Finding Joy and Humor in the Chaos
There are people who have somehow earned the reputation of being an “animal person”. When people speak about them, they say things like, “ever since she was a little girl, animals were drawn to her”, or “he’s always had a way with animals. It says a lot about his kind and patient energy”.
I have never been one of those people.
Now that the kids are back in school, everyone is slowly coming down from their holiday sugar rush and settling into their regular routines. For me that means getting my house (and my life) in order, in the wake of the tornado of Christmas Cheer. This year, for the first time in my adult life, I took a few hours towards the end of December, and compiled a list of goals for 2020. I know, I know: goals for the new year. Groundbreaking. But after a decade of college, a baby, a wedding, lots and lots of moving, more college, more babies, and more moving, I finally have time to breathe, and set my sights further than getting my kids to school on time.
From what I’ve gathered, observing people who make these sort of plans, there are many ways to go about it. I’ve noticed that it is popular to choose a particular word to set the tone for the year. My more religious friends will pick verses to focus on. I decided what worked for me was to come up with an outline for my ideal self. If I were to become the best me (and I know it’s hard to believe I could get any better), what would I do? It started with a quick brainstorm of things that correspond with the model for a productive and admirable day. Most of them were things that I don’t do, or only do sporadically, and would like to change:
Write
Move
Save
Commit
Clean
Persevere
Connect
That list was diffused into categories for each month:
Writing Goals
Movement Goals
Savings Goals
Cleaning Goals
Connection Goals
I thought that these categories would help me focus on smaller attainable goals, rather than large lofty ones. Those would lead to certain failure.
The month is all about commitment and consistency.
-That means writing every day, intentionally moving my body every day. The privileged white girl way of saying exercise.
-I’m going to stick to our family budget. Essentially, that boils down to not blowing it on food and iced coffee.
-I am following a cleaning routine (honestly, the hardest one for me).
-I am making a concerted effort to connect with other people. This month that means hosting a playdate with someone from each child’s circle of friends.
In a few short weeks, this will ensure that all of my problems will be solved, and I will be the even better version, of an already pretty amazing gal! That’s how these things work, right?
In all seriousness, this past year has been a blur of adjusting to life with three kids, and trying my best to keep my head above water. It’s time to focus that blur a little bit. Here’s to kicking ass, and heading into the new decade with goals in place. There’s nothing we can’t do! (Except for the cleaning routine. Seriously. You guys…I’m very worried.)
Love, Always,
Jennie
Last week I made a pledge to sit down and write something every day. Roxanne Gay says this is a habit she started years ago, and I make it a point to take advice from brilliant female writers. It’s been well over a week now, and I still haven’t written anything…SO. Here we are. I’m starting small, and trying something new, with three of my current must haves. Don’t worry. None of these are remotely exciting, or expensive, or sponsored (although if anyone is interested, I am not too proud to accept your money).
Tomorrow, my eldest child starts kindergarten. How did we get here? She was bottle fed from day one. Not a single ounce of breastmilk has touched this girl’s lips. We never used a sleep sack, and she refused a swaddle blanket.
The night we started sleep training, I drank an entire bottle of wine. The next night she slept in bed with me, because my heart (and my liver) couldn’t handle it. Every so often we still let her crawl in between us, when she finds her way into our room at night.
Despite the warnings discouraging screen time, she became very familiar with the voices of the Real Housewives before the age of one. Mostly because her mother needed to hear something other than her own thoughts, when she was cooped up, alone, in an apartment in West Texas.
This girl survived Johnson and Johnson bath products, Purell hand sanitizer, and Bounce drier sheets. She ate Gerber baby food from a pouch, switched to a front facing car seat before she was officially 2 years old, and was sent away to school shortly after.
I’ve used a leash on her more than once. I’ve lost track of the time outs. She’s had more hot dogs and chicken nuggets than I ever thought possible.
And yet…
I’ve gotten pretty good at reacting to things in my life. Happy things, like hearing my babies’ heart beats for the first time. Scary things, like the day my husband came home and told me he had lost his job. And funny things, like finding my child in her crib, playing with her own feces.
All of these situations–happy, scary, and funny–elicited relatively easy reactions from me. Were they to happen again, I would know exactly what to do. I know what my next steps would be. I could probably even demonstrate which faces I would make, and what I would do with my hands.
There is one reaction however, that I have not been able to nail down. Despite getting older and wiser. Despite giving myself pep talks in my car. Despite practicing in my shower the night before:
How are you supposed to react when a doctor calls you fat?
Continue reading “How Are You Supposed to React When A Doctor Calls You Fat?”
I had a therapist say to me that if she didn’t take copious notes during our times together, she wouldn’t believe how quickly things change in my family from week to week. Decisions I would discuss at one session would be completely changed and forgotten by the next. I’m sure this did nothing for my case against insanity, but it’s the way I have always been.
I come from a long line of hyperactive extroverts. The kind of people who say stupid things like “I’ve tried and tried, but I’m just not a person who can take naps” or “Why relax on vacation when you can hike, bike, swim, take a basket weaving class, and learn the local language?” Therefore, I feel like I am doing something wrong if I don’t have at least 25 plates in the air at one time. This had led to a full, stressful, beautiful, chaotic, and interesting life. But it also hasn’t been very conducive to keeping up with weekly blog posts.
Not that I’m vain enough to believe that anyone has been dying to know what’s been happening in my life, but I figured I would catch everyone up with what has been going on in the Porter universe since I last wrote.
February:
(Not necessarily in order of importance, but kind of in order of importance…)
-The Eagles win the Super Bowl.
-I find out I’m pregnant with baby number 3
-We decided we are going to buy a new house.
-Hire a realtor and start packing boxes
March:
-Scratch the house purchase, let’s renovate instead!
-Fire Realtor, hire a contractor, an architect, and a designer
– Keep packing boxes
April:
– I can’t breathe out of my nose. I can’t hear in my left ear. Are you supposed to cough up green goo? Surely it’s just a head cold. It will get better.
-Weren’t we supposed to have blue prints by now? Oh, the contractor is in Europe for 2 weeks? We can’t get ahold of the architect? Eh, it will be fine. I’m sure we’ll be in the new house when the baby comes.
-Update, not a cold. Bronchitis and a severe sinus infection. Antibiotics for 2 weeks.
-Boxes. So many boxes.
May:
-Strep Throat! Stomach bug! Don’t forget, you’re also pregnant. Are you eating and sleeping enough?
-Finally get blueprints. House will be done by Thanksgiving. It’s cool. Moving back in with your parents is what millennials are supposed to do, right?
-Submit renovation permits to the Borough.
June:
-Permits rejected.
-Renovations cancelled. Let’s move instead!
-Re-hire realtor–clear out entire house, get it ready to list, and move back in with your parents. You have 2 weeks. Go!
(It’s fine! It’s all fine! Did I mention, I’m fine?)
-Sell house in 2 days. They want to close in 30 days. Oh, but you need to put a new roof on the house, or they’re going to walk away from the deal.
To those of you who have read through this tedious recap, I thank you! We have made it to July, which despite travel and house hunting has been relatively calm. I’m still very pregnant, very tired, and as of today, very homeless. Today we close on the sale of our house. The first house we owned as a family. I almost find myself getting sentimental about it. Every time I do however, a tiny pair of baby feet stabs me in my organs, snapping me back to reality, and reminding me that we have bigger things to worry about.
I am painfully aware that my problems are 100 percent #firstworldproblems, and I have no right to ever complain. There are so many exciting things happening, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds. I just hope next time, it doesn’t take me 6 months to post about it!
Love Always,
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I have never been a big “New Year’s Resolution” gal. You’ve seen my Instagram stories. How could anyone expect me to get it together enough to make resolutions…let alone follow through with them?
This year, when I finally crawled out from under the stressful, sugar laden blanket of the holiday season, I found myself struggling to come up with an idea for my first blog post of 2018.
Ideas left on the cutting room floor included:
To Kill an Australorp*
How I brought one chicken back to life, only to have another savagely murdered by a fox, while my children slept.
*one of our two breeds of chickens. Honestly, given the tumultuous climate of 2017, this story just seemed too dark.
Total Eclipse of the…Oh You’ve Got to Be Kidding
Planning your family’s entire summer around the 2 minutes and 11 seconds of the Solar Eclipse, driving 12 hours to be in the path of totality, only to have it be cloudy.
And most recently:
“Dinner and A Show”
That time last week when I didn’t check to see if my son had pulled up his pants after going to the bathroom, and didn’t notice until other patrons started laughing and pointing as we walked across the entire (very crowded) restaurant with his ding-a-ling hanging out.
None of these stories, albeit hilarious, embodied the characteristics I wanted to take with me into the new year. I needed something fresh. Something new. Something that said, I’ve learned from my old ways, and have reinvented myself. That’s when a picture of me from 2014 knocked the wind (and the self-righteousness) out of me.
There are so many things I would like to say to this girl. I want to hug her, and let her know how special she is. She deserves to know that she’s doing a great job, no matter how often she tells herself that she is failing. She is the strongest person I have ever known, even though she felt very weak.
In just 360 days, she had already moved three times, in three different states, and had 2 babies. She lived in the desert of West Texas, a 10 hour car ride away from her closest family.
When I complain about having to make dinner, I think about how she had to carry a toddler, an infant, and a full load of groceries up concrete stairs, to her second-floor apartment. She gets my lazy butt in gear when I feel like hiding under the covers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told myself that running a 5k is a lot easier than taking an infant and a toddler to a park when its 108 degrees outside.
Most importantly, I would apologize to her. I’m sorry for all the times I told her she wasn’t enough: thin enough, pretty enough, or organized enough. I have done a terrible job of respecting the legacy that she started. I could blame it on “Mommy Amnesia”: the idea that the only way anyone would willingly have more than one child, is because we forget the hard that comes with children.
This mentality encourages us to view our challenges as something to get over and leave behind. When you are in a season of blooming, you don’t want to remember what it felt like to be pruned. Yes, I know our pasts don’t define us, and we should always strive to be evolving and changing, blah, blah, blah. However, this “amnesia” has allowed me to get soft. Although I would not readily return to that life in West Texas, I have lost so much of the grit that was forged amongst the tumbleweeds.
No, the picture it isn’t particularly special. It doesn’t commemorate an event, and it certainly isn’t flattering. Yet, I can’t look away from my face, a face puffy from pregnancy (and about 300 too many trips to Whataburger). In the background my bed is unmade, the counter is a mess, and I can practically hear myself telling my husband to get the camera out of my face.
Looking at it for long enough, it occurred to me that this picture perfectly embodies the “Why” behind #MillennialMama.
It’s permission to embrace the hard, especially when it would be easier to put a filter on it. It’s permission to laugh at the ridiculous, and the serious, and try again tomorrow. And it’s a resolution even I can get behind.
“Goodnight! And tell your Mommy to clean out her car!”
“…Mom I am literally standing right next to you.”
“Well I’m just saying, that if you just take 10 minutes every night after the kids go to bed…”
If I were to add up all of the “just take 10 minutes” that my mother has suggested, I would never sleep again. If it’s not the state of my car, it’s the baskets of laundry I have yet to fold, the toys scattered about my backyard, or the exercise I’m putting off. At times she’s like a living, breathing Instagram feed, reminding me that I’m not doing enough.
It’s happening people. You scroll through your social media feeds to find that pictures from fraternity parties have been replaced by engagement photos and pregnancy announcements. It won’t be long until the baby shower and first birthday invitations start rolling in. What is a (barely) grown up millennial to do?!
Never fear, #MillennialMama is here!
Continue reading “Gifts Your Friends (and their kids) Actually Want”
DISCLAIMER: This blog post was written in response to the news that Amazon Fresh would no longer be delivering to my area. After taking a few days, I realized I needed to mourn in the only way I know how: through writing. This is not an ad. Simply the ramblings of a broken hearted woman. To anyone else who might be feeling the impact of this loss, may my words bring you solace in this difficult time. AmazonFresh may have only been a part of our lives for a few weeks, but it will be in our hearts forever.
“Mommy,” he whispers, on his tip-toes to reach me from the side of the bed. “It’s here.”
My heart flutters and I blink myself awake. Glancing at the clock, I realize it is not even 6:30…but I don’t care. Without stopping to put on my glasses or shoes, I follow my excited children to the front door. A surge of adrenaline causes me to fumble with the lock. I take a quick second to consider the possibilities that await us on the other side. It is going to be a good day. A magical day. Because today, is AmazonFresh delivery day.
