Tag: momblog

Sending your kids to school in the school shooting era…

So much of parenthood is wondering if you’re doing the right thing… Am I reading to them enough, are they eating enough vegetables, am I giving them plenty of experiences, how much red40 dye have they consumed. But after every school shooting I’m consumed with… am I doing the right thing by sending them to school? After each one a part of me feels more and more unsure.

It feels ignorant to think “it won’t happen here” because I have absolutely NO way of knowing that. The Columbine shooting was 24 years ago. Since then there have been 376 school shooting. 46 happened last year. And since Columbine 338,000 children have experienced gun violence at school. It feels like there is no end in sight. We have allowed an entire generation of children to be traumatized by gun violence. (statistics from https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/ )

When you know better you do better. Except for the nearly a quarter century we have let kids go to school and not come home. Instead of taking action we’ve argued about door strength, arming teachers, allowing a place of learning and fun and friendship to also be a place where our children have to think about where they would hide if someone decided to come shoot at them today during circle time. I know every child loses their innocence, but forcing our children into active shooter drills before they know how to tie their shoes isn’t how I imagined it going.

In the late 80’s we decided it was unsafe to smoke while pregnant. It was hurting kids.

I wonder what my children and kids going to school now will think when they are adults. Will they ask us why we allowed this to go on for so long? What will be the result of growing up doing active shooter drills or expecting them to learn in an environment where they’re wondering about their safety. Having to have discussions about mortality and unimaginable evil, with kids who have barely begun to read. I can’t help but feel like I’m failing my kids, sending my kids to school when I can’t know that they’ll be safe. I wouldn’t let someone I felt iffy about watch my kid. But each day I send my kid to school wondering the uniquely American thought of, will today be the day someone brings a military style weapon and decides to blow kids to bits? We know better, we can do better, and most importantly our children deserve better. It’s like the doctor told us to stop smoking while pregnant because it is hurting our kid, and as a country we are just staring the doctor in the face, chain smoking.

After Uvalde, where 21 students were killed, I really struggled – struggled with being on the cusp of having a school aged child. Of getting ready to send him off to kindergarten and really questioning what was best. And here we are again, not even a year later. And I can’t help be flooded with all those questions again. I don’t really have answers or a true conclusion to this post. I know a lot of moms and parents feel the same sense of helplessness, of feeling stuck, of wanting to give your kids the best, of wondering if what we’re doing is right.

I want to encourage you if you feel paralyzed by this to a) stop scrolling and b) doing something tangible. I decided this evening after far too much scrolling to step back from social media, I donated to moms demand action and I went to 5 calls to find my representatives phone numbers and use their pre written scripts to DEMAND action against gun violence, to close loop holes, to put a ban on high capacity magazines and assault style rifles. When the day comes and my boys ask me about school shootings, I don’t want to say well I shared a LOT of memes, I might as well say I gave thoughts and prayers. I want them to know I cared enough to do everything in my power to make change happen.

Monday Mindset: Affirmations For Every Situation

Consider this: “We think in words, and these words have the power to limit us or to set us free; they can frighten us or evoke our courage. Similarly, the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives eventually becomes our lives.”

Dan Baker, What Happy People Know

Try This: Affirmations. I used to roll my eyes at the idea of affirmations, but science has shown us that affirmations are in fact a way to help alter our internal dialogue, that will otherwise gladly tell us: we aren’t good enough, smart enough, we’ll fail etc. For many of us if we let our subconsciouses run wild they will chatter at us in negative and anxiety ridden tones. It takes work to change our narratives but one of the most powerful ways we can do that is through affirmations.

Below you’ll find affirmations for most situations! It can sound so silly when you first start saying them. But other ways I like to incorporate affirmations are:

  • Write it on a sticky note and put it on a mirror you look at daily
  • Pick one or two to say daily at a specific time (ie: waking up / going to bed / rocking your kid etc.)
  • Save an affirmation as the background on your phone, when you’re going into a tough situation or experience. It’s the perfect easy reminder to see some words that should bring you calmness or courage!
  • Save my PDF version with these affirmations!
Affirmations for every situation PDFDownload

Back to (pre)School Favorites

1. Simply Modern Water bottles 2. Toddler Size Backpack. 3. Fun Back to School PJ’s
4. Non-Toxic Hand Sanitizer 5. Bento Box Lunchboxes 6. Waterproof Name Labels

I’m not entirely sure how it’s already back to school season, but here we are! I wanted to share some of the items I discovered and loved last year for my preschooler & a lot of these I repurchased now that Johnathan is also headed to preschool this year!

  1. Simply Modern Water bottles – These water bottles are leak proof & are a staple in our house, plus they’re a little cheaper than the hydroflask guys!
  2. Toddler Size Backpack – an appropriate toddler sized backpack can be hard to find. Last year I definitely sent will to school with a backpack that was wayyy to big. So this year both the boys are going with these!
  3. Fun Back to School PJ’s – get your toddlers excited the night before with fun ABC pajamas!
  4. Non-Toxic Hand Sanitizer – this is the only hand sanitizer Will will tolerate on his hands. It doesn’t dry your hands out and it smells like christmas, without all the harsh chemicals!!
  5. Bento Box Lunchboxes – love these reusable bento lunch boxes. These drastically cut down on single use plastics! Plus this year I’ll be packing lunches in bulk!
  6. Waterproof Name Labels – Probably my favorite item! These name labels either for clothing or supplies are dishwasher and washing machine safe. After a full year of preschool of the stickers I used are still intact, after many loads through the wash! This year I got some with the boys last name large and their names smaller because I know they’ll be interchanging waterbottles / lunchboxes. Plus they are totally customizable and come in so many designs / colors!!

If you have a favorite back to school item I’d love to hear what it is!

5 Toddler Books for BIG feelings!

If you have a toddler then you already know, the feelings are BIG. Here are some our favorite books to help make sense of these big feelings. I bought The Invisible String, before going out of town and Will LOVED it! So I thought I would share our favorites for anyone else navigating those BIG feelings.

1. The Boy with the Big, Big Feelings 2. The Invisible String 3. In My Heart 4. The Color Monster 5. My Heart

Things I love about each book:

  • The Boy with The Big, Big Feelings – does a great job actually explaining what it feels like when we get upset “feelings push out of our eyes” aka tears.
  • The Invisible String – I just love this book and the concept that we are always connected to the people we love even if we aren’t with them at that moment. Plus Will LOVED this book!
  • In My Heart – This one has so many emotions & the design is cute!
  • The Color Monster – Will also refers back to this one about feeling mixed up & feeling lots of emotions at once!
  • My heart – I love the illustrations in this one & the simple message!

Do you have a favorite feelings book? If so I’d love to hear what it is!

Sensory Overload In Motherhood

Why doesn’t anyone warn you about sensory overload as a mother. I feel like we hear about moms being “touched out” but it’s not just being touched. It’s the dog barking, it’s the wooden hammer on the cabinet, it’s the doorbell ringing, it’s the repetitive phrase your toddler has chosen to say louder and louder, it’s that toy with the annoying song that someone left on.

I struggle with overstimulation big time. I first started really noticing it a few months into breastfeeding J. Combining feeding a distractible infant while cross monitoring what a busy two year old is getting into had me almost always in this fight or flight mode. It was not the peaceful breastfeeding experience I had with Will. After stopping nursing I realized another rapid fire way for me to get sent into sensory overload was when we would roughhouse. It would only take getting hit in the face a few times for me to suddenly feel like my walls were closing in, my skin would start crawling, I’d immediately want no one to touch me.

It is easy to question yourself, to feel alone. Why is the dog barking or my kid wanting to “wrestle” me causing me to feel SO uncomfortable. My heart beats faster, I feel annoyed, angry at seemingly insignificant things. Each noise feeling like an interruption into the single thought I’m trying to complete. I found myself deeply craving silence. In the moment feeling like I want to retreat into darkness.

Before we had kids I would occasionally feel this way after a busy shift. Chris would play music in the mornings and I remember this same feeling, the music was too much, it felt like my brain was still too close to that fight or flight mode. Even if I slept it still felt like all the alarms, ringing phones, or screaming patients were still right there. All it took was turning the music down and it’d go away quickly. Well with kids you can’t just turn down the volume and often times the volume feels like it’s just increasing. 

If you feel this way too, you’re not alone. It is totally normal to get sensory overloaded and you are not selfish or a bad mom for wanting silence. Letting our brains decompress from the stimulus of motherhood is absolutely necessary in order for us not just to survive but thrive in motherhood. We all have difference tolerances and triggers when it comes to stimulus but there all ways to help both prevent and rescue yourself from fight or flight. 

  1. Know your triggers & set boundaries around them. Find out the sounds or types of stimulus that push you quickly into that mode If that toy remote your kid has plays a song that makes you want to tear your hair out – take the batteries out! Make certain toys for outside play only. I personally stopped buying dog toys with squeakers, instituted a drumming outside only rule, and encourage loud play to be done in bedrooms instead of common areas. I also know to put my hair up so it doesn’t get accidentally snagged by a toddler, and to set clear boundaries when we roughhouse I usually say something like “If I get hit in the face again, I will need to take a break from the game”. It sounds silly but the boundary setting works & is another valuable skill to teach your kids. When it comes to your body setting clear boundaries that you hold in turn teaches your kids that it is okay and they can set boundaries with their bodies too! Tickling is the prime example. Whenever my boys say stop to tickling we ALWAYS stop. Continuing to tickle your kids when they say stop is saying “it’s okay to ignore people’s boundaries”.
  2. Practice LOUD & soft – when your kids are already screaming is not the time to try to teach them how to whisper. Instead turn it into a game at a time when they are fairly calm. We play this at the dinner table. We can’t expect our kids to know things we haven’t bothered to teach them, teaching them how to control their volume is an important life skill and future teachers will thank you!
  3. Breathe mama breathe – When you are seeing white & are in that mode. Literally stop moving, and start breathing. Take a slow deep breathe, hold for 4 seconds, exhale. repeat. Closing your eyes helps too. This physiologically will help bring your body and your nervous system out of fight or flight.
  4. Carve out quiet. I personally get up 1-2 hours before my kids now that they both sleep through the night. I use this time to meditate, journal, read, workout, get breakfast ready. I know this is not for everyone. At the very minimum I get up 10 minutes before them. Enough time to sit in silence and stillness. Creating a quiet morning ritual will give you a sense of control over your day. You are not immediately thrown into a reactive state. This has probably been the thing that helps me the most. Sitting in stillness feels like the most luxurious thing once you have kids and meditation has helped me actualize this concept that peace is within us and are able to find it whenever we like. 
  5. Use a screen, recompose, and don’t feel guilty. You will be more present and a better parent. When I had peaceful nursing sessions it was either in the middle of the night, while Will was sleeping or when will was watching Mickey Mouse. Looking back I’m thankful I did that and wish I had recognized this sooner and found more ways to make more peaceful nursing sessions. 
  6. Speak Up. Do not suffer in silence. Name what you’re feeling. Is the clutter overwhelming you, is the music too loud, is toddler hanging from your leg pushing you into a reactive hyperstimulated state? Name it. Talk about it. If you are lucky to have a partner or support system talk to them, and try to find ways to release. Some days when my husbands comes in from work (he works in a detached office in our yard) I will tell him I need to go sit in the office for a few minutes of silence.

Sensory Overload In Motherhood

5 Ways to Beat the Heat with a Toddler

It’s officially summer & San Francisco already had it’s first heat wave of the year. Temperatures got up into the 90’s which is about 30 degrees higher than our usual summer temps! Keeping a toddler entertained as well as trying to get them to sleep when it’s 90 degrees in your apartment is no joke. So in the spirit of summer I thought I’d share some ways to beat the heat with a toddler & share some photos from the heat wave & the weekend we spent enjoying the heat at my brother’s house.

  1. Water tables – these are an awesome investment! We got this one for William’s birthday. And it was a serious lifesaver during the heat wave. I highly recommend water tables – they are fairly affordable & provide so much entertainment for toddlers. Even when it’s a little too chilly to be playing in the water William has a great time playing with the table without the water. He loves putting the balls down the track & finding things in the yard that can go in the water table. If you live somewhere remotely warm I’d totally invest in a water table.
  2. Popsicles – pair a Popsicle with a water table and you’ve got yourself one happy toddler, enough said!
  3. Baby wipes in the fridge – talk about a quick & inexpensive way to cool off. This is such an easy trick to make your baby or toddler or even yourself just slightly more comfortable in the heat.
  4. Stroller fan – this is a good gadget to have if you live somewhere that experiences a fair amount of heat. This is perfect for car rides where kiddos don’t always get the best airflow in those hot car seats especially facing backward. You can also clip it onto a stroller.
  5. My final tip for beating the heat is to seek out AC wherever possible. Libraries are a great free place to take a toddler to try to get some reprieve from the heat. Even just an hour wandering around the grocery store or target was a great way to get out of our stifling apartment. So if you have a membership to a museum, a local library you’ve been wanting to check out or if your kids are old enough a movie theater these are all great places to try and escape the summer heat, especially if you’re living somewhere without AC like we are!
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Catching up & slowing down

It may have been unusually quiet over here on the blog but it’s been rather turbulent offline.

About a month ago Chris started telling me he was getting “floaters” in his vision & some occasional numbness in his hands & feet. The ER nurse in me wasn’t all that concerned given how much stress he’s under & how much time he’s at a computer. The symptoms would come & go as would my level of concern. He went & got checked out one day after work, blood work & head CT later the ER chalked it up to dehydration and anxiety. Well unbeknownst to anyone he was developing viral encephalitis.

About week later he woke me up early in the morning to tell me his headache was back. A few hours later I found myself in the ER I’ve spent the last seven years working in. I held our nearly one year old & watched as my coworkers rapidly called a stroke alert on my husband who at this point could no longer identify me. An hour later he was intubated. I waited for the battery of tests to start resulting. Finally after masses & brain bleeds & thyroid storms were ruled out, they tested his spinal fluid, which finally provided answers as to what made my healthy, young husband literally lose his mind. Viral Encephalitis / aseptic menegitis. I couldn’t believe it. And honestly I still can’t.

We spent 3 days in the ICU. Looking back it all blurs together. I think I got maybe an hour of sleep the first night, carefully watching as the nurses titrated his drips, making sure his antivirals were being administered at the right times. I felt like I was tightrope walking this line of advocating for Chris while not micromanaging my colleagues. Being in the medical field, especially critical care, you find yourself wielding a double edged sword of knowledge & knowing too much. I knew they needed to intubate him because of how altered he was, but I also knew all that comes along with it. Having spent my entire nursing career in the ER & taking care of my fair share of intubated patients, I know that everyone’s sedation needs are unique. And at the end of the day you want your patients to be as calm as possible & quite frankly knocked out! There’s an arsenal of sedation & pain medication combinations available to patients so if one isn’t working it’s the nurse’s obligation to advocate for something else. Chris is a big guy & was requiring a lot of sedation to keep him comfortable, I was so thankful that I got to stay at his bedside & advocate for him when I thought he was being undermedicated.  I was terrified of how much of this experience he would remember, & mostly what he’d be like once they extubated him. The prognosis for viral encephalitis is variable. People make full recoveries, others require occupational and physical therapy to regain balance & motor skills. When we went to the ER he had already been exhibiting motor weakness, memory loss, & difficulty speaking, so needless to say I was terrified I would get a partial version of my husband back.

Chris spent about 3 weeks at home, recovering. We are extraordinarily lucky he was diagnosed so quickly & began receiving antiviral drugs rapidly because that is likely what has effected his outcome.

The last seven years in the ER have shown me shit happens. Aneurysms burst, cancers invade, hearts fail & no one gets out alive. Life is fragile, you never know when your world will be turned upside down. For me it was a typical Monday morning. I can’t help but think that life gives us certain situations to change us & challenge us. I’m enveloped with gratitude after this experience. Unmeasurable gratitude that my husband is laying in bed beside me as I type this,a new found appreciation for the medications that allowed Chris to remember very little of this whole ordeal, and the antiviral medication that allowed Chris to make a remarkable recovery. I’m eternally grateful for my out of this world co-workers who not only took exceptional care of my husband but lifted me up, caffeinated me, fed me & kept me company at all hours. They were there for me more than I could have ever imagined.  When I left the house that morning I had no idea I’d be calling Chris’ mom telling her she needed to get on a flight asap. I had no idea the first night I’d ever spend away from my son would be because my husband was intubated & in the ICU. Sometimes situations can seem so dark, but the dawn always comes.

Needless to say the last month, we’ve laid pretty low, enjoyed time together as a family. Things are slowly getting back to normal, and we have some fun things coming up in the next few months that I’m excited to post about. Tomorrow we are headed to a wedding in the city & Sunday is Easter! I can’t believe next weekend we’ll be celebrating William’s first birthday!

Beach Babe – 7 Months

I didn’t get around to doing our monthly letterboard photos with William this month & now we’re half way through December… oops. I guess you could say we’ve been busy. Will’s 7th month consisted of his first international trip! We went to Curacao for a friends wedding & extended our trip by a few days to enjoy the beach & warm weather before heading to Texas for Thanksgiving. In case you can’t tell by the photos William was a little unsure about the ocean despite the water being bath temp. He eventually came around & became a little more comfortable, I guess swim lessons will be part of 2019 ha! Along with travelling outside the US this month he also began eating a ton of new foods, learned how to crawl & still has zero teeth! I’m looking forward to Christmas because I feel like he’ll really enjoy the wrapping paper element. Onward & upward to month 8!