Mom break - Realistic self-care ideas for stay-at-home moms

If you’re whizzing through your days in a blur of exhaustion, you need a break. Here are 30 self-care ideas for stay-at-home moms to help put the joy back into motherhood... 

To the mom who lost her job

Losing a job you enjoyed is hard enough without the pressure of having to try to find a replacement as a mom during a pandemic.  

Whether you were retrenched (made redundant) or felt a push to resign, job loss is an emotional, financial and career hit that takes time and effort to recover from. And you are not alone...

From the ashes

Everyone has been talking about the Cape Town fires, but I've had little to say...until now. 

I thought I was okay until seeing the pictures of the charred, hollowed-out Mostert’s Mill. That's when I felt this emptiness.

Pre-COVID, I attended one of the mill’s open days with my family. I wanted my son to experience the awe I felt when visiting this working piece of history as a child. He loved it. When we talked about the fire, he kept saying that the mill couldn't be completely burnt down. Oh, the heartbreak.

But it is more than the destructive fire that saddens me. I think that, like many Capetonians, I have felt deeply affected since we've already lost so much in this pandemic.

Easter things - 4 Fun Easter activities for preschoolers

Happy Easter. Can you believe that it's our second 'covid' Easter? Last year my Easter efforts felt a bit thrown together, so I want to do a bit more this year. 

It's hit me how fast my child is growing up and how much of that growing up is happening in the midst of a stressful pandemic. It makes me feel sad thinking about all the things my child is missing. I'm also aiming to shed my serious self a bit and make my kid laugh more often. So this is what I'm doing in an attempt to make Easter more fun for my 4-year-old...

How do you find me-time as a mother?

Finding me-time as a mother is hard when you have kids at home, a ton of housework and no set lunch break. But, it's not impossible...

I was chatting to a stay-at-home mom friend the other day and she was saying how relentless her days were and how sometimes it felt a bit meaningless.

Did I gasp and instantly gab on about how meaningful I find motherhood?

Heck no, I just nodded because I get it.

Yes, motherhood is beautiful and it’s such important work, but it’s also hard, exhausting and frustrating. When you have little kids, there are days when you feel like an overlooked personal servant. The only way I can think to counter that is to carve out time for yourself and do something that feels meaningful to you.

So we started talking about how we find “me-time” as stay-at-home moms and what that even looks like, especially during a pandemic.

Finding a rhythm for 2021

I quit making resolutions probably about the same time I had a baby. Life becomes rather unpredictable when you have kids and I was done with setting lofty goals that made me feel inadequate rather than empowered.

Over the last few years, I sometimes come up with a word or a phrase for the year that relates to some areas of my life I would like to improve. Last year, my phrase for the year was ‘lighten up.’ It encompassed the ideals of living more joyfully by streamlining mundane tasks, spending more time investing in friendships, having more fun and yes, rather predictably, losing a little weight. And then COVID-19 hit us.  

It was hard to lighten up in 2020 and, since I still feel like I’m learning how to do this, I didn’t want to come up with a phrase or word for the year. But it came to me regardless – rhythm.

What can we learn from lockdown? 7 Lockdown life lessons

 Lockdown hasn’t been easy, and COVID-19 is scary, but being stuck at home has had some benefits...

This virus has freaked me out ever since I learnt about it, and we've been taking precautions – like avoiding crowded spaces - since February. So, when lockdown started on 26 March, I felt oddly relieved. Finally, the virus was been taken seriously. 

The relief didn’t last long though -  this pandemic is an emotional rollercoaster. Some of the lockdown regulations have sucked – like being deprived of wide, open natural spaces - and I worry about how social isolation and pandemic fears could all affect my child’s mental health. However, I'm grateful to be able to stay safe at home and for what lockdown has taught me...

How to survive lockdown in an apartment with a toddler/preschooler

Being cooped up at home for lockdown is hard, especially when you live in a small apartment with a toddler. Here’s what has been working for my family...

  

I live in a small garden apartment (54sqm/581sqft) with my husband and 3,5 year-old son.

We’re not a perfect family - we fight, our toddler throws loud tantrums, we’re anxious about the future and missing family and friends as much as anyone else. However, we’re finding ways to enjoy lockdown – as crazy as that seems.

Our lockdown process is unfolding, and we have off days, but if one thing we do helps you better navigate living in a small apartment with a family during the COVID-19 pandemic, then that’s awesome. So here goes...

How to work from home with a kid (COVID-19 Lockdown)

Goodbye childcare and hello trying to balance work with homeschooling and housework all while not being able to get out. This is going to be fun.

We’re only 2 days in and if you already feel like you’re losing your mind, here are some tips from someone who has worked from home for seven odd years, three of those with a kid – all in a small apartment.

Start your day early - If you can get up and get some work down before your kid or kids get up, it will be a big help. Even 30 minutes of uninterrupted time will make a huge difference.

Create a flexible work schedule - My husbands and sat down and tried to create a schedule because we have a 3-year-old and he doesn’t entertain himself for long. We realise that we have to be flexible around meetings.

Special time - Schedule in a special time of 10 to 20 minutes alone with each child in which they are allowed to direct the play (but it does have to be fun and safe for both of you).

Giving them this uninterrupted time (no phones allowed) makes it easier to ask them to do this...

Play alone time - Set up a game or invitation to play of some sorts that your child enjoys. Ask your child to play alone for as long as they can or until you call them.

I was told by a parenting expert that a 3-year-old should be able to alone for 45-minutes. Um, what?! My jaw dropped when I was told this because my extroverted child doesn’t seem to like alone time. 

We are working on it by using a reward system. If he plays by himself for more than 20 minutes, he moves up his reward chart. Once he reaches the goal, he gets a toy that I bought long before lockdown. So far, the longest he has played alone is 27 minutes (with playdough and dinosaurs)

This gives you and your partner time to knuckle down and work.

Quiet time - My kid naps occasionally, but we do insist on 20-30-minutes of quiet time. During this time he lies on his bed and looks at books. Thankfully he loves books and the now very overdue library books we took out are gems.

Hopefully, that gives you something to work with for now. 

P.S. you might enjoy reading Into the wild - before lockdown

Into the wild - before lockdown

We don't know what freedom is until it's taken away. 

This was our walk on Tuesday. We're usually avoid hiking because of crime and having a toddler, but we braved it because we wanted to keep physical distance from other people. On that little hike, I said, "After lockdown, we have to do this often, and invite friends so we can walk together." If it weren't for the loaming house arrest, we wouldn't have done this, we would have stuck to the safe and the known, the less wild.

But things are going to get wild. Without us around who knows how the plant and animal life in parks, forests and beaches will flourish.

And thanks to an extreme reduction in road traffic, we are going to benefit from massively reduced air pollution levels (please let someone be studying this). Mother nature is reclaiming herself. She's having a spa day for 21 days. She deserves it. We deserve it. It's the least we can do.

#gratitudeduringlockdown #lockdownsouthafrica #gratitudejournal

The small things are the big things

A few weeks ago, I woke up uncharacteristically early and decided to watch the sunrise. I throw clothes over pj's, took my coffee and walked down the road, greeting early morning runners on route. I must have been quite a sight with wild morning hair and coffee cup in hand.

The sunrise was worth it. 

I tried to be quiet because I was already freaking out about the coronavirus, but I couldn't really talk about it because I sounded like a hypochondriac. I am, but I've also been expecting this since I watched an Oprah show way back about how scientists predicted a virus will mutate enough to cause a pandemic. At the time, they thought it would be bird flu (it could still be). I also looked at how fast the numbers climbed in China and I just knew this was going to hard to contain.

I was grinding my teeth in my sleep freaked out. And then I watched the sunrise and felt like God was saying, stop to notice the big things. In that moment, the sunset was so big, the sky a show of colour changing every second. It was a performance. One I hardly ever attend, something sidelined as small. I thought of my child when he was born. He was tiny (2,4kg), but the first moment I saw him, roaring in his deep voice, he was the biggest thing in the room. Sometimes the smallest things are the biggest things.

Right now, something so small that we can't even see it is causing big changes in our lives. Its horribly scary but it's also a reminder that the small things could be the big things.

Job stress, workloads, deadlines, career success all loom like big things over us, taking up so much headspace, but in comparison to our family, health, creativity and the wonder of nature they are the small things.

A little Christmas miracle.

Yesterday evening, we cleaned our yard and put up solar-powered fairy lights. 

We lost track of time and before we knew it it was almost 8pm and we had a very tired 3-year-old. He wanted the lights to work, but they needed 12 hours of sun to charge first (according to the box). E lost his mind. He was screaming and crying for the sun. I explained that we can't make the sun come up - it's God's work. He said he wanted God to change the world (we took him to the planetarium so I think he remembered about the world moving around the sun). 

Long story short, in the bath he cried to his dad about why he couldn't see God and why couldn't God just come here. Emotions were wild. How do you explain this to a 3-year-old when you don't know either. So I was honest, I said that as old as I am, I don't understand everything about God either, but I do know that God shows himself in different ways.

I went to fetch something we left outside and our tree lights were magically on. So I showed E and told him that God heard him crying for the tree lights, and even though they shouldn't be working, God made them work to show him that he is real and he listens. E, full of wonder and awe, said, "God heard me and changed the world." 

Yes, He did.

P. S Don't ruin it by telling me some logically reason for the lights to work, I prefer a little Christmas miracle.

The Christmas Rush

I'm starting to feel that frantic rush to get everything done before Christmas. 

I have to remember that done is better than perfect and presence is more meaningful than presents (that's a good thing cause I think I am a crappy gifter). Oh, and to purposely slow down.

Pic from back in November inside Helderberg Nature Reserve, Somerset West during our first family mini-vacay.