Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

My win this week is getting a new planner set up and ready to go. It’s not a traditional “weekly planner” kind of setup, although I continue to drool over the Day Designer and Simplified Planner and a few of the other planners out there. No, the planner I’m using this year is a blank dot-grid book organized in the style of a Bullet Journal.

Never heard of it? I hadn’t either, until last year. I can’t even remember where I heard about it! I knew it would be perfect for me; I’d done a less-organized version of it for several years already, and it was exciting to see improvements to a method that’s been working for me already.  The gist of Bullet Journaling is that you use a blank book and keep track of your entire life in it. You number the pages, and as you add new things to your book, you record them in the table of contents.  It sounds kind of hokey and simple, but I love it!

Here are a few pictures of my setup…

It was a lot of setup, but now that it’s done I can use it weekly to keep track of our schedules and events (I didn’t include a picture of the first weekly schedule, but it’s basically a two-page spread that has a section for each day of the next week or so), to keep track of some habits I’m wanting to build, to keep track of meals and shopping lists and blood pressure readings, and to just clear my brain of all the random to-dos I hold in there (and often forget…).  If it intrigues you at all, you can learn more about bullet journaling here, and I was inspired by the design and  headings this blogger created.

How do you keep track of your day-to-day life? And what was your win this week, big or little?  I’d love to hear about your win and cheer you on in the comments!

Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

 

 

I cut my teeth on knitting with my grandmother and little cotton dishcloths, but I really learned to knit many years later on hats.  Baby hats, more precisely.  I love baby hats. They knit up so quickly and can really be quite simple while still looking impressive but cozy.

I didn’t make any for Gabe…not sure why, really.  I suppose I thought they were too tricky? Or I thought I – with no kids and my part time job – didn’t have enough time? (Big fat HA!) I did knit him a simple, small blanket, but that was all he got.  Anyway, by the time Isla came around, I’d found this hilariously awesome and sweet book of baby hats and accessories that were just easy enough for me to complete while still stretching my skills just a little bit with each new hat.  The knitting was also good for my super crazy levels of anxiety, and I hammered out a blanket, two cocoons, and a handful of little hats.

When I was pregnant with Jude, I didn’t want him to be left out, so he got his own blanket and a few hats, too, albeit by then I really didn’t have much time for knitting.  I did knit his coming home outfit, though, and I assuaged any guilt with the fact that I made his very first outfit – something that special must make up for a lack of hats, right?

My littles aren’t so little anymore, and the book of patterns with which I fell in love doesn’t size up quite this high, so I’ve had to move on to greener (i.e. larger) pastures.  Enter Monster Knits for Little Monsters, a book I found in July while we were on our trip and looked like so much fun! I had grand plans for which hats my little people would wear this winter – a bluebird for Isla and an owl for Jude. But Isla had different ideas, so we settled on a robot for her (which she asked about almost every day for a week once we got home) and a fox for Jude.

I have been working on that dang robot for a month now!  I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve gotten halfway done only to screw up an important section and have no way to work my way backwards, so I’ve just pulled the whole thing out and started over.  I threw my knitting needles at the tv one night.  Perhaps not my best coping strategy.

BUT.  This week, I finished it!  Squee!  I mean, the basic hat portion.  Let’s not get carried away – not the whole thing.

Yes, she did in fact wear it all day – even to bed, even while cooking…

Now I’m working on the accessories you attach to the hat to make it look like a robot, which I’ve pulled out and restarted a surprising number of times given that they’re not the least bit difficult.  Also, quite honestly, the whole thing looks TERRIBLE.  My gauge was all wonky and I can see where I made random errors and I’m going to have to embroider and sew in these next stages.  Yuck.    But the end is in sight, and it feels good to be near to finishing a project that will make my little girl’s eyes light up.

Oh, and we’re potty-training.  I’m calling that a win because I’m actually doing it.  Not that we’ve completed it or anything – just that I finally found the well of inner strength needed to start.  Not to mention I wind up paying as much in bribes as I do for several months of diapers…

I think I’m doing this wrong…

I hate potty-training.  Did I mention that?

So…two wins this week.  Woot!

What was your win this week, big or little?  I’d love to hear about your win and cheer you on in the comments!

Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

How is it the end of July and this is the first win I’ve posted for the summer?  Yikes!

We got home from a 17-day road trip last Monday, which, in and of itself, was epic.  I think we were in the car for like 40 hours?  But that’s not my win. My win is that I unpacked.  Like for real did all the laundry, put away the leftover snacks, cleaned out the backpacks and boxes of toys.  Even better, I got the house (which I’d left in a sorry state) back into a reasonable living condition.

I can’t claim this as a win without also claiming the fact that I had a little help.  My mom had entered an auction earlier this year for 2 hours with a mother’s helper, and she kindly donated it to me.  I cashed in this week, and that help is really what made it all possible.  I have no doubt that I’d still be unpacking and throwing away Cheerio bits if it weren’t for that free afternoon!

Granted, if you came to my house now, you’d never know it was clean just a few short days ago…Perhaps that’ll be a win for this week.  Or not.

 

What was your win this week, big or little?  I’d love to hear about your win and cheer you on in the comments!

Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

 

We had a very regular week this week, but it really dragged for me.  I got to the end of the week and couldn’t think of anything I felt proud of – a sure sign I needed to regroup and refocus.  It seemed somewhat melodramatic to claim this week’s win as being the fact that everybody survived or that I only let one load of laundry mildew… So I thought long and hard and came up with this:

I recently started taking the two little kids to a weekly story time at Barnes & Noble.  Anyone who brings a list with 20 books they’ve read since the last story time gets to pick a little treat out of a treasure chest.  The fact that the treats are recycled Happy Meal toys is of no consequence to my children – they love getting to pick something.  So I feel a lot of pressure to make sure I’ve read 20 books to each of them.

This is a marked change from Gabe.  When Gabe was little, we easily read 10 books to him every day, at a minimum.  Probably more like 15.  Isla and Jude, however, aren’t that lucky!  Let’s not talk about my guilt over that. Every week since we’ve started going, I’ve had to work hard to get to 20.  Usually, it has ended up with me picking 6 or 8 of their shortest books to read just before we rush out the door to the event.  Enter Goodnight Moon and Truck Duck…Nothing like the last minute!

This week, I only had to catch up with 2.  Thursday morning was practically leisurely!  We’d read 18 books throughout the course of the week, AND had remembered to keep track.  And now, my children are two McDonald’s toys richer.  Boom.

What was your win this week, big or little?  I’d love to hear about your win and cheer you on in the comments!

Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

I feel like our house is falling down around us.  It’s not, but there are a lot of areas of chaos that have been driving me crazy!  It seems like every space is in transition, and before we can finish anything, we have to do this over here and that over there.  Lots of rabbit trails.  This weekend, we knocked over the first few dominos – we painted parts of two rooms, switched out some furniture, started installing some shelving, worked on a few half-completed projects.

I didn’t get everything done.  Actually, I didn’t fully complete anything, a fact which is sure to drive me insane!  But each thing needed starting so we could get to the next part of the problem.  While I’m obsessing over the eighty-seven things still to do, I try to remind myself that sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better.

Gosh – that doesn’t sound like a win.  But it really was!  Little steps toward the bigger destination.

What was your win this week, big or little?  I’d love to hear about your win and cheer you on in the comments!

Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

It’s the little things, right?  For me, last week I took a shower while no other adults were at home but my two littles were awake.  Until now, this has been basically not possible–at least without some of us screaming and crying or getting hurt or getting into things like the markers and the trash.  Tahd was gone last week, though, so it was either find a way or skip, and I’m here to say I FOUND A WAY.  Praise Jesus, thank you, amen.

This development opens up such a wealth of self-care opportunities on the horizon.  Like maybe going to the bathroom alone!  And getting dressed without being stared at!  Woot!  But for now, I’ll take the shower thing, especially since Tahd’s travel is hectic for a while and I was legitimately not sure how I was going to work out the issue of staying clean.

What was your win this week, big or little? Did you at least get to shower?  😉 I’d love to hear about your win and cheer you on in the comments!

Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments!

I feel like I’m always saying this, but this week’s win was just surviving.  We were on a road trip which included 3 children, 1,400 miles, not enough clothes packed (a first for me – usually we have too much), 2 small ice storms, 1 major snowstorm (10″), 1 emergency chiropractor appointment, 1 MASSIVE 2-hour traffic jam covering 15 miles, 1 husband who worked every day, and 1 giant stuffed whoopie pie.  I’ve never been so happy to be home in all my life! 😉

We used to travel a lot with Gabe before we had the others, and although I’m glad we took advantage of this opportunity, three kids is an exponential amount of work!  Here are a few of my instagram captures from the week:

What was your win this week, big or little? I hope you got to have a little fun! I’d love to hear about it and cheer you on in the comments!

Whoops – meant to post this last night, and here it is Monday already! I think I got carried away in the Oscar pretties! Ah, well…

Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments!

Tahd was traveling last week, so I wound up a bit overwhelmed than normal. But we pushed through, and my win for this week was successfully wrangling the kids to and from Chicago twice this week, with a few stops along the way and no stroller. On one occasion, I did, in fact, let Jude crawl through a mall, and on another occasion I did, in fact, carry him kicking and screaming on our errands. We were a spectacle everywhere we went! But we went and got our jobs done and lived to tell about it. I only wish all the wrangling added up to super cut arms. I think that might involve eating less chocolate, though…

What was your win this week, big or little? I hope your week wasn’t as rocky as mine! I’d love to hear about it and cheer you on in the comments!

Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments!

My area of the midwest has been under a blizzard warning all day, a surprise to me since I wasn’t even expecting a snowstorm until I overheard them talking about a little snow on tv Saturday morning.  Overall, I give a huge “Thumbs Down” to winter and snow, but if it has to be snowy, at least the storms can make it worth my while with some adventure, right?

It’s not going to end up being that much snow.  We had a blizzard 4 years ago (today, actually) and got around 30 inches, and that definitely felt like a blizzard.  Our cars were snowed in for days!  But even with less snow, the blowing is crazy and it just keeps drifting everywhere!

Tahd has to get out super early for work tomorrow, though, so we wanted to stay in front of the removal so he didn’t have to stay up all night clearing us out.  So we spent the afternoon and evening doing what we could to stay ahead of it.  Looking out my front door now, I’m not sure how much our efforts mattered since the sidewalk is blown over again, but I must have burned a lot of Calories shoveling and ramming the snow blower through stubborn drifts, right?

My win came this afternoon when I took all the children outside to play in it.  Gabe does fine in the snow, and Isla loves it, although she hasn’t played in it much.  I wasn’t sure what to do about Jude, so I bundled us both up, put him in the Ergo and tucked us into one of Tahd’s oversized coats.

We stayed out like that for 30 or 40 minutes, I think, and everyone seemed to have a good time – even me! 🙂

I did have to chuckle when, after my mom and I traded duties (so she watched the kids while I cleared snow), I found myself thinking that I was actually enjoying the snowblowing since it gave me a few minutes to myself.

Now, it’s off to bed so I can get up with Tahd in just a few hours!

What was your win this week, big or little? I’d love to hear about it and cheer you on in the comments!

Sometimes the positive aspects of motherhood get swept away in the deluge of busyness, discipline, the day-to-day grind, and the bigger burdens that weigh us down.  Focusing on the little wins can be a great way to re-center and come back to what matters most.  So that’s what today is – a celebration of motherhood victories, whether they be big or small.  I’d love to hear yours in the comments!

My win this week was going out on Saturday evening to celebrate Tahd’s and my 15th anniversary.  15 years – phew!  I feel really impressed at that number!  🙂

I know that celebrating an anniversary might seem like a win for our marriage rather than a motherhood win, but I believe my kids only benefit when we invest in our marriage.  It would have been much easier to skip going out together and just hang out at home.  And there’s definitely nothing wrong with hanging out at home – it’s just that it’s what we do all the time, and it usually turns into a parallel evening – one in which we spend our time beside each other but not with each other.

Someday, we’ll be back in a stage of life where there’s time and money for regular date nights, but for now, they’re not super frequent.  I’m glad we took advantage of this special occasion to make the effort.

What was your win this week, big or little? I’d love to hear about it and cheer you on in the comments!