Immense and crazy pressure we moms have to face these days: plan for and manage the home, take care of and raise our babies sparkling well, be the mighty, graceful wife, stand unwavering on the pedestal of our career, and at the end of the very, very long list, take care of ourselves (that is if we remember), oh and deny we’re overthinking.
See, we’ve mastered the art of multitasking, and it's just right to advocate for ourselves and fellow moms.
Here are a couple of really normal things we actually do. But, before we get you high by the sound of it, below isn’t a list for parents going solo- yes, it’s still things we do with our kiddo- other than sitting happily and sipping latte (for 9 sweet, uninterrupted minutes) while the tot is glued to the floor with his trains, cleaning the kitchen counters, overcoming the hill-high laundry, or getting better at not stepping on Legos.
We read.
Did you know, research has shown that breathing and other mindfulness techniques manifest the same calming effect as with reading to a child? Awe-inspiring, right? That’s why one of our present parenting tips is to read. Read and read until you drop, until you can’t recall how many why’s you’ve answered, and how many ‘read again’s you’ve done.
Here are some titles we've kept, (ours are on the RESOURCES tab in this page.) Thanks to a quick trip to National Book Store, we've managed to bring these when we relocated to Bangkok.
My team and I love how these books highlight the joy (and the sacrifices, of course) in parenthood so our little ones get to understand with their beautiful, small mind what we do for them.
We play and do silly things, and imagine some more.
And when the day is over, and our little ones have succumbed to sleep, the present parent thinks.
We think of all the things we weren’t able to do, the things we regretfully said, the fails of the day, the 719th way of making a different kind of breakfast the next morning, errand list, what our child will be like in ten years, or how life was BC (before children), and the list goes on really.
We then finally decide that we do overthink.
And lastly, we look at the precious love in front of us, and how we ever deserved this role of being a mom, and we say thanks to the universe, as for me, my Jesus.
Amen.
So the next time you ever wonder what we moms do, they're nothing fancy really, and yes, we could use you taking us out in times our power runs dry!