What to do...what to do...

I've been really mulling over what to do with my blog now.
And with the New Year here, it's a good time to make a move.

My blog started out just causal projects I have done.
Then turned into: pouring my heart out, along side pregnancy-health stuff, as I faced my having-a-second-baby fears. ("Please, please, VBAC, please." -- The chant of my heart.)
And now with my blog getting a bit of attention (thank you Pinterest) I sit here and think, what more do I have to say? Who am I now?

And I think I might just have been fighting my strength all the while.

My new focus very much has to do with being a mom.
Also an adult.
And feeling like a mess.

I started out my grown-up-life totally lost.

• I went away to college having never done my own laundry.

• I got married having had grocery shopped only twice (not counting the times I was small enough to ride in the cart).

• So I didn't know how to pick out the grapefruit my husband requested on our grocery list and I circled the citrus fruit for maybe 20 mins trying to figure it out.

• Before adulthood I was messy and never tried to clean. And then I got married and had a house that I wanted to look like Better Homes and Gardens by magic.

And well, I could go on, but let's just say I was lost.
I didn't know how to be a grown up.

I sorta got that under control --- enough to get by anyway.
And then we started our family.
Enter: a whole new level of lost.

Did I ever tell you, I've never been around babies... and very, very, few kids. (Unless you mean when I was the same age as them.)
I don't know what I am doing.

Then emotionally add in the fact that there is the internet -- which make it seem like everyone should be doing everything, and photograph it too!
I get weighed down.

So, basically I am digging my way out as I go along.

I suspect there will be very few days where I feel rested.
I suspect there will be very few times where I feel I got it right.

But I have a goal in mind.
To try and get these hard learned lessons built into my girls (and possible boys, if God gives them.)

That idea sounds hard to me too.
I like to just get stuff done, its hard for me to want to sit there and go slowly along so a child can learn it.
But I want to do that so they can have the blessings of lessons learned early, while its still easy for them.

SO...
where does the blog fall into play with all this?

I'm going to start keeping track of lessons I have learned across the board.
Laundry, cooking, shopping, mommying, what have you.

I'm just going to call it "Things I've Learned."

I don't know if my new focus is going to make anyone else happy.

It may turn out to be incredibly dull.

(You should note that I'm me, and kinda random, so my blog is always going to have many facets and different projects and such, but I'm just talking general focus.)

I like the idea of blogging this stuff for a few reasons.

Having it written down will help me to remember what was hard to learn so I remember to teach it, not just assume its built in knowledge.

And if for some reason I'm not there to tell them, I hope they can still find this blog online and get access to this stuff.

Its really easy for me to forget everything right now. (New mom brain.)

And it will be even easier for this stuff to fade away as time goes by. There are a bunch of questions I have asked my mom and she often says I just can't remember. So I want to put it down while its still happening.

And maybe, just maybe, if I write this stuff down now while it is happening and I am {somewhat} young and possibly still perceivable as cool (ha, do kids ever think their parent's are cool?) maybe my kids will believe me when I tell them stuff instead of just writing me off as an old fuddy duddy? (Mm. I think this thought is too good to be true.)  It will at least mean something to them once they are adults and see I'm not just crazy that real life does happen. :)



Also, the idea of writing to my children on my blog is so much more appealing to me than trying to write to the masses. The internet is too big, and people are too diverse for me to really say what people I don't know need to hear. I like knowing my audience.

That being said I like the idea of leaving this stuff online, because maybe someone will like it -- maybe someone who feels like I did/do will find some ideas to help get them integrated into adulthood. Unless of course, I'm the only one who is this lost, and therefore all this stuff will just be common sense to everyone reading (or no-longer-reading-due-to-boredom.)

I'm not sure society is remembering to teach Home Ec to us any more -- we all got too excited about life outside the home.
And so much of the media (like reality TV) is doing nothing but give us very strange impressions of what's "normal."
(Like having more affluence than can generally be expected, and therefore not needing to do your own cooking, cleaning and laundry. Getting to go to red carpet events? Or at least dressing like you do.)

I think more people are lost on how to be an adult than would let on. (And a lot have let on, to me.)

I'm not at all addressing the idea of stay at home mom vs working mom -- we all live at home.
And we need to know how to keep our head above water there.

via

I loved looking at the photos of old Home Ec classes to find something for this post. Call me crazy, but I am jealous of all the stuff that used to be regularly taught in those classes. I know a lot of women might have seen it/ currently see it as sexist or degrading --- I'm not trying to say women should only be home makers, I just would have loved to been better prepared for the everyday stuff of life.

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I mean look at that -- Mad Men style ironing class! How awesome is that? Its like everyone used to be Martha Stewart just by going to school.

No longer, my friend, no longer.

So that's where many of my posts are going to focus now.
A sort of Home Ec type curriculum, if you will.
For my girls.

I doubt I will actually do anything like "How to iron" but maybe. Just stuff I've learned the hard way.
It's not exactly Home Ec -- but close enough.

I hope it might be a blessing to someone else too.
But if not, I know it will bless our family.

I also hope you don't take anything I write on this topic too personally, because like I've said, its for my girls, based on our family, so if it doesn't make sense in your life just brush it off. The internet is just too big for me, I don't like how easy to is to offend people, so I preemptively say please feel free to ignore me and live in peace.

P.S. Yes I still have a bit more pregnancy health posts brewing in the brain. So stick around for those too! I'm not totally through all that!