Tag: mom

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Mom Life

Can I Really be a Pinterest Mom?

Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash

I so badly want to be a Pinterest mom. Not badly enough to stress myself out and ignore my own rest breaks, but badly enough.

I love looking up cute holiday crafts to do with my daughter, or for when we have playdates. I love balloon arches. I love the little wooden toddler knife I bought her. I love the tiny footprints I had made when she was an itty bitty newborn. I love scrolling Pinterest to find cute things to do and cute décor for every occasion.

What I don’t love is the pressure.

The pressure to have to do these things. To look like a good mother if I cut her food into cute shapes. For some, it helps those picky eaters. For most, it’s just more damn work on an already busy day. Every time I see pancakes in the shape of candy canes or snowmen, I think I could totally do that. Then, I wonder why I would take the time only for her to eat it in three seconds, demanding more. Pancakes are like cocaine to toddlers.

Maybe my comparison there is why I can never be a Pinterest mom.

Sure, I can put in the extra work and make things more things special in her life. But, could I mentally handle it? Probably not.

I’m a big fan of mixing things, though. When she was a baby, I breastfed and formula fed. I’m a stay at home mom, but she also goes to her grandparents two days of the week so I can write (and, to be honest, take a break). I plan fun parties with tons of balloons, streamers, AND a balloon arch, but we don’t have 1,000 activities or so much specialized décor I’m stressing the entire time. She gets healthy snacks for school packaged in a bento box, complete with little appetizers picks (I found this was great for her to keep her hands a little cleaner when eating certain foods), but there are also gushers or just a buttered piece of bread some days.

As she’s gotten older, I’ve realized that I can do the Pinteresty things without going fully overboard. I can buy a 3 foot Christmas tree for her room, let her pick out decorations, and decorate it. I don’t need to make every decorate, or have it be themed (what’s the fun in that for a child, anyways?). I can bake the cookies with the fancy sprinkles and try a new recipe, but I don’t need to make frozen whipped cream snowmen for hot chocolates.

I can save the receiving blankets and sleep sacks of hers, but maybe wait until she’s a little older (and thus giving me more time to do projects) to finish the quilt. I can have the aesthetically pleasing wooden toys and hand-made items, but also the plastic toys that make wild amounts of noise.

I can protect my time because who is going to make these crafts with her if I’m too stressed from the one last week? I can take a little bit of everything, like I love to do, and go at my own pace, making sure to keep my own sanity.

Until I get caught up in the next fun Pinterest project.

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Mom Life

I Used to be a Person

Photo by Samantha Garrote on Pexels.com

I used to be a person. I used to have my own dreams, my own desires, my own time, my own identity. I used to do things for myself, working hard on those dreams of mine, wondering if they would be attainable.

I’m now a mother and no longer an actual person. My time is eaten up by minding a — now — toddler, cleaning, cooking, taking care of everyone, and forgetting about myself. Even when you have all of the support in the world, it’s easy to get lost in it. Get stuck in motherhood and forget who you are, who you used to be. Because you’re not that person anymore. You’ve changed, some of it for the better, some of it not. There are so many things I’m happy for now, and yet, I’m missing the things that make me…me.

I used to be a person, but now I’m bogged down. I guess that’s the best way to describe it, because we know that other moms have done just fine and gone on to jobs and worked and achieved their dreams and goals. I try not to think about that, not just because it makes me feel like a shitty person overall for not doing everything so ‘perfectly’ or for getting so exhausted by day to day life, but because I still label those moms as career oriented women and moms separately. I still feel like my ‘regular life’ and my ‘mom life’ are two separate things needed to be kept apart so that both can flourish, and yet one of those quietly fades away.

The ‘mom life’ is always there because it is life, it is the mundane, the daily tasks, the behind-the-scenes work. There is the never-ending list of chores, the fun activities that take up most of my energy and day. The guilt that eats away whenever I do something for myself besides sleep.

It’s hard not to yearn for the person that I used to be. For the carefree life I used to live, for the freedom I had before everything revolved around one tiny creature. I know that some things will get easier in time, like drinking my coffee while it’s still hot, but will the person I used to be be waiting for me? Will she have turned, too tired of waiting for the ‘next weekend’ or the ‘tomorrows’ that always get pushed aside because something more important came up?

I worry that she will get lost, never to be found, while this newness and wonderfulness takes over my whole life. You better not forget the wonderfulness, because you’re not allowed to yearn for different times while you’re a mother. You’re not allowed to be the person you once were, barely allowed to be your own person. So, I tell her to hold on, that’ll one day I’ll reach out and take her hand, bringing her back to the here and now, but for now, she just needs to wait. Wait for a time when life isn’t so chaotic, isn’t so new, isn’t so all consuming. Like that time will actually come.

Once upon a time I used to be a person, but now I’m just mom.

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Mom Life

Making Mom Friends is Harder than I Thought

Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.com

Everyone talks about how hard it is to make friends when you’re older. And they’re correct. For the most part. I made friends easily from elementary school to high school. It was easy, still, to make friends in university and find friends at work. You’re seeing the same people day in and day out, so you get to know them slowly and yet so fast. That’s the funny thing about making friends in an office — you may only know your deskmate for a month, and yet, they feel like your childhood best friend because of how much time is spent with one another.

Now, instead of in an office, my time is mainly spent with my daughter. As a stay-at-home mom, I’m realizing the difficulty in finding friends, especially in an age where there are fewer of us, with more moms returning to work. That means fewer moms at home in the neighbourhood to get together for coffee or play dates during the day. Which means less easily made connections. While I’m not looking solely for stay-at-home mom friends, it would be nice to be able to have a little break during the morning or afternoon, the longest and most tiring part of my day, and talk to an adult.

I joined Peanut, an app for moms to meet one another and chat. I also joined Bumble, hoping for some friends who may not be moms but would love to chat or meet for lunch. I wasn’t picky and just wanted to expand my circle a little more. Damn, guys, she’s rough out there. Even with using the Mom Tinder, as my husband calls it, I’ve yet to find a good mom friend. People don’t respond, you don’t click, you can’t arrange meet-ups between two schedules, conversations get forgotten and fall away. When the Mom Tinder wasn’t working, I looked toward the activities I signed up for with the baby. They were supposed to get me out of the house to meet new people, and yet…

Why are we all so closed off? Are we just nervous? I know I felt that way when I had my first ‘mom date’ with someone I met. I was worried about what I’d wear and how I’d look to this other mom, who probably had it together more than I did. I bet she did the dishes that day or doesn’t have a pile of laundry staring her in the face constantly. Don’t worry, the worry was for naught, and the friendship fizzled away like most first dates.

We see jokes that moms will befriend any other mom with similar-aged kids, even if they’re a serial killer, but it doesn’t seem to apply to real life (for that, I am thankful, of course). I’m not going to lie; part of it is true…when I saw a mom walking her baby a few weeks ago, I wanted to run up to her and say hello! Let’s be friends, or at the very least, walking buddies! She was further up the path from me, and I really would have had to hoof it. Alas, running up to strangers and shouting at them to be friends is seen as terrifying, so I refrained from chasing her down and just kept walking to the park, hoping by some form of kismet, we’d meet again.

Maybe we’re all too shy, too nervous to sound silly, too tired, or too mom-brained to form normal sentences with adults. Maybe I need to wait until my daughter is older when she makes her own friends, where I can then latch on greedily to whatever parent is nearby. Whatever the reason why forming mom friendships is so hard, I’m surprising myself with how outspoken I can be and yet incredibly shy. And finding out new things about yourself is always rewarding. Right? I’ll wait patiently for now and try my best not to run after moms I see on the street. No promises, though.