Author: michleeann

A lover of all things Karl Lagerfeld, Golden Girls enthusiast, and loves books from Hemingway to Harlequin.

Categories
travel

The New Way I’m Travelling

Photo by Leah Kelley on Pexels.com

Slowing right down. Taking it all in instead of rushing around. Staying longer and relaxing.

Remember when you could travel and you weren’t connected 24/7? When you had to fumble through awkward language barriers because Google translate didn’t exist yet. When you needed a real map instead of your phone. When your phone wouldn’t work, not because it was expensive to operate while abroad, but simply because it wouldn’t work overseas.

When you’d wander around, not for Instagram shots, but to just feel the life breathing around you, the lives lived and lost inside and out of the walls surrounding you.

Remember when travel was more than just the 2,688,098 things you could see for free? When it was more than one-upping the faceless persons on the internet? When it didn’t matter if you saw the tourist attractions because you’d also find some gems, too, simply because you’d get lost on your way to seeing said tourist attractions. You’d stumble, and fumble, and fall right into that adorable cafe, or enchanting park. You’d explore a new neighborhood, taking your time because, well, you didn’t know where the fuck you were.

You didn’t worry about trying to have the most authentic trip you could, because you were already doing that. Yeah, you might have had a tour guide or two, and yeah, you might be seeing a lot of touristy stuff and paying quadruple, but you weren’t worried about that because you were exploring a new world to you.

I remember when staying in apartments was weird. I loved it. Loved it because it was cheaper than hotels. Loved it because I generally enjoy grocery shopping, and even more in a foreign country. Traipsing off to the markets to buy food I wouldn’t be able to at home, to peruse the snack section at a grocery store, to happily tuck a bottle of wine from the little corner store down from your apartment is what traveling is about. At least, for me it is.

But, just like everything that becomes too mainstream, it comes with a price. No longer is it exciting and fun to fall into new places and new experiences. It’s demanded of you. Why aren’t you staying in an apartment? Hotels, and their concierge services, are the scum of the Earth. Why would you stay in an apartment? It’s ruining the housing economy everywhere! Why would you ever pay a tour guide to bring you around a city? A cab? You must be joking…only true travellers walk everywhere. Why wouldn’t you live in a van and travel for a year? Everyone and their kids are doing it. You must, too! It’s authentic, don’t you know.

I’ve definitely given a few of these tips out myself. The finding the hidden gems (although my advice is always just walk and explore and hang out, letting the city/town soak into you). Staying in an apartment. Nixing some tourist attractions. My way of thinking has changed over the years, evolving with the giant tourism boom. I’m more worried about the environment, about the people who actually live in these places, about the stress I’m now feeling trying to have the perfect Instagram-worthy vacation.

Honestly, it’s more in my self-interest to change the way that I travel, that everyone travels. I’ve always been an advocate for doing what you want on a trip. Yes, staying in an apartment can be immensely better than a hotel. But, sometimes hotels are infinitely better. See: spa packages and as many pillows as you wish. Yes, it’s amazing that people are seeing more of the world, but have you seen the damn line-ups, recently? Not my cup of tea. It feels like all of the quiet haunts I used to love are now overcrowded as more and more people find them and tell everyone to go there. Simply for a like or two. It’s why I’ll often keep beautiful, quiet places to myself. Or, I’ll tell a friend who is visiting to check it out, but I won’t blast it over the internet. There’s something about keeping that hidden gem…hidden.

I highly doubt we will be traveling this year, and if we are, it will only be in our country. I won’t be stepping on a plane until things calm way down. I won’t feel comfortable, so why waste the money? I’ve gone back and forth over whether or not I like that I’m not traveling. Sometimes, I can’t wait to get out there and my hand starts inching closer to booking a vacation. But, I’m trying to tamp that feeling down. I don’t want to go on vacation just to go. I want to go because I miss the streets of Paris, because I want to relax on the beach and explore the rainforest, because I want to see and immerse myself in everything the country I’ve chosen for the next 3–4 weeks has to offer.

I’ve written about this before. Before the pandemic. At the start of the pandemic. Because our worlds were tipped upside down. I had enough of traveling, of being in an airport for hours upon hours. Of jet lag. Of overcrowded streets. I wanted to explore my own country, and that’s still true, but with a break in travel, I’m still reaching for more foreign pastures. And, that’s okay. Next time I go I’ll try to unplug, try to bring myself back to the way it used to be. When traveling meant figuring it out on your own, and finding a little bit of yourself along the way.

Categories
Nature

Finding Happiness in Forest Bathing

Photo by Feyza Altun on Pexels.com

A fall trip to the lake is my favourite time of the year. Sure, floating in the water while the sun warms you into a crisp, then napping the afternoon away while a fan blows is a wonderful weekend spent, but it’s hard to feel connected to nature during those months. You’re hot, sticky, worrying about spending as much time in the water as possible, worried about wasting away the summer days. Yes, bathing in the lake while baby loons played about me has been a highlight in my life, and I felt so close to the original world around me, but that’s not the everyday. I’m not a Disney Princess with a passel of animals ready to make me laugh and serve me. Wouldn’t that be amazing, though? What I’m trying to say here is that summer is great, but in the fall, nature brings out her most colourful, crisp, cozy, happiness.

In the fall, my priorities change. It’s not the water I’m seeking, but the closeness of the trees. I want to feel wrapped in their embrace, I want to hear the birds and squirrels making noise, playing, and singing, and jostling about.
I need to ground myself in the Earth. I need to feel that quietness deep into my soul. With less people milling about, it’s easier to sit in silence, listening to the birds chirp while a hot mug of coffee warms your hands. It’s easier to listen to the trees talk, the rustling of their leaves providing the perfect background noise. This is when I feel most relaxed, most at home here in the middle of the woods.

I don’t need to read any studies on why Forest bathing is so good for you. I can feel it inside myself when I take a walk through the woods. When I sit and just listen. Even while sitting in a man-made structure, snuggled under a blanket, just smelling the Earth, the leaves, listening to water lap at the shore while trees whisper, I feel it. I feel the benefits before I’m fully immersed in it. I feel my body relax, my mind let go of everything. I breathe deeper, I smile more, I feel absolutely and wonderfully content. While for me, complete happiness is open fields and prairie skies, for a lot of people it’s the hustle and bustle of city life. I’m sure if you plopped them down in a forest, made them comfortable (to whatever that comfort is to them), they’d feel the same. Dropping the phone, breathing in, and connecting with the world in which we try so hard to run away from.

There’s a spot in the cabin, the breezeway, that I call my home. There’s one wicker chair, an old log used as a foot stool, and my complete happiness there. Curling up with a good book or magazine and my coffee is my favourite part of the time spent here. I look forward to it before we leave, I think about it before I go to bed, snuggling under the blanket while the quiet radiates through the air.

But, my chair faces away from the water, the magnificent lake views that the whole cabin revolves around. Instead, it points towards the trees, the small path that leads to the road. It is there, in that view, that I find the most comfort, where I feel most at home.

Categories
Mom Life

You’ll Make it out of the Baby Stage, Mama

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Even if it feels like you’ll die here.

I never thought I’d make it here, but I have. Just over a full year of breakdowns, rage, postpartum depression, anxiety, stress, so many tears, so many of the ‘I will never sleep again’ and the ‘I will never do anything again’. A full year of ups and downs, smiles, and more tears than I’ll ever be able to count. A full year of amazing memories and fucking straight up exhaustion. A full year, and I made it to the other side.

I’m sitting in my kitchen after a day of errands, chores, visits, play, relaxing, reading the teeny tinies one too many times, baking, and supper. And I feel great. Well, maybe great is a strong word. My back hurts, I don’t want to read the teeny tinies anymore, and I’m sick of picking up everything I just put away. I’m sitting here contemplating cleaning a little bit more while my daughter toddles around the house, content to play with empty cups and tear flyers and magazines apart.

I never thought I’d make it to this day. I honestly thought I’d be stuck in mom hell, waiting for a precious two minutes to myself, needing my husband home or babysitters to make those two minutes happen (and then when you have them, what to do with those precious minutes?!). I never thought I’d be able to get things done and not feel so exhausted that all I could do is watch TV and sleep in my ‘off time’. But I’m here. I made it.

During that newborn stage as a first-time mom, where you have no idea what is going on, you never think that your baby will sleep again. Toxic people will tell you just to leave them, insist on it, that it’ll be good for them to cry, and it’s the only way. You’ll stress over this, wondering if you should even if your entire instincts are screaming no. You’ll feel trapped and wonder just what the hell you did to your life. Your friends will tell you that you really do sleep again, and that you don’t need to change anything, that they will — eventually — just sleep. They tell you that it’ll get easier regarding time management, and you will get to drink your coffee hot again. You call them all liars.

And then…babies get bigger, and they start — usually — sleeping a little better. And, even if they aren’t sleeping better, you’re sleeping better because you’re not up feeding them every two hours. You stop taking naps for every single nap they take. They start getting more independent and can drink out of cups and don’t need formula or breastmilk anymore. They start actually eating the food instead of throwing it on the ground. They start picking up their toys and helping you clean up, even if it takes twice as long, some days. While I haven’t gotten to the stage of fully potty trained and dressing themselves yet, I know it’s coming.

I know that all of those mothers who say it’ll come aren’t lying. I know that kids do things in their own time, and everything is okay if they’re still not sleeping through the night at a year and a half, or if they’re not saying 100 words yet, or learning Japanese. Okay, the last two are exaggerations, but with the pressures out there to be perfect parents and have perfectly adjusted and smart kids, is it really?

The days when my baby would fall asleep on my chest and only want to sleep on my chest are gone. While it may make me a little nostalgic to think that she doesn’t want that anymore, the hugs and kisses she gives me make up for that. And the fact that I can sit here writing out whatever comes to mind while she naps or entertains herself is wonderful.

So, mama, if you’re out there in the trenches thinking you’re the only one up with your baby or toddler at 2 am, know you’re not. If you’re thinking that you’ll never sleep without your child again, know you will. If you’re thinking that you’ll never have your days back, you’ll be nap-trapped forever, you’ll never drink your morning coffee hot, you’ll always be stressed out and feel so absolutely damaged from your hormones and maybe birth and this huge, huge change in your life, know you will get those days back, drink that coffee, and feel like a human, again. You will find your way back to yourself, even if the road is bumpy and covered in overgrown brush. I never thought I would, but I made it.

Categories
Mom Life travel

The Stress of Boarding a Plane with a Baby

Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash

When we decided to go on a trip to France with our 11 month old, it didn’t seem crazy or strange. It felt normal. I wanted to go on a trip, had been waiting for a time to come when we could travel safely and freely, again, and had felt pent up after two years of staying inside or close to home. Wanting a cute family trip, we picked France due to the amazing rate I found on an apartment overlooking the sea in Antibes, and the fact that we felt comfortable there. While it felt normal to go on a trip with a baby, I wasn’t ready to jet off to Morocco with one.

Travelling with a baby is hard and stressful at times, but it’s also a wonderful journey with your little one you’ll never forget. It doesn’t matter that they won’t remember it — some things you just do for yourself. Besides, the photo of my daughter sitting in the Mediterranean Sea or frolicking in front of the Eiffel Tower are some of my favourites. The memory of sitting with her in a cafe while it lightly rained outside is one I’ll never forget. It never concerned me about what we would do once we got to France, never concerned me that we would have to buy diapers there or formula or take it a little low. What concerned me was the flight.

After following numerous baby/family travel accounts on Instagram and researching everything I needed to know about bringing an infant on a plane, I felt confident in what we needed, but felt more anxiety than I had in a long time. I felt like crying thinking about people getting angry and making huffing comments to me about my child and my lack of respect towards them. The same type of people who would talk loudly while everyone slept or take up more than their fair share of space or recline their seat the second they’re in the air, I’m sure. I read all sorts of horrible things that people said about babies being on flights, essentially meaning that babies should be no where near humans or civilization until they are — at least — 8 years old and can sit quiet for a while, content with an activity book.

I was ready to be awake the entire flight, knowing that I’d be exhausted, but not wanting to be that asshole with a crying baby for the entirety of the flight. I brought so many snacks and toys and everything we would need, cramming in every last piece until our suitcases were about to explode. I readied myself for horrific comments, knowing I’d bite back with something scathing yet cry in the bathroom later.

So, when I boarded that plane with baby, I was surprised when the flight attendants smiled at her, entertained by her winning smile and all around adorable 11 month shenangins. On our first flight, a short-haul, no one seemed to bat an eye at the fact that a baby was sitting near them. No one made any comments, no one screamed at us. I breathed a sigh of relief and actually enjoyed those two hours in the air as my daughter ate her snacks, played with her toys, and then napped contently in my arms.

After hours spent in an airport lounge trying to get her giggles and energy out while eating as much as we could without feeling lethargic and icky, we boarded our second flight, a 9-hour long-haul. I was feeling much more at ease with a baby on a plane after having experienced it, even if it was short. Even though I was feeling pretty decent, the people around us may not have. As we boarded the plane, turning left into the premium economy cabin I had been adamant on (more room for baby, food constantly, great post-pandemic deal) I could see the stress and horror run across the faces of those who had paid more for a — hopefully — quieter and roomier flight. I didn’t blame them. Flying for 9 hours can be annoying and exhausting enough; no one would want to deal with a screaming baby for those 9 hours.

But, here’s the thing. A baby will — most likely — not scream for those 9 hours. They will maybe cry on take-off and landing if they refuse the breast, bottle, or snacks and water to help with their ears. They will maybe cry if they’re hungry. They may be a bit fussy and whiney every so often, but it is unlikely that they will scream for that long with no end in sight. And, with the right tools on your journey, you can cut all of that down to nil or very little.

I will admit, feeling the people around us tense up at seeing our baby happily boarding the plane, looking excitedly at everyone and everything, had my anxiety flare up. But, I held strong on feeling okay with it. Babies are allowed to be in public, and even though people act like this isn’t true, an airplane is public transportation. It is just a giant bus in the sky. Was I on edge a little more whenever she let out a peep? Of course. I always am when we are in public. But, I’d remain calm and calm her, getting what she needed to be happy and content. The flight attendant was amazing and so helpful, giving us extra tips and tricks and letting us know the best way to eat in peace.

At the end of that flight, the man across from us told us how amazing she was the entire flight as he took his luggage down from the overhead compartment. I beamed with pride, feeling like we had won family travelling, but if it wasn’t for the fact that babies needed to be ‘good’ and perfectly silent when in public, I never would have felt that anxiety or stress that society places on moms and babies.

Boarding a plane with a baby will be anxiety inducing every single time, even if you’re feeling pretty relaxed. There’s always that chance that absolutely everything will go wrong and there will be nothing you can do to stem the flow of pure shit — both literally and figuratively. As a society, we all have to remember that babies are part of our society and allowed to be out, too. Shutting up parents for years just so babies can look a part is cruel. If we remember this, maybe this anxiety will lessen and over time, become obsolete. A travelling mom can only hope.

Categories
Life

Welcome to Juniper and Daisies

Hi, everyone! I’m so excited you found my page. I’m Michelle Lee-Ann, and boy, have I got some stories to share.

I’ve had blogs throughout the years, going from travel niche to a lifestyle blog (The LT Edit), but neither felt 100% right. While I love travel, loved writing about it (still do!), and loved the fun articles I could post about gardening and decor on The LT Edit, it wasn’t what really made me feel inspired. I was never one for marketing and social media (despite actually holding that title in my job years ago); though fun, it was always so tedious and exhausting to keep up with what was trending.

I always loved telling stories. Writing whatever comes to mind and ranting about this and that. I had a small outlet of that on Medium, but after years of back and forth between blogs, taking time off to focus on my daughter, and deciding what in the world I want to put out there in the world, I finally landed on what I should be doing: writing stories.

Writing stories for me. For you. For everyone. I won’t be worrying about making click-bait titles and trying to do 1,000 affiliate programs and keep up with my social media platform. Right now, there isn’t even a social media platform for this blog. We’re taking baby steps here and listening to what I always tell everyone else to listen to: intuition. Go with your gut and all that.

So, I’m happy you landed here and hope you stick around to read some fun things, some grumpy things, some wistful things. Like what you find here? Tell everyone. Like, everyone. Happy reading!