Thriving Mom

It's been a lazy day for me and the kids. The weather is lovely; the high is only 94 (sure beats the 106 degree weather we have been having). This morning it was a super comfortable and breezy 86 degrees, so you better believe that I had the kiddos outside enjoying this lovely weather.

The toddlers were playing nicely. Something about the fresh air seems to help the forget that they hate each other. The baby was eating her favorite baby food puree, pears with raspberries. Yep, it was a lovely day.

I brought the kids in for lunch. They actually ate what I gave them. I know, right? I bet it had something to do with my giving them lemonade to drink instead of water. My middle child, he's 2 years old, decided to be an absolute angel. I changed him, laid him in bed, and told him "night night." He simply said, "OK, momma." And that was it. He went right to sleep.

I was on a roll. The kids had played nicely, everyone was fed, 1 child was already napping. Today was cake. Then it was time to put my oldest down for a nap, she'll be 4 next month. I told her it was nap time. She told me "nope. it's playtime." I reminded her that we have lunch then nap. She reminded me that she didn't want to nap. *sigh*

I was in the middle of our nap time struggle when I smelled it...the distinctive smell of baby poop. My 7 month old was happily squealing and crawling away as fast as possible. Was that some brown I just spotted on the back of her all pink outfit. Oh no. I picked her up and rushed to the changing station and that's when the warm, wet goo began to seep through her clothes and all over me. Ugh!

I opened up her romper to discover the horror. Gooey, squishy, mooshy poo was all over her. It shot out of the font and back of her diaper. For 5 seconds, while holding her wiggly feet firmly in place, I gazed in awe of the terrible mess. "Think, think, think," I say to myself as I try to figure out the best way to clean up this disaster. The neck of her romper is too small to take off without pulling over her head. OK, time to crinkle it up like a pair of panty hose and quickly lift it over her head. Yes, this would work. It had to. My oldest jumped on the bed, throwing me off my game, and grabbed the baby's attention, causing her to quickly roll over and crawl 2 steps before I managed to grab her again. Ugh. I felt the gritty grain of pureed pears poop under my fingernails! Crap, crap, crap...literally!

Baby wipes. I need baby wipes. I started pulling them out of the dispenser. OK, 6 wipes later she still wasn't completely clean and I still had baby poop under my fingernails. "Think, think, think." My oldest, "what's wrong mommy? You should calm down." Note to self, try and use a phrase besides "calm down" when toddler is having a tantrum, because it sounds quite obnoxious when it's said back to you.

I tried to distract my oldest, who's now really getting in the way, by asking her to bring me a receiving blanket. My plan was to wrap the baby in the blanket so that I could transport her to the bath tub without getting poop all over me and the house. She came back with a tiny burp cloth. If this were a sitcom, this would be where they'd insert the canned laughter. I send her back for another blanket, this time telling her to get one big enough to wrap her baby doll in. Score! This time she brought back a receiving blanket.

I wrapped the baby up, who was pleased as punch by the entire fiasco, and rushed her to the bathroom for a much needed bath.

Whoever first coined the phrase poop (replace with the non family friendly synonym here) happens must have been a mom. Life at home with the kiddos can be joyful, peaceful, and loving one minute and then boy oh boy, poop happens!

Are you a stay at home mom or a working mom that is hoping to make money blogging so you can keep your kids out of daycare? Many moms are doing it, making money blogging that is. Making money online has grown from a gimmick to a reality for many moms just like you. I've even jumped on the blogging for money band wagon.

If you want to make a living blogging, here are the first steps you must take:

1. Get a free Google account and then start up an account with Blogger. You can have a free blog, just like the one here, and use the Blogger platform to create it and have Blogger host it for free. This is a great place to start. After you get your feet wet in the blogging world and start making some money, you can buy your own domain name.
2. Choose a niche. Writing about anything that crosses your mind is great for a personal blog, but if you want to make money blogging you need a niche and the more specific the better. What is so great about Blogger is you can easily (through the "monetize" tab) place items for sell from Amazon directly on your blog. If a visitor clicks on one of your Amazon links and then makes a purchase you get commission for the transaction. Pretty neat, huh?
3. Get rid of that ugly blog. You need to get a Blogger template to jazz your blog up. There are a lot of great things to say about Blogger, but they're templates look generic and unprofessional. You can make your blog more eye catching with any number of free templates. Here are some of my favorite sites to go to for free Blogger templates:
1. Sharnee at Yummy Lolly makes some very unique templates. Most of her templates are very feminine. If you're shopping for a free girly Blogger template, then Sharnee has got you covered.
2. Gisele Jaquenod is known around the web for her Birdie template designs. Her style is super unique. Nothing else looks like her Blogger templates. She offers several free Blogger templates on her site.
3. Blogger Styles is your one stop site for a huge variety of free Blogger templates. Yummy Lolly and Gisele Jaquenod offer great templates for feminine style blogs, but Blogger Styles has a ton of different style blog templates, many of them look very professional.
4. If you want to keep one of Blogger's basic templates but just want to change the background, then you need to check out The Cutest Little Blog on the Block. They offer a wide variety of free Blogger backgrounds for your blog. The benefit of changing the background over the whole template is that it makes it much easier to deal with the page elements on your blog and you never have to touch your blogs HTML code.
4. Now that you have a blog host, niche, and snazzy new template, it's time to add some content. This is what is going to get visitors to your site.
5. After you have about two weeks worth of content on your site, it's time to join an advertising program. The main ones are AdSense, AdBrite, or Kontera. Check out those three sites, choose one, and join. After you put their code on your site, your only job will be to keep adding great content to your site and keep marketing so you continue to get traffic.

If your blog grows, gains visitors, and becomes successful, you can look into adding affiliate sales to your blog. The main companies I trust for great affiliate programs are: Share a Sale, Link Share, and Commission Junction.

I wish you a ton of blogging success. Happy earning.

Potty training my oldest child has been no small task, that's for sure.

The switch from diapers to potty seemed easy with her at first. She was so interested in the potty at 18 months old. We bought the Elmo Potty Time DVD (which I highly recommend by the way), the Dora potty training book (complete with a button that makes a flushing sound), and her own little potty. We were on a roll. The Elmo DVD had her obsessed with the potty. Great! I set her little potty in the living room. I had her sit on it for practice about every two hours.

One day I was busy talking to my husband and my adorable 18 month old shouted "I peepee." We giggled, "Oh, how cute," we thought. "She thinks she peepeed in the potty." Then we looked up, saw our daughter bottomless and peepee in the potty. Whoa, she was potty training herself! Two weeks later she started going poopoo in the potty. This is a piece of cake, right? WRONG!

You see, I was also pregnant with her little brother. In fact, I was in my third trimester. We were on a roll with the potty until two months later when I delivered her little brother. Then she completely regressed. She went all the way back to diapers. I shrugged it off. Sure, it was a little frustrating, but she wasn't even two years old yet. So, I had two in diapers.

I talked to her pediatrician about our potty training troubles at her two year old well baby check up. He didn't seem concerned at all. He simply told me no kid goes off to Kindergarten wearing diapers. He advised me to be patient with her and let her use the potty when she wanted to. He said toddlers will pretty much potty train themselves if you let them.

When she was two and a half, she started to show an interest in the potty again. We started watching the "Elmo's Potty Time" DVD again. She was almost using the potty regularly and then we found out I was pregnant again. I always get terrible morning sickness during the first few months of my pregnancies, but this third pregnancy was a real doozy. I was so sick. I spent most mornings curled up in the fetal position on the couch while my two toddlers climbed all over me. Forget potty training. I just wasn't up for the challenge at that point.

By the time the morning sickness had passed, my daughter was no longer interested in the potty. She was very resistant to anything to do with the potty. I was very frustrated. I did NOT want three in diapers at one time and I was getting very close to delivering my third child. One day I just decided I was done with diapering my toddler who had just turned three years old. I was stubborn. I wouldn't let her use her pull ups as diapers any more. I sat her on the potty all day though she protested with kicks and screams. It was an awful day. She peed on the couch, the floor, her bed...you get the idea.

Then I remembered what her pediatrician said. I decided to take a big step back and let her use the potty when she wanted to. She suddenly started going peepee in the potty with no help at all just weeks before I had her baby sister. By the time my third baby was three months old, my oldest was going peepee in the potty all by herself every single time. She only had accidents if she was really busy playing. She still wasn't going poopoo in the potty though.

She will be starting pre-K this August, so around May I was starting to panic that she would not be going poopoo in the potty before school started. I talked to her about putting her poopoo in the potty every day. I only gave her panties to wear during the day. Since she still wet in her sleep she was getting pull ups for bedtime. She started holding her poop all day and then would let it go at bedtime when she got her pull up. A few times during the day she would even get her own pull up, put it on, then poop. I was so frustrated. She was getting close to her 4th birthday.

I decided to ignore what the pediatrician said and take it upon myself to force her to poop in the potty. When she started to act like she needed to poop, I took off her pants and set her on the potty. She would cry, scream, and struggle to get off the potty. It was useless. She would just hold it in until she got a pull up.

I felt like I was being mean about trying to get her to poopoo potty. I didn't want to shame her into using the potty. So, again I decided to take a step back and listen to what my pediatrician had said. Just one week later my daughter went to use the potty. I thought nothing of it. I assumed she was going peepee. I was changing the baby's diaper at the time. Then I heard my daughter say "mommy I poopooed in the potty." 'Yeah right," I muttered to myself. I went to check and to my amazement she had pooped in the potty!

That was about two weeks ago. Since then she has only pooped twice in her bedtime pull up. She has been pooping in the potty almost every day. Yay! Words cannot express my relief that she has potty trained herself before she starts pre-K.

So, in hindsight, my mommy advice about potty training is to simply be patient. My daughter's pediatrician said that toddlers only have control over two things in their little world:  what goes into their bodies and what comes out. For this reason, it's very important not to turn meal time or potty time into a struggle. Her pediatrician told me that if I just gave her time she would start to use the potty all on her own. Turns out he knew what he was talking about after all.

The first thing to understand about breastfeeding is why it's an option for us in the first place. All mammals produce milk for their young. Humans are no exception to this rule. The American Academy of Pediatric states, "Human milk is species-specific, and all substitute feeding preparations differ markedly from it, making human milk uniquely superior for infant feeding.” The AAP recommends all mothers breastfeed for a minimum of a year.

Image: Tom Clare / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Yesterday on CafeMom a working mom asked SAHMs what their every day schedule looked like. I started to type in an answer, then I saw that it was ridiculously long and I was only up to 10:00am and to make matters worse my toddlers began fighting over a block (even though there was an entire pile of blocks behind them) and the baby started crying because she needed changing.

The whole experience, even though I didn't get the chance to answer the question, made me realize my days are extremely hectic and monotonous all rolled into one. My days are far busier now than they ever were when I was working. I don't get sick days or weekends off from being a mom and now with a breastfeeding infant, I don't even get nights off.

My days consist of changing babies (I have 2 in diapers), helping my 3 year old use the potty, feeding meals and snacks to 3 little ones who have bottomless pits for stomachs, laundry (it never ends), cleaning when I can, disciplining (will my toddlers ever get along), kissing booboos, teaching shapes, numbers, colors, and letters, and sneaking in playtime here and there.

In hind site, it was probably for the best that my day was too busy to allow time to answer that lady's question. I think her entire purpose for asking the question was to prove that SAHMs are lazy, have a lot of free time, and should be contributing to society by joining the workforce instead of raising their children. I'm far too busy being a mom to my kids for such nonsense.

I wish I were one of those moms I see, you know the ones, that are dressed perfectly with their hair and make up done. They have a toddler, perfectly behaved, perched on their hip and a content baby napping in a stroller. They have a structured routine that their little ones magically agree to and they get a full night's sleep every night. I, in contrast, have circles under my eyes from the sleepless nights I spend with the baby. My hair is carelessly tossed into a pony tail. My busy days spent with babies and toddlers have caused me to completely forget how to apply make up. I'm having to hold my baby because she screams when I don't and my two toddlers are fighting with each other between my legs. You see, I fall short of the "perfect mom" title too.

The difference between the "perfect mom" and moms like myself, besides the fact that she looks like she stepped off of a runway and I am all disheveled, is our attitudes. Sure she has a perfect smile and looks like she's got her act together, but she secretly resents motherhood and is constantly looking for her "me" time. She is just "surviving" motherhood until her kids are all in school. I, on the other hand, put my kids first and live in the present with them, savoring each precious moment.

Our kids do not care if the house is neat and orderly. They do not care if we are dressed in name brand clothes; heck, they don't even care if we match or not. They do not care if we follow the latest pop psychology book on parenting or sleep training. They do not care whether society thinks they shouldn't use a pacifier past the age of 6 months or a bottle should be promptly removed from their hands on their 1st birthday. They don't care if we keep up the "appearance" of being a perfect mom.

So many of us moms put unrealistic expectations on ourselves about being a "perfect mom." So many of us that are doing a good job of keeping our kids safe, well cared for, and loved are questioning whether or not we are doing a good enough job. We fear that we are damaging our kids for life, failing at the task of helping them reach their full potential.

The truth is, if you are feeling less than adequate as a mom then that is probably a healthy sign that you're doing a good job. The mothers that are failing at the task of being "mom" are the ones that don't care enough to question their mothering skills. They aren't emotional invested enough in their families to ever feel guilty. Being the best mother you can be is all in your attitude. I have a thriving mom attitude instead of a surviving mom attitude and that makes all of the difference in the world.

I took several months off from working on my site because I was in my third trimester while also caring for our rambunctious toddlers. I had the baby in December and spent six weeks recovering from the c-section. Now two months after the delivery, I'm just now beginning to get my bearings as a mom of three.

Staying home all day with a three and a half year old, twenty-two month old, and a newborn has proven quite the challenge. As if this wouldn't be enough to curl the hair of most experienced moms, just when I recovered from the c-section the entire family (me, hubby, and all 3 kids) got sick. I now understand those "Calgon, take me away" ads that used to air when I was a kid.

I have plenty of ideas for this site and lots of information that I plan to add. Needless to say, with three little ones under the age of four, it will be slow going for a while. But Thriving Mom is something that I've wanted to do for a couple of years now. I will be adding great mommy advice, news, and resources as time allows.