Everyone has ups and downs as a child. Certain things happen to you that shape who you become; some of those things are good and some can be bad. I was fortunate enough to have mostly good experiences. I had a roof over my head, both parents, enough food to survive, and a fantastic education despite my trying to escape the responsibility of school whenever I got the chance. I was able to live on a generously sized property where we had not only privacy but also the opportunity to experience things like farm animals and numerous pets. We were involved in a church that had a close knit community, and I grew up with the same best friends I had known my entire life. There were bad experiences sprinkled in, but nothing too horrific. There’s one experience, though, that affected me so badly it forever impacted my mental health. People who had a much harder childhood than I might read this and feel I’m pathetic for complaining about something that seems so inconsequential. I’d like to preface by saying you are entitled to however you feel, but so am I. I don’t have much control over how certain things affect my mental health, and that can be said for everyone who has their own unique set of troubles and bad experiences.

It started with my love for singing. The older I got, the more I realized how much I enjoyed trying to sing well. I would dance and sing absolutely everywhere: in the car, whilst doing chores, during grocery shopping trips, when walking to any room in the house, etc. I was involved in chorus during my one year I went to public school, and I absolutely loved it. So when I went back to homeschooling, my mom offered to sign me up for my church’s teen choir. Like I mentioned before, my church’s community was pretty tight knit. I knew probably at least half of the girls in the choir, if not more. It was so exciting to think about being involved in a group where I could sing with friends once again.

I passed the try-outs, which I’m pretty sure were just a formality. The teen choir director seemed way too nice to be able to turn any girl away from trying to join the group. Being able to sing for our church’s service was daunting but also incredibly refreshing. Our choir was much more technically advanced than my old chorus group at school. I was often confused by the different terms the choir director used. I had never before heard terms like “alto” and “soprano,” but I watched everyone else and learned as I went. My biggest goal in life at that time was to work on my singing until I was able to earn singing a solo at church.

Being in this choir made me practically feel like a celebrity. They had created a CD containing church hymns a few years prior to me joining, and many of the songs were written by the choir director herself. Was I in the presence of potential hymn music stars? My freshly-turned teenage self thought so. Never did I ever anticipate that the choir teacher would decide to start the process of creating a second CD right after I joined the choir. After hearing the news, I was beside myself with excitement. In my mind, my celebrity status was confirmed by the fact I was about to be recorded to sing on a CD.

The schedule for choir practice went from consistent to hectic. Extra practices were scheduled to get all the girls ready to record for the CD. It was all very exciting, but also hard to keep up. Someone said the choir teacher was trying to schedule practices around the schedules of all the choir girls. Unfortunately, this was around the time when my family was trying to figure out what was wrong with my youngest sister. We noticed she stopped hitting the typical baby milestones, and my mom was worried it had something to do with my sister’s extremely traumatic birth. With all that on our minds in addition to the frequent visits to doctors and therapists for tests and evalutations, I was not making it to every choir practice. We were trying, but our schedule was hectic, their schedule was hectic, and some days it was too hard to meet in the middle. In addition to bad scheduling conflicts, we lived far enough out of town to the point where it was expensive and a hassle to drive all the way into town just for a late night choir practice. We were already spending so much in gas taking my sister to her appointments that my mom tried her best to consolidate as many trips to town as she could. I made it to most of them, but many of them were at times when consolidation just did not work out.

I was totally oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong. Yes, I missed practices. But in my mind I was learning the songs, singing at church services, and having an all around great time with figuring out the ins and outs of the choir group. I was given a few singing parts that made me feel special and beautiful when I sang them, so life was good. I felt ready to take on the world with this CD and be a part of something bigger than myself. Now, looking back, I realize how easy it is to put out music. Yes we were doing something fun, but it was not nearly as extraordinary and crazy as I thought it was. Looking back, I wish I had not let myself get so carried away with being excited about this CD that hardly anyone outside our community would listen to.

I guess the choir teacher communicated to my mom that I was missing too many practices. At this point, the choir is way down on her priority list with all the stuff that was going on with my sister. We finally got close enough to where we only had a few more practices until we were going to start recording. I remember my mom telling me the choir teacher said missing any more practices would affect my singing on the CD. We missed a practice right after this. I don’t even remember the exact reason why we missed that practice. Were we busy with appointments that day? Did we not have the money for gas? Did we just forget it was that day? By the time I realized I had practice, it was too late. In my little teenage brain, though, I thought, “It’s okay, I’ll just try harder at the next practice and won’t miss any more.” I had no clue that the next practice would be one of the most terrible experiences I’ve ever had.

It happened so long ago, I don’t remember all the details. I just remember walking into practice and feeling like something was super off. The air felt different… so different I could sense it as soon as I walked in. I went to the usual spot I stood to sing the song we were practicing. I remember feeling like everyone was staring at me, but I didn’t know why. Maybe it’s just my imagination? I mean, it was obvious the choir teacher had rearranged the girls to sing different parts of the songs (alto, soprano, etc). I guessed she just decided to switch it up and try something new before we recorded for the CD. She switched us around pretty often, though never quite to the extent where it seemed almost half the girls were singing new parts. I just brushed it off and kept singing because I didn’t want to make anyone else feel weird in case the vibe being off was just a figment of my imagination.

Soon after I started singing, I remember the choir teacher saying whilst playing the piano, “I need to hear how the girls sound.” I had absolutely zero clues as to what the heck that was supposed to mean, so I think I responded with a nod or an “oh, okay” and kept singing. A little while later, she repeated herself. At this point I’m coming to terms with the fact that I was definitely not imagining things. The vibe in this room was so incredibly off. Girls I knew did not like me were sneering at me. Girls who were usually so nice to me just looked sadly at me as if I was a limping puppy. I didn’t know what was wrong, yet I felt like Alice falling down a deep, dark hole.

I couldn’t tell you how many times the choir teacher told me she needed to hear the girls sing. It didn’t click in my brain until one of the choir members, who used to babysit me, came over and repeated the choir teacher, but also suggested I go sit down. Suddenly, everything snapped into place: the girls were rearranged to make up for my voice being gone in the song. They got rid of me, and my trying to sing was screwing up the teacher trying to hear if she can make the song sound alright again. How hard was it to just tell me directly that I wasn’t allowed to sing? Why was I given the opportunity to humiliate myself in front of everyone like that when they knew I had no clue what was happening?

I sat down in a chair at the edge of the room and died inside. And I don’t say that sarcastically. A part of me really died that day. It took every single ounce of willpower to not break down sobbing right there in front of everyone and make even more of a spectacle of myself. My face was so red it felt like my entire head was on fire while the rest of my body was ice cold and numb. My limbs felt like they were laden with heavy weights. I stuffed my emotions down as far as they could go while my head spun to the point where I fought losing consciousness. That might sound dramatic, but you have to understand that I was only about 13 years old at the time. I was being bombarded with so many big emotions that I could not process what was happening. Disappointment that I wasn’t going to be included in the CD I had been over the moon excited to sing on, fear that I was going to ugly cry in front of so many people, hatred for myself for not helping my mom keep better track of my practices, worry that I was about to pass out and get drug out of that horrid place by paramedics.

I felt less valuable than dirt in that moment. I wasn’t a person, I was a piece of trash that can be flippantly tossed to the side the second I became less than convenient. I thought the group was about having fun together as a group of young women who shared a love for singing and music. I thought godly people were supposed to love their neighbor, not humiliate them during a very fragile stage in human development. God, why didn’t anyone have the balls to say something to me before I started singing so I didn’t end up so confused? I’m sure they were afraid of hurting my feelings, but the way things happened left me with so much more than hurt feelings.

By the time the girls were done practicing for the CD, I had successfully swallowed all of my emotions without passing out. I somehow croaked through practicing songs for our next church service and tried my best to put up a front that I was fine and totally not bothered by what had happened that night. I did not stay a member of the choir for very long afterward. I couldn’t. Hearing the choir sing gave me horrible panic attacks that made me feel physically ill. These were my first memories of ever having panic attacks. I started avoiding the services they sang at as often as I could. The times when I could not avoid their church services, I fought to keep my body language neutral even though all I wanted to do was run out of the church and cry like a baby some more.

I was told that the decision to remove me was left up to a vote amongst the choir members. Upon learning that information, I realized I could tell who voted me off based on how they were looking at me as I sang that night. One girl in particular, who had hated me my whole life, stood out in my memory. The thought that she voted me out because she didn’t like me and not because she thought I was technically inadequate was so hurtful. Girls at that age can be so cruel and hateful to each other. To be essentially voted out of a social group that young really can have a negative impact on a young girl’s psyche.

It mentally scarred me to the point where I still feel ill when listening to all female choirs, despite all this happening over a decade ago. I have had friends join that same choir throughout the years and I tried so hard to be supportive of them. I let them know I had a bad experience to try to keep them from experiencing the same fate. I forced myself to be friendly to the choir teacher whenever I saw her at church even though being by her really just made me want to sob. I tried so hard to just get over it. I mean, how pathetic is it to be traumatized by your childhood teen choir? But it’s not about the choir, it’s about how the experience with the choir impacted my perception of my place in society.

The older I get, the more I come to terms with my psychological struggles. A few years ago I helped admin a mom group on Facebook. I was voted out and my adminship was removed, but they neglected to tell me all this had transpired. I had to figure out myself what had happened and search for why they had done this. I could feel all the same emotions bubbling up again. I had been voted off yet another island and again, no one thought about telling me? Just a simple, “hey we revoked your adminship because of xyz, deuces.” I thought I had gotten over the whole teen choir thing, but this experience with facebook made me realize I definitely had not. I was having flashbacks and panic attacks and simultaneously hating myself for being so affected by something so stupid and unimportant.

Writing about all of this makes me feel sick and short of breath, but it also kind of feels good to get it off my chest. I don’t really feel like any one person is at fault or deserving of judgement for what happened (except that one bitch who hates me, she can go play with Carol Baskin’s tigers). I just feel like it was a situation that was handled poorly and I regret that it caused me so much psychological damage. I wish I cared less about what others thought of me at that age, because maybe then I would not have been quite so affected. Either way, what’s done is done. I’m working on improving myself and my anxiety so that hopefully someday I’ll be able to laugh about how silly it was that my first memories of having anxiety was getting booted from a dumb church choir CD.

If no one has told you yet today, you are valuable. Anyone who treats you less than the precious, unique person you are is wrong. They may treat you less than you are, but that doesn’t make you less than you are. How some terribly wrong people treat you does not define your worth. You have people in your life who love you for who you are. Keep them close, and remember there are resources out there if you need help. It’s okay to need help, we’re only human.

I’m helping a friend out and don’t have a post for you today, sorry!

Can we just take a minute to talk about pregnancy hormones. I am so tired of crying over stupid things. Pregnancy hormones have the power to take a completely rational human being and turn them into an irrational, sobbing pile of goo. Thankfully the hormones with this baby haven’t been as bad as they were with my second pregnancy, but things still build up until I snap and have an emotional breakdown. At least this time around in crying about pretty fair things and not stuff like missing clothes or lacking unhealthy candy snacks in the house. Yeah, I’ve done that. My second pregnancy was an adventure. I definitely suspect I was that way because that was my one girl pregnancy but who knows if that’s how that actually works.

Crying isn’t the only horrible side effect of the hormones. Cue weight gain and acne. The weight gain is especially bothering me this time around. How does it make any sense at all that a woman’s most emotionally vulnerable tine is also when she’ll put on the pounds? If there is a god out there, bro what is you doing?! I just do not understand. I’m hoping exercising a bit will help with the weight gain this time, but it’s so hard to motivate myself to drag the kids with me to the gym in the heat. The weather has been just so gross lately. So sitting on the sofa feeling sorry for myself it is! Sorry summer bod, maybe I’ll see you next year.

Don’t judge me… Sales are my weakness.

I know I talk about it entirely way too much, but I just cannot stop thinking about moving. The thought excites me so much. Even if it never actually happens, just thinking about and mentally planning for a big move makes me happy. Planning what furniture I’d take and what I would toss. Trying to predict where I’d put what furniture if we did move. Looking at adorable dog houses I could buy since I would finally have a yard for my dogs to run around and play in. Just so many things. So instead of blabbering about it in every other blog post, I’m going to lay out my reasons for wanting to move in this post.

1) Space

I’m not sure how many times I’ve mentioned it, but my house is small. Like, very small. It’s only about 600 sqft, and that’s including my patio. This is shared with myself, my husband, our two toddlers and baby number three who is expected to make his appearance at the end of this year. Obviously there are many people out there who survive with far less space and more people sharing the one house, but I spend most of my time at home, so the small space is really starting to wear on me. If I can afford to upgrade, I would really like to do so. Not only would we have more space to breathe, but the kids could really benefit from having more space to play.

2) Yard

I don’t have a yard. At all. I have a very small patio, and then the yard outside that is considered a “common area.” I cannot let my dogs outside my patio unsupervised, tethered or not. So if I am busy taking care of the kids, the dogs will just relieve themselves on the patio. Even though I clean the patio off several times a day, I hate them going to the bathroom on the patio. My oldest dog was trained to go on pavement because she was not born into a very good household (she was left in a garage to use the bathroom and do whatever else) and now our younger dog has picked up this bad habit as well. It has made house training/potty training very difficult because they are just dogs, so they don’t really understand the difference between flat floor inside and flat floor outside. I would like to be able to let them inside more often and not have to sit on the edge of my seat so I can hurry up and pull them outside when the try to pop a squat in the living room after being inside for fifteen minutes. I think having an actual yard with grass will go a LONG way with improving their quality of life. Right now I try to take them out on tethers several times a day if I can so they can potty in the grass and run/play together, but the tethers are pretty limiting, and the dog park near us is just absolutely disgusting. Having a yard I can easily clean myself will be so amazing for them.

3) Neighbors

As you can see from my first crazy neighbor series… Some seriously insane people have lived near me. After those people left is when I started having issues with a different neighbor. So far we haven’t had problems since the second crazies left, but I really don’t feel like waiting around until I get another psychotic neighbor! I know you can grt bad neighbors anywhere, but our neighborhood has statistics against them. We have a higher rate of police calls for domestic disturbance/violence and and animal control than any other neighborhood in our area. Why? Because our neighborhood is the cheapest in our area and is filled with a bunch of young newlyweds. Some of these kids are literally teens that married right out of high school. I have no issues with mature teens living around me, but a lot of these kids are bringing their high school drama and immaturity with them. In fact, not neighbors who caused issues for me were teenagers. I’m just really tired of it and am ready to move somewhere with a higher rate of mature adults living in the neighborhood.

4) Laundry/housing company

We don’t have laundry hookups in our houses, so we use communal laundromats in our neighborhood and it sucks. Not only are a lot of the other tenants very inconsiderate with their laundry, but the housing company in charge of my neighborhood is absolutely horrible at keeping up with fixing our laundry machines. So you have people leaving their loads running in the laundry room for hours at a time, but none of the other dryers work, so you’re pretty much screwed. Some people will straight up take your load out and toss it on a counter if you leave your clothes in the laundry room too long, because it’s ridiculous to have to leave your clothes sitting wet in the washer as you wait hours and hours for a dryer to be freed up so you can dry your clothes. And it’s not only the laundry rooms that housing sucks at maintaining. A lot of apartments also have issues with vermin, pests, and black mold. The maintenance people will come look at a spot of mold and with seriously tell you it’s just dirt or mildew, then spray/scrub it with bleach amd leave. It’s absolutely horrible, and the worst part is they are guaranteed rent each month because it’s a military neighborhood, so rent just goes straight from the government right into housing’s pocket. We have no opportunity to deny them rent if we are being mistreated.

5) I’m too fat for stairs

This is kind of a joke… But also not really. Pregnancy takes a toll on my hips, so stairs is really hard for me the more pregnant I get. Not only are they hard for me, they are dangerous for my mischievous toddlers. I just really do not like having to confine the kids to our teeny living room because of how clumsy they are on the staircase. The neighborhood I want to move to offers single story homes, so I am really hoping that is what we can get.

6) Air conditioning

Our current neighborhood does not allow any kind of air conditioning usage unless you have some kind of doctor’s note stating AC is medically necessary for you. I doubt I can obtain any such note, even while being pregnant. Our house gets surprisingly really hot during the long summer months, so moving to a neighborhood where AC is allowed would be so ideal for us. Heat stroke just does not look good on me, and it doesn’t look good on my babies either.

So yeah, there you have it. Pretty much all my reasons in a nutshell. I think they’re pretty good reasons! Let me know what you guys think.

FINALLY. I was able to successfully contact Instagram and verify that my account was run by a real person not trying to make scams. I had to send a picture of myself holding a written code and other information. I also had to send a whole bunch of screenshots of my account to verify I own the blog. It was kind of funny, but also kind of annoying. Whatever. I’m just glad it’s finally up and I can use it! I’m really looking forward to building up my insta in addition to my blog. I’m also really excited to see where all of this takes me! I have a feeling Instagram will be the most successful in attracting traffic. How amazing is it that we live in a time when social media can be such a lucrative tool for entrepreneurship! I really am so grateful to have such an opportunity to cultivate my creativity from the comfort of my own home. This is so important to me as a stay at home mom living in a time when daycare is so expensive, any money I could make from a typical out of the home job would almost completely go towards covering the cost of daycare. Not only would I not be really making any money to go towards our family, but I would miss out on raising my own children. The thought of someone else (either daycare workers, babysitter, or even a relative) spending more time with my children than me… Well, it just makes me really sad. So anything I can find to do from home makes me so happy. If I could only manage my time better, I could get into even more lucrative at home projects. Like crafting, for example. I keep telling myself I will craft and put my creations for sale on Etsy, but it is honestly so hard to find the time to craft! And don’t even get me started on my energy level. That is often nonexistent. But if I want to make money, I need to buckle down and make it work. Money doesn’t make itself! And the amount of money I make will depend on how much work I am willing to put into my projects. So bring on the challenges!

Even if I don’t make much money from these adventures, I’m still grateful to have a creative outlet where I can vent and share my struggles. Life can really start to feel cloistered as a stay at home mom. Being introverted doesn’t help, but it is what it is. The few friends I do have a good ones, so I’m fortunate in that regard. Life is going to get a lot more lonely in the next couple of months, so I’m hoping that focusing on trying to move will keep me busy. There will be a lot of planning that needs to go into moving, not to mention I need to start making some serious moolah before moving can even happen. Fingers crossed I can make this happen!

Whew, sorry for the radio silence. We have been super busy lately and crazy stuff has happened. We took the kids to disneyland early this week and holy moly that was exhausting. It took a few days just to recover from that one day of fun. Note to self: put extra padding in shoes if going on some kind of all day excursion with toddlers (especially while pregnant). Because let me tell you… My back felt broken by the end of the day and I could barely feel my feet anymore. Standing in long lines holding a squirming toddler (my daughter) while they’re trying to fight you to get down and run away… That crap will wear you down real fast while pregnant. But despite all the pain and exhaustion, we still had so much fun! Our wallets sure didn’t appreciate the adventure but the kids had an absolute blast. It was a little bit of a bummer that my husband and I couldn’t go on some of the crazier rides since neither child is over 40 inches tall yet and there’s no fun in waiting in line over a half hour to go on a ride by yourself, but I was pleasantly surprised how many rides were stubby toddler friendly. The kids were basically unconscious on the drive home because of how much fun we had that day. And I am really happy with how many steps I logged from walking around so much! I definitely say the day was an overall complete success.

Now for the crazy stuff… Guess who figured out how to unlock the backdoor and open the patio gate all in one day? That’s right, my lovely 2.5 year old son. I left them zoned out on the tv downstairs so I could run upstairs and rummage through our clean clothes to find some good clean pants. Well, my son had other plans. He let himself, his sister, and both dogs out of the house to run away into the neighborhood. I felt like I was having a heart attack when I came downstairs to an empty living room. Luckily a nieghbor saw them before they made it very far so I was able to get everyone back in one piece. We put a heavy duty waterproof chain and lock on the patio gate later that day. I’ve tested him a few times since and sure enough, the second he thinks I’m distracted, he silently slides the backdoor open and tries to make another break for it. Of course he can’t because of the new lock, but he sure still tries! After all that, the best part is one of the pairs of “pants” I grabbed actually was a shirt. All that pain of going through heart attack after heart attack, and I didn’t even grab the right clothes. I now have plans in the works to put high locks of some kind on all of our doors, both regular and screen doors. Because I really don’t want to have to find out the hard way that he’s learned a new trick.

The escape hasn’t been the only trouble this past week. This kid has also learned he can open his bedroom door despite my having the knob purposefully pinned so it’s hard to turn and open. So I need to be careful to wake up about the same time as him so he doesn’t try to bust out of the baby gate and wreak havoc on the house while I’m sleeping. I have tried knob covers in the past and he can easily disassemble those in minutes. How??? I have no freaking clue. Those things are hard for me to get off! But somehow he’s a baby proof destroying pro. Send up a prayer or good thought for me or something because I swear this child is going to be the death of me. I will be surprised if I have any dark hair left by the time one 30. I guarantee it’ll all be white by then!

My, my. How fitting is it that my mommy blog has gone untouched for so long? Can you tell I have been busy? Two kids and over one year later, now we are finally expecting our third baby! We’ve also had many furry additions to our family. It’s been a crazy year and a half. I feel like the woman who started this blog was a completely different person from who I am now. Mistakes were made, lessons were learned, backs were stabbed, etc. It’s been an adventure, for sure. But I wouldn’t change a thing about it… JUST KIDDING. There’s that one brat I wish I never met. Then there’s that group I wish I never joined. And those people I should never have tried to get to know. My crazy kids and stubborn husband are the only reason I have been able to stay grounded throughout this whole mess! And do you want to know my biggest reason for coming back to the blogging scene? MONEY. Lmao it’s stupid, but I want so desperately to move out of my current neighborhood. I have had back to back psychopath neighbors (maybe a topic for a future blog post?) because this neighborhood is mostly inhabited by married teenagers who make serial bad decisions. It’s almost cute how they think they’re so mature and ready for the real world. Almost. The kind of crap I’ve seen since living here is almost like something you’d expect to see in the movies. Completely dramatic and ridiculous. The neighborhood I live in has the highest rate of domestic disturbance calls than any of the other many neighborhoods in our area. It’s like living with a bunch of high schoolers, except these kids have way more freedom. Aka more ways to torture you. And I have to live around them 24/7!

The bad neighbors are only part of the problem, though. We have also completely outgrown our teeny tiny house. I have actually hated this house for a while now. It is puny and nearly unusable because of how many beings live here. Everything is just squished into random places and nothing looks cute. All of our furniture takes up so much room that every room feels extremely crowded. And because our neighborhood is considered the crappiest in the area, our housing company severely neglects the houses and amenities. The only reason we have stayed this long is because this neighborhood is the cheapest in our area and we would take a HUGE budget cut if we moved elsewhere, which would me a huge setback in paying off the debt we’ve stupidly accrued. Hence why I’m kicking this blog back into gear. My husband said that if I can make the amount of money we would lose from moving to a better neighborhood, he’d be 100% on board with moving. So here I am! Brainstorming on how to make money from home without selling my soul to a MLM company. An away from home job is pretty much out of the question. Not only am I extremely attached to my kids, but childcare out here costs an arm and a leg. Not to mention there are so many horror stories of bad babysitters in our area. It’s just less stressful for me to find a job that I can do from home. Pregnancy insomnia has been kicking my ass lately, so I might as well make use of myself while lying in bed waiting to fall asleep. I’m planning on trying to post at least 5 days a week at first so I can quickly build my blog up, then maybe shaving a day off here and there later on if 5 days a week is too overwhelming.

And guys… I already have a new neighborhood in mind! The houses are SO much nicer than the shoebox in which I’m currently living. Just thinking about moving to those houses gives me butterflies. I am so excited to see if all of this works out. And the best part, my stalker won’t know where I live! It’ll be great! Fingers crossed this works out for my family and I.

I am alway more than willing to admit that motherhood is pretty rough. You’re on call 24/7, which is enough to drive any human being insane. You’re constantly covered in a grody concoction of puke and pee and poop and drool and sweat. You never get a moment to yourself, and your moments of peace (such as when the babies are both miraculously sleeping at the same time) are usually spent trying to get as many chores done as you can before one of the babies is back up and trying to throw themselves off the furniture. Life as a mom can be difficult, and for some mom’s it’s harder than others. 

Take the post partum depression mom, for example. Life as a mom is hard enough without having to feel abysmally bleak about everything. Motherhood combined with a depression that feels like it’s swallowing you whole is complete hell. Or what about mom with a colicky baby? That’s always fun, to have a baby who is screaming in pain no matter what you do. Bedtime seems to always be the worst because not only is mom flustered about not being able to help her baby, she’s also running on pretty much no energy and is barely holding it together enough to keep trying to console her baby. 

The scariest part about these examples is they are not terribly uncommon. Many mom’s have experienced one or the other. If you have many mom friends, chances are at least one has experienced at least one of these situations. But these examples are a bit on the  extreme end of the spectrum. There are other smaller struggles that every mom has experienced at one point or another. One struggle every mom knows too well is sleeplessness. 

Sleeplessness is one of those things every mom goes through whether it be just for a week or for the entire first year of their child’s life. The earlier your kid starts sleeping through the night, the luckier you are. Now, my two babies can certainly drive me up the wall. My one year old especially knows exactly what buttons to press that makes mommy act funny (funny, in this case, meaning angry). But one thing I will forever be grateful for is the fact that my kids have always been awesome when it comes to sleeping. I never even really had to train then to sleep through the night. Once they each hit about 2 months old, they started sleeping through the night with me. It’s something I have always appreciated so much because I have heard other moms complain about their kids not sleeping through the night for the first several months of their life, and I could just not imagine having to live like that. Especially when it comes to moms who don’t cosleep or breastfeed. You mean you don’t just roll over and stick a boob in your baby’s mouth before they have a chance to get really upset? How do you still live?! 

Don’t get me wrong, I have struggled a little with my one year old not being able to sleep without holding my hand as he falls asleep… But I would rather that than getting only three or four hours of sleep at a time every single night. That would just kill me  My kids may struggle with certain things, but seeping though the night  not one of those things and I can’t even express how happy I am that they allow me to be the best, well rested mommy I can be. Props to all you moms out there who deal with sleepless babies, my hat’s off to you.