Episode 31: Enough With the Mom Guilt.

Happy mid-July, friends! This summer sure is screaming by. It gives me endless joy to see those plans that we made back in January coming to fruition. One of our plans involved Chris taking all three girls to Australia by himself for two weeks.

Those two weeks happen to be occurring right now.

While my time without my family has been busier than I would have liked it to be, it goes without saying that I’m incredibly grateful for it. Grateful and, at first, a little guilty.

Who am I, I wondered, to deserve such a luxury?

I’ll also be honest: It took me about two full days to stop feeling that anxiety that comes with having to do every single little thing on a tight deadline. You know the feeling? That one where you know you’re going to be interrupted by a little person any second, so you go ahead and rush through whatever it is you’re doing at the moment?

I’ll also be honest: It took me about two full days to stop feeling that anxiety that comes with having to do every single little thing on a tight deadline.

After about three days, though, I decided to put down the Mom Guilt and just enjoy. After all, opportunities like this don’t come around often. So while I know my girls are off having the time of their lives and being spoiled silly by their Aussie family, here are some of the things that I did that don’t ever get to happen in my everyday mom life.

• I slept an hour later than I normally do and even worked out at night a couple of times. I’m usually far too tired to even consider that.

• I ordered a grocery shop for only the foods I like and cooked to eat whenever and whatever I wanted.

• I ate my lunch on the couch in front of the television. (That is when my contractor and his merry men weren’t traipsing around the house. Whole other story.)

• I went shopping in stores and I tried stuff on!

  

• I left the calendar blank. You know the one. It hangs on the fridge and can barely fit all the kid activities/play dates/school functions/PTA meetings/etc.? Yeah. That one. It was blank for two full weeks and it was glorious.

• I painted my nails.

• I purged every single room in the house and washed every single towel/linen/sheet. I am, after all, still a mom ;)

• I did two to three less loads of laundry per week.

• I went on a trip to Napa with girlfriends. I haven’t gone away with friends in years.

  

  I’m sure there were several other things I did throughout my two weeks that were far different than what I do in my everyday Mom Life, but those are some top things that stood out. And here’s what I learned on this little experiment of ours:

  A. It’s necessary for parents to take breaks. Dads too, of course, but Moms … I’m talking to you, specifically, and

  B. Your kids will and do benefit from experiences that are also out of their norm. The photos that I got daily of what my girls were doing in Australia both broke my heart (because I missed them and had FOMO) and made me so happy. While I occasionally wondered if I should have cracked and gone with them, at the end of the day, I’m so glad they — and their dad — had this experience.

  
  And I’m glad I had it, too.

  

About that little girlfriends’ trip, you can read about it over on my travel site.

I wrote another story for TurboTax about how lemonade stands provide an excellent way for parents to teach their kids about money in the real world. Check it out here.

I will be at the Edgewater Public Market with Edgewater Books this Sunday for their summer party for kids!

Learn more here and come say hey!

After that, our next event is the Farmer’s Market with Second Star to the right on August 30th. After that, we hit the ground running with “Purple Potatoes Will Turn You into a Witch” stuff!

I’m pretty sure every single weekend from then on is booked, and I couldn’t be more excited to show this book to the world.

Until then … bis bald, friends!

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