3 Essential strategies for achieving balance in your marriage after kids

One of the biggest mistakes I think new parents make is expecting their life will at some point get back to what it was sans kid, without realizing ‘normal’ must now be redefined.

I had my first kid while most of the other people in my age group were pursuing high education, advancing in careers, or just beginning marriages, and I made a tonne of mistakes and learnt most things the hard way.

Now that I am redefining my life for the third time, I sure hope that I have a little more wisdom! Although it’s still a struggle to find balance, and even though three kids are difficult, it’s a little easier to manage our shortcomings and “issues”.

Find your “thing”

The most important strategy I think is that each parent has some alone time to do something that is fun and interesting to them, their “thing” if you will. I would suggest something physical, like for example, to join a sports team, or just have a regular, weekly game with friends. And if not, try a class, I am starting some cooking classes with my sister, first up is sushi! I think that each one of us need some space away from family and responsibilities to rejuvenate and get back to our true selves.

Redefining your spousal relationship

Now that it’s no long just the two of you, almost everything in the relationship needs to be reassessed and redefined. It is tremendously easy to fall into parenting and mundane living, and it’s even easier to become completely stressed out and feel like there isn’t any time for “fun”, and there may not be time for what you once considered fun, but surely once you get creative, I think you’ll find a lot of little ways to take away the monotony from the relationship.

With kids comes much less freedom and much more responsibility, so one of the things that we need to learn is how to unwind and have some enjoyment at home. This is sort of dependent what you and your spouse enjoy doing, I think the only thing my husband enjoy is movies, so we end up doing that a lot, but it’s works. Other things that I think may be fun, is cooking a meal together, or a game that you both enjoy, sometimes simple things are all you need, and of course a few laughs are essential.

Having fun as a family

With a first child, it’s easy to forget that the kid is now a part of the family, I mean it’s just natural almost to want to go back to what life was before, but of course since that is really not an option, it’s essential to instead think about “family activities”. Now that my kids are a little older, bike riding, playgrounds and parks are huge on our list of family things, but even with younger kids, walk are great, trips to the zoo, even spending time hanging out in the backyard can be fun.

Managing expectations, in my opinion, is one of the key factors in having a healthy marriage, and it becomes so much more important after we become parents. It’s impossible, I think for our spouses to actually live up to our ideals, I mean, there are possibly some of you with the perfect mate (lucky you!!), but I think that most of us need to set our expectations a little lower to be happy!

Surviving marriage after kids… it takes patience and understanding, and sometimes even a miracle! I am kidding! Sort of…

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Introducing the Org Junkie and my reorganized living room

Have you ever heard of the Org Junkie or may be Menu Plan Monday? Well, over the past couple months, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Laura, author of a blog called I’m an Organizing Junkie, which is filled with great tips for making things easier for moms especially.

I have a pretty small house, the main floor has basically 2 rooms, the kitchen and then an open area that functions as the dinning room, living room, family room, play room, tv room, and everything in between! The kids toys were always all over the room, and I hated the fact that we didn’t have a play area set aside for them. I think that I was inspired while working on Laura’s website redesign and I did a little organizing of my own.

I used to have the couches at the back wall, and a big empty area in the middle, so I move up the couches to split the living room a bit and created a tiny play area of the kids. It actually has been working out very well for everyone!

The other storage solutions I’ve had for about the last 3 and a half years, but thought that I would show them anyways…

The TV stand actually houses a lot of our “stuff”, there is a toy box, prayer mats, and the cupboards are home to diapers, wipes, books, playdoh, craft supplies, and many other items that need to be ‘hidden’.

The window seat has little pockets that actually serves as a “garage” for their large planes, trains and automobiles.

I hope that you do check out Laura’s website, I know that you will find her and her tips totally awesome!

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Momtrepreneur report card

I recently started my adventure as a work at home mom type, and there have been moments when I felt like a complete failure, moments when I thought I was quite clearly losing my mind, and moments when I was apparently ‘not behaving good at all’ and had to be reprimanded by my 4 year old son – “mommy, you are using too many bad words today, too many! You have to stop it now!”

But as challenging as it is to work at home while caring for 3 small kids, it is not impossible, and can even be rewarding. Everyday I try to find the secret formula that would make this initiative ‘easy’, or less hard at least, I have a hunch though that there’s really no secret, instead we have to make do with some mommy-hacking and a few great strategies for working at home.

There are days when I literally just cry over the client deadlines, screaming kids, needy husband, and the complete disaster that is our house, and days when I just am so exhausted it’s almost impossible to even function, but then there are days when I create an entire website in only a few early morning hours and the client totally adores it, days when the house is clean, dinner is cooked, and I still have time for a dvd with my hubby, and days when I can drop everything and head out for a kiddie-sized adventure – and then I know that it’s all worth it.

If I had to pick one thing that I missed the most about a ‘real’ job, it would be having a team, or just people to interact with and talk to on a daily basis, people to share my ideas with and to get feedback from, but at least I do have my darling husband, who, ummm, at least tries to be supportive with his “it looks good, what else do you want me to say? I told you that all websites look the same to me!” standard response each time I solicit his opinion on one of my creations.

My almost-daily haunts are invaluable in inspiring and motivating, or just in making me feel connected, you know, like Chris – what can I say, the woman has 7 kids, and of course, Wendy – she must be like the queen of working at home! Jen talks about motherhood and wifey-hood in a way that I can really relate to, Randa is my example of a successful webby mom, to keep up with the single peeps, I love Organic’s little home in the blogisphere, and there are so many more of you, too many to list here, but I will have a list of my reads out soon.

After much trepidation, I finally began to publicize my portfolio, and gained some really lovely clients, I launched 2 free themes – Sakeena for WordPress and Life for Textpattern, and I taught a web development course, which started off great and slowly waned due to mid-summer-madness-syndrome affecting my students – I postponed the class until September.

It’s funny that some days I lament over my life, or lack of a ‘life’, and I know that there are working moms wishing to be able to stay at home, and stay at home moms longing to work – sometimes it just feels like a no-win kind of situation – but such is the nature of motherhood, it’s our ability to do what we believe is best for ourselves and our families that will help us find peace and fulfillment. My most important lessons – find time for some mom escapes, don’t panic, avoid the parent trap , and enjoy life!!

Now, the contest!!

One of my clients, Silver Lily, who has a really wonderful collection of beautiful handmade jewelry, has generously donated this lovely necklace and earring set – {a gorgeous glamorous sterling silver necklace with sparkling jet stones and a delicate filigree pendant hangs with high cut citrine briolettes. Matching earrings .approx length of necklace 15”.7mm.Earrings hang approx2.5”}

All you need to do is subscribe to this blog, either through your feed reader or email (if you’re already subscribed, thanks! and of course you’re also welcome to enter) and leave a comment here – I am doing a random draw on August 21st. Good Luck!!

Parenting Strategies: how to get kids to clean up

My kids are notorious non-tidy-up’ers! They absolutely hate to clean, and it seems that no amount of motivational songs, threats, or rewards can help the situation. It actually amazes me to hear the elaborate excuses that 3 and 4 year olds can think up!

I used to go on for about half an hour trying very hard to convince them that cleaning was ‘fun’, ‘smart’, ‘healthy’, you know, I used just about any adjective I thought would serve as encouragement, and yet nothing. Then, I started with the threats, “I WILL give it away!”, “I WILL throw it in the garbage!”, “I WILL give it to the baby!”, but they would then dare me to do it! Mind you, many of their toys are now sitting in the basement and even more have been given to charity. But I found it hard to just take away the toys that I know they love, and they’d caught on to my weakness.

Recently, I discovered a technique that works so well, I don’t even have to threaten anymore! One day, as they sat ignoring my pleas to remove their toys from the floor before I swept, without warning, I just started sweeping away their toys. I have never seen them work so fast before – they jumped from their seats and ran to remove their toys from my path! Now, when I tell them I am going to sweep away their toys, they instantly start putting everything back into the toy box.

Last night though, they were extremely tired from missing their daytime nap, and when I started to sweep the toys, they both completely lost it and started screaming and crying very loudly, so loudly that I was fearful a neighbor might have called child services! But, the trick is to remain completely calm and unconcerned with their crying. I just calmly gave them the options, and calmly told them that I was going to sweep whether they cried or not (more crying ensued, of course), then the baby got very worried about his toys and started to pick them up. As I neared the end of the living room, I started counting, and told them that they had until I counted to 20 and then the toys would be gone, thankfully this worked and the place was clean by the time I reached 39 (they requested 19 additional counts).

How do you get your kids to clean?

Parenting strategies: how to feed kids

Since my first son was just a baby, we made a habit of eating dinner together – now we do it with all 3 kids! My mom was over last week to witness the spectacle that is dinner at our house, and her opinion was that we should feed the kids first and then we’ll be able to eat better afterwards. Although she does have a pretty good point, I decided that I would stick to our current routine.

My 4 year old has grown so accustomed to the family dinner that he completely misses it if we are out or if for some reason he has to eat alone. I found that having this routine with my kids, no matter how challenging it can be at times, has made them pretty good eaters. I mean, I know that it is possible that they just naturally love food, but I have a feeling that the practice is a key part in them not being fussy eaters.

While they were still within their first year of baby-hood, I did feed them before we had our dinner, but I would still keep them in their highchair with us and I think each of them grew comfortable and accustomed to sitting down at the table and eating a meal. Routines are greatly instrumental in the development of kids and really helps them to understand complex concepts and to have situation-appropriate behavior – simply by the virtue that they know what to expect.

When it comes to the actual dinner, I do try to make one meal usually, but I will not force them to eat things that I know they don’t prefer, like red peppers for example, I will instead choose the ingredients that I know they enjoy and this way I know that the chance of them finishing their meal is greater – and isn’t that the aim? Often parents may forget that the point is to get kids to eat healthy foods, and not necessarily to eat foods that we may enjoy! Serving kids a healthy selection of foods that they like is key in ensuring that they are actually getting all the nutrients they need, and not complaining about they stuff they may not be particularly fond of.

There are surely times when they refuse to eat – they are kids after all – but I don’t really push them at those times because in general I know they are good eaters, and because I am usually careful with what they eat at home, when we go out I don’t mind if they indulge in ‘not-so-healthy’ alternatives!

How do you feed your kids?