I’m Running Away But I’ll Tell You Where to Find Me

Reading my fellow bloggers’ farewells these past two weeks, I feel a little like a character at the end of an Ocean’s Eleven movie. We’re all moving on with our families and careers and Parenting.com is evolving and changing. After five and a half years and around two hundred and fifty posts, I’m taking down my shingle at The Parenting Post, a blog I was a founding writer of. I’m taking down my shingle, that is, until they decide to call the gang back together for our next impossible heist.

I’ve been pondering what to write about for my last post but I thought I’d just fill you in on what else I’ve got cooking in my life.

For one – I’m working at raising my small people to be slightly bigger small people and eventually grownups. I’ve been doing quite a bit of freelance work this year, blogging here, writing a novel, and writing and managing the Mom Congress blog for Parenting. There have been several times when I was too busy writing about being a good education advocate to volunteer in my kids’ classrooms and too busy to spend one on one time with them reading or just enjoying each other.

But, at the end of January, I’m taking an indefinite break from most of my freelance duties so I can spend more time doing good and less time blogging about it. I made this decision just days before Wanda raged into full force two-year-old-dom. She is a precious, adorable, mood-swingy nightmare in little girl’s clothing, whom I need to spend more time helping adjust to a world where the answer is frequently – NO. Oh, how I adore her.

The world’s sweetest boy, Magoo, is reading his way to enlightenment at a crazy fast pace and I think he’s continually disappointed to find out how little I actually know and how often I cheat by looking things up in books. The more he knows, the dumber I become. The other night I was reading him and Wanda a book about Snakes, cleverly titled… Snakes. Every couple of milliseconds, Wanda would point to one of the animals and say, “WHO’S THAT?!”

“That’s an African Mill Toad Tree Lynch Crup Snake,” I would quickly reply.

“Oooooh,” she’d say.

After a little while, Magoo smiled at me, impressed.  “You’re really good at knowing the names of all the snakes mom.”

I then pointed to the little name labels stamped in the corner of each picture.

“Oh,” he said, his face falling. “You just read it.”

Laylee became resigned to my average intellectual ability years ago and I think she’s at peace with it. At almost nine years old, she is one of my greatest friends, someone I would choose to hang out with if I could spend time with any person in the world. She’s writing a novel herself and can’t wait until she’s old enough to read mine. It contains kissing and roundhouse kicks and such so I’d like her to wait a few years.

In August, I completed a teen crime-fighter novel manuscript that I’m really excited about. It needs a little polishing and pimping around to agents but I like that I can do that at my own pace with no mandatory deadlines or external pressure.

Also, in December I blogged my intention to help my family eat healthier this year and to go along with that resolution I’m launching a food blog with my amazingly-talented-in-the-kitchen sister Heather over at BiteUponBite.com. The concept is that we determine how our bodies will feel and look with every single thing we put in our mouths. We’re choosing our health bite upon bite upon bite.

Heather and I plan to share our very best recipes and realistic ways to incorporate more fruits and veggies into your family meals, along with some of our favorite special occasion treats. You know we can’t stay away from those special occasion treats. Hey, it’s Wednesday. Let’s call it a special occasion!

At this point, we’re populating the blog with some of the recipes we’ve blogged in the past, but you can look forward to increased consistency and content quality as we get closer to officially launching later this year.

I really do love being a mother more than anything in the world and I have immensely enjoyed the past several years sharing the journey with all of you. You are doing the most important work of your lives right now and I hope you glorify it for what it truly is. Make great little people! Daring Young Mom out.

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