on trying to find balance between free play, tech time and a little bit of helping around the house.  

Some days and weeks are better than others. But I suppose we are like many families in that regard.

Being an “Older” Mom

I always wanted to have kids, and lots of them.  But I also wanted to help my husband succeed first, because really, being a stay at home mom with a successful husband seemed idea.

But, when he struggled, and there were lots of reasons, so it wasn’t all him, but indeed he did struggle to finish his advanced schooling, it seemed best to wait to have kids.

Now, I figured we were fine, no big deal.  Our first child was born when I was 33.  

But then we waited to have our second because the job situation wasn’t terribly stable, and took lots of hours of my husband.  So 3 years later we were a family of four.  

Then a miscarriage taught me the importance of watching hormones as an “older mom.”  That was such a painful learning experience.  

But, baby number 3 came a few years later.  We were fortunate to adopt baby number 4.

Now at age 44 I am mom to four boys, age 1, 2, 8 and 11.  

Boy Mom

I never imagined that I would only have boys.  That just wasn’t in my plan.  But that is what we have.  

I even got my Girl Scout lifetime pass as an 18 year old as I was convinced I would have girls and wanted to be a leader and do all the Girl Scout things – but nope.  

And actually, I kind of like having boys.  I have a super-close relationship with all my boys and just love them to pieces.  

Job Transition

I had worked as a City Planner until not terribly long ago.  But I came to the realization that I wanted to be more present with my kids than just home here and there.  

I love being able to be present with my kids.  To love on them all day long – and all night long too plenty of times!  

My 1 year old just cries when I leave the room.  I have done plenty of work with him on my lap or playing at my feet.  It isn’t always convenient, but I love it.

My Superhero Mom is Amazing

My amazing mom is super helpful and comes to help out with the boys quite often.  I would be so lost without her while I am building my blog coaching program.  

She always has a great idea to try or a new way to think things through.   

I know that I laugh that my boys think that I am a superhero, but the real superhero is probably my mom.  

She has an amazing ability to 

Clutter and Housekeeping

Anyone who has been to my house knows that I am not always the neatest of housekeepers. 

I mean my house is livable, but cluttered.  

And if you have kids you recognize that 4 boys, at home all day every day makes for an interesting situation.

I figure someone has to be the person that helps other people feel good about themselves.  I mean anyone who comes over probably leaves thinking, gosh, I was feeling pretty self conscious about my house, but hey now that I think about it my house is pretty organized.  You are welcome.  Happy to have helped.  Ha! 

I mean I do try, but when I make progress in one room the kids have destroyed the last room I made progress in.  So its all a process.  A very slow process.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Okay, maybe it would be nice, okay really nice, to have a cleaner house.  But I need to have a serious conversation with myself about the stuff that I feel is necessary to keep.  

I mean I understand all of the logic behind getting rid of stuff.  But it is so hard!  

I have so many stories that I need to weed through and work through.  And I am getting better at letting things go.  But it is definitely a process.  

It gets easier to get rid of stuff that is smaller than my youngest.  

Weight Loss

It will be easier getting rid of my current larger sized clothes as I lose the baby weight.  

But I am giving myself grace and not expecting change overnight.  

I mean it took more than overnight to find the weight, so it will take more than overnight to lose it.  

We are getting an exercise bike and I cannot wait for it to arrive.  I have so many great plans.  

Arguably the same plans that I have for the monthly yoga training videos I pay for but rarely do.  

But I am hopeful that I can follow through on this!  

I really want to feel proud of my body again.  

I want to have energy to move and enjoy life with my kids.

I know I can start and stick to it.  I will make it happen.  

Laundry Mountains

Is it just me or does laundry multiply.  Like seriously.  

I think I need to just take the whole lot of it to a laundromat so I can start fresh.  

But then again, maybe I just need to set a timer and change laundry every so many minutes.  

Except we have a possessed washing machine that only lets out a trickle of cold water.  So washing in cold is a really slow process.  

At least life is never boring.  

We actually own another washing machine, but I am not sure if the issue is the water line or the washing machine and I haven’t bothered to swap them out to find out yet.  .  

One of our sinks also has an issue with slow cold water, so I am afraid it is an issue in the pipes, but part of me just doesn’t want to know.  

Book Lovers

But we love books – and love collecting books.  

Yes the public library is amazing, but we have a ton of our own books we just can’t stand to part with.  

Not only that, but each of us have various interests and hobbies.  

And we moved… a lot.  Usually we didn’t have time to downsize first.  So we just keep moving boxes waiting for the day we can go through it all.  I think next year will be the year to get through a lot of them.  But for now, we will persevere!  

Harry Potter

While we are on the topic of books.  My kids absolutely love everything about Harry Potter.  They have read all the books and watched most of all the movies.  Movie 7 part 2 freaked them out so I think they haven’t finished that yet.  

My eight year old has an uncanny ability to memorize movie lines.  

So he quotes movie lines and quizzes frequently as to what scene and movie and characters it pertains to.  

I think I watched and read through about book 5.  I will eventually get through the rest of it, but I kind of want ot read the books before I watch the movie.  But I have seen bits of all of the movies while others were watching them.  I know just enough to be dangerous, although maybe that isn’t the right phrase to use when you are talking about magic and magicians.  

I did however live for 6 months in Alnwick, Northumberland where the flying lessons in the Harry Potter movie 1 was filmed.  I actually lived in Alnwick Castle.  It was so much fun.  

Marching to My Own Tune

It probably goes without saying but I am an independent thinker.  

I don’t do what the crowd does just for the sake of doing the “in” thing.  

I give lots of thought to my actions and act intentionally most of the time.

I mean I have traveled Europe, several times. On my own. Like completely on my own as an 18 year old.

I have never minded doing something totally different from everyone else.  

If it makes sense to me and seems like a good idea, I make it happen.

Traveling

Even as a teen, I was an avid traveler.  

Our family regularly trekked from Minnesota to Florida by camper in the middle of winter.  

My dad worked outside and found that a few weeks in Florida was just the ticket to enduring the harsh reality of working outside in a Minnesota winter.

I have fond memories of planning the entire trip and talking through the pros and cons of each route. 

We used a combination of the Triple A Eastern United States Map, individual state maps and the TripTik.  

We usually went a different route than the TripTik, for at least part of the trip and it was fun to figure out the best plan – and then equally interesting to learn why it was or wasn’t a good idea to try with a camper.  

We still tease my mom and brother about them waking up my dad and I in the middle of Wisconsin some 90 miles in the wrong direction on a toll road that was nowhere on our route.  

And then there is the time that my sister, who was still young at the time, like maybe 5 or 6, kept waking up to find a french fry in her shoe the next morning.  

She was really good at going to bed on time and we of course didn’t want to wake her (or share the fries).

I started traveling on my own at age 13, with the highlights being trips to Norway at age 16 and England at age 18.

I have slowed down a bit with kids, but still love a good adventure. Even if I need to be more responsible now.