Motherhood

I’m really enjoying coming up with these bucket lists every season (see my fall list…

Friday was my birthday, so this post is a few days late, but after a fun weekend celebrating with my boys, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on the previous year and my goals from the one to come. I’m not sure if I ever shared this, but I love birthdays! I love celebrating other people’s and my own. I just feel like it’s one day (or in our house, week) all about you and celebrating your life and where you’re at and going. It’s like my own personal New Year’s in many ways — a chance to reflect, reset, set goals. And since my birthday corresponds with spring, I always feel really hopeful and like it’s a time of rebirth in some ways.

I should really have put a question mark at the end of the blog post title, because honestly, I don’t know the answer. Lately, I’ve been exhausted and I have found it nearly impossible to muster the strength to play with James and run after and plan activities for him so he can get his energy out — and I feel terrible. Honestly, I’m so exhausted and there’s so much going on and it happens to coincide with this period where James is really active and really defiant, and I find myself losing my patience more than usual.

Before I had James, I loved rainy days. It was the perfect excuse to stay in my pajamas, binge watch Netflix and order takeout. But all that changed since becoming a mom. Every mom dreads a rainy day. Keeping kids entertained while cooped up inside all day is no easy feat and it’s hard to get a toddler’s energy out if they can’t run around outside. Little kids need the fresh air and without it, they become hyper little maniacs. Luckily, our nanny has found some amazing activities to keep our little maniac busy when it’s pouring and because it’s rained almost every weekend, I’ve discovered quite a few on my own. Here are my favorite rainy day activities for toddlers.

This March, Andrew and I will celebrate our five year wedding anniversary. I’m kind of…

Like many of you, when mid-January hit, we were ready for a vacation somewhere warm. Last year, after much debate, we decided to bring our then baby along on our vacation. I wrote a post about what I learned from our experience. Well, we just got back from another January trip to Florida, and I thought I’d share my vacation with toddler tips after surviving a beach vacation with our crazy two year old. While I felt more prepared and less panicked about traveling with James now that we’ve flown and vacationed with him a bunch, we still made some mistakes this time (and had some wins) and learned a lot.

When I set out to write a winter bucket list, I was basically tired of…

Right before we had James, we moved into a newly renovated apartment, and finished decorating it just in time for his arrival. I swore we wouldn’t be those parents whose entire apartment is taken over by toys. I swore we wouldn’t buy James that many toys. After all, they really only play with a few of them and prefer to just bang on pots and pans, I said. And then we had James, and two years later, our apartment is overflowing with toys.

So basically every day when I open the mail, I get to cry over the fact that another friend of mine is having a baby and I’m not. Something I used to love, opening Christmas cards has become something I dread.

I used to think it was silly to buy holiday pajamas…until I had kids. There’s…

So we’ve officially had our first snow of the season in New York and I…

It quickly skipped from fall to winter-like temps here, and I’m realizing that James’ wardrobe…

I love dressing James for the holidays, and while I”m excited to hopefully one day…

Every year we go skiing in Park City for Christmas, and it’s one of my…

I had originally planned to write a post about what I’m thankful for, and I…

One of the reasons we’ve been contemplating moving to California (besides all the reasons that…

I don’t know about you, but Thanksgiving really snuck up on me this year. I…

Start routine at 6:45pm each night. Give ten and five minute warnings before. Then take…

This weekend we skipped a bunch of Halloween parties I was really looking forward to…

Being slapped across the face by a screaming toddler is a true test of parenting.…