I think I'm suffering from a pandemic brain, but it's going to be okay...I hope.
Hello, remember me?
I unintentionally took a month off blogging. It’s not like I didn’t try - I started blog posts here and there, but I couldn’t finish them. As I explained to my husband, it’s like I wanted to say things and then I didn’t want to say anything.
I haven’t been making much art either – just a drawing here and there. Could this be a creative block?
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...
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.
We recently celebrated Earth Day, but what did we achieve by posting cute 'Happy Earth Day' messages online?
In 2019, the UN scientists* warned that we have 11 years left to prevent irreversible climate change damage. So now we only have 9 years and, as a parent, this terrifies me.
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.
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.
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.
“The birds don’t have to wear masks?” my son suddenly asked. He’d been watching the birds flying above, landing on walls and street lights as masked people walked by along the pavements.
“No, they don’t,” I said.
“They’re lucky,” he said.
Shoo, this pandemic has flipped our world upside down. I typed this out months ago and saved it so that I wouldn't forget how a virus could make us question everything.
Photo by Viktor Keri on Unsplash
P.S. You might enjoy reading The small things are the big things.
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.
Here is my favourite peanut butter cookie recipe. It includes shredded carrots and somehow my four-year-old loves them.
I'm saving the recipe here it so that, should I have a dithery day, I can find it here. Reader, you might like it too. Who knows, maybe this blog will still be here, floating around on the Interwebs when I'm long gone and my son wants to bake his mom's peanut butter cookies for his loved ones. Maybe he'll make them even better.
This peanut butter cookie is my little family's favourite. The inspiration came from another Monique, of the famed Ambitious Kitchen blog, and her delicious peanut butter cookie recipe. I made lots of changes, but these are the most important ones:
Ingredients
I wanted to write about how I've been finding calm in the midst of this covid pandemic and how it's lead me to embrace my anxiety as a superpower of sorts, but who am I telling? I feel like Shirley Valentine talking to a wall (great movie that), so I'll tell my son, in case he ever reads this.
Tiny treasures
These flowers are so small that, had we not stepped off the path, I would never have spotted them in the grass.
Sometimes, stepping off the path is the best thing, even if you're forced to.
It's what I'm learning during this pandemic - to notice beauty and make the small things the big things. I listened to a talk about happiness that reminded me of what God told me back in early March - focus on the big things. As a key to happiness, Dr Rick Hanson suggested creating 'beneficial experiences' and then making the experiences big, letting them resonate.
That made it click for me, what God was saying all along - the small things are the big things. It's all the good small things that make us happy, but they need to be magnified.
I'm trying because I'm not naturally a happy, easy-going person. I am anxious, analytical, serious, easily overwhelmed by too much sensory information and an introvert - INFJ/upholder. So I read articles on how to be a more fun parent and stop shouting (I'm a shouter), I take too many photos of flowers, landscapes and my kid climbing trees, I plant weeds in my garden because I think they're pretty and why the heck not, and I paint. It's what's keeping me going.
I'm sharing this because it's World Mental Health Day and I want to say 'Hey, it's okay if you're struggling - I'm struggling too.' I think we're all struggling. It's been a heck of a year so far, so do what you need to do. Look after yourself. Find a hobby that you can get lost in, get out into nature, bake a cake, wear your fav outfit (even if you're staying in), put on some lippy, pray, read, watch a good movie, garden, have a roll in the hay and remember that life is still beautiful.
P. S. Check out how small these little orchids are in comparison to my hand.
Thinking about the effort taken to make faux fans for a stadium got me thinking about how much we do or do not do because of the presence of an audience - real or imagined.
Before he mentioned this, I had been composing an Instagram post with a collection of images only to decide not to post it. This happens often – I question the quality of the content and then why would I need to post it. The moments were lived, the images taken and the memories saved, but does it have to be shared? Do I need an audience for it?
Social media’s split personality
This has been a question on my mind for years as I grapple with my love/hate relationship with social media.
On one hand, it’s a great way to connect with people, share ideas and inspiration and be inspired while simultaneously being a vehicle of distraction and narcissism. This is social media’s split personality.
When I’m online, I try to stay on the good side of it – follow people who inspire creativity rather than envy, share honestly and respectfully – but I still wonder if I’m falling for a time and soul-sucking vacuum.
I don’t have ‘the answer’ to social media – I’m no hypocrite and admittedly love scrolling Instagram, but I do think it’s important to keep social media in perspective.
Not everything needs to be shared to be important. And sometimes, the time spent sharing and scrolling can stop the doing of what's important.
Related: The small things are the big things
Lockdown hasn’t been easy, and COVID-19 is scary, but being stuck at home has had some benefits...
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...
Living with gluten intolerance is a blessing and curse - I can't eat cake at kids' parties, but I also can't eat cake at kids' birthday parties. But this mama has a sweet tooth. So, I’ve been tweaking some of wheat-free recipes and, before I forget, I thought I'd save them here. I still feel a little sad about the apple cinnamon oat cake I made once and can’t remember how I did it.
This is a quick and easy oat chocolate muffin recipe I tweaked from Power Hungry.
It's wheat-, egg- and dairy-free, but the addition of coconut oil or olive oil and a little more sugar make the muffins a little less healthy but mouthwateringly good.
