by Ecoziva (Brazil) | Oct 14, 2013 | 2013, Babies, Being Thankful, Brazil, Child Care, Childhood, Culture, Domesticity, Eye on Culture, Family, Health, Home, Inspirational, Life Balance, Maternal Health, Me-Time, Motherhood, Parenting, Religion, Spirituality, Traditions, Working Mother, World Motherhood, Younger Children
My maternity leave is now coming to an end, but throughout it a typical week day has meant about 12-14 hours alone with the kids.
I usually wake up at 5:20 a.m. and my husband leaves with our eldest around six. I spend my mornings with our 2 ½ year old girl and our six month old baby boy. Our son returns from school approximately 1:30 p.m. Sometimes my husband returns early, but he usually gets home between 6 and 8 p.m. depending on traffic, his schedule, etc.
I love my kids dearly. Yet any mother knows that such a routine is not easy. On the typical day, by 6 p.m. my patience starts to wane. By nature I have a calm personality, but if there is screaming on my side, 90% of the time it will be after 6 p.m.
I once heard that 6 p.m. is one of the most difficult times of the day. On an individual level it is the time when stress peaks and on a collective level it is the time when most crime, car accidents and other such things happen. I don’t know if there is data backing that, but in a way it does make sense.
In my case, it is around 6 p.m. that the less-than-noble feelings will start to take over my mind, such as resentment, self-pity and repetitive worrying about pending work (although I have been legally on leave and have not been teaching, I did choose to maintain some activities from home). Other days I wish I could just stop working and truly be a full-time mother.
One thing that has helped is practicing acceptance and gratitude: A student sent me her research project two weeks ago and I haven’t even managed to open the file. Sorry, I am doing the best I can. My daughter has been screaming for 15 minutes in a temper tantrum. How great that she is healthy and her lungs are working! The kitchen sink is piled with dishes and the whole house is a mess. Things will get better as the kids grow older.
Of course it is easier said than done and one thing I try to do every day is to pray that my patience lasts past the kids’ bedtime.
I recently thought about how in the past it was a custom here in Brazil – a mostly catholic country – for the radios to play the Ave Maria in Latin at 6 p.m. In the small town I lived in when I was little, the Catholic church’s bells also tolled at six.
I haven’t been much of a radio listener for the past few years so I went on the web to check if the custom was still present. I learned it is a practice that has been carried out here in Brazil for the last 54 years. It comes from an old Portuguese tradition that in turn derives from the Angelus [*] – a Christian devotion recited at 6 a.m., midday and 6 p.m., which refers to Mary and the Annunciation. In simple terms, it is a time of prayer and meditation.
While reading about the 6 p.m. devotion and thinking about the emotional condition of mothers who spend the whole day alone with their children, I realized that it was the kind of practice that makes sense in the context of motherhood. After all, regardless of religion or debates on the specifics of Mary’s story, in a greater context she can be seen as a symbol of an inspiring and caring mother.
With that in mind, this week I am experimenting with short “Mary meditations” around 6 p.m. to see if it helps extend and deepen my patience and acceptance.
And you? What strategies do you use to help you face the challenges of the day-to-day motherhood routine?
[*] If there are any Catholics out there reading this and I am explaining this wrong please correct me! I was sort of raised Catholic in a Catholic country but I’m not actually Catholic, so I don’t have in-depth knowledge of the Angelus.
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our devoted writer and mother of three in Brazil, EcoZiva.
The photo used in this post was taken by the author.
Eco, from the greek oikos means home; Ziva has many meanings and roots, including Hebrew (brilliance, light), Slovenian (goddess of life) and Sanskrit (blessing). In Brazil, where EcoZiva has lived for most of her life, giving birth is often termed “giving the light”; thus, she thought, a mother is “home to light” during the nine months of pregnancy, and so the penname EcoZiva came to be for World Moms Blog.
Born in the USA in a multi-ethnic extended family, EcoZiva is married and the mother of two boys (aged 12 and three) and a five-year-old girl and a three yearboy. She is trained as a biologist and presently an university researcher/professor, but also a volunteer at the local environmental movement.
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by Fiona Biedermann (Australia) | Oct 7, 2013 | 2013, Being Thankful, Communication, Economy, Family, Health, Husband, Inspirational, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Oceania, Older Children, Relationships, Stress, Teenagers, Working Mother, World Motherhood
I try to do the right thing most of the time by setting a good example for my teenage / adult children. However, like most mothers, sometimes I’m torn between doing what feels right for me and doing what might be right for the family. I guess that’s because sometimes the two are in direct conflict, or often they seem to be.
On the 9th of August, I walked out of a well-paying job with a company that I’d been with for 12 years. I gave my requisite four weeks’ notice with no job to go to, no immediate plans and only a belief that I had to take the leap because I believed I deserved better.
It was perhaps a little selfish financially in terms of my family, and my husband was totally against me resigning without something else to go to. He had legitimate reasons given that the job market in Australia is considerably flat at the moment, as I’m sure it is in many countries.
I was also worried whether I was setting the right example for my children by just walking away from a good job, I was basically throwing in the towel because things had gotten too hard. My husband is also not a man who likes change, which made my decision even more difficult.
The thing is for many months I felt like I’d been dying inside, I felt like my job was sucking the life out of me. I was working in a company which was under new management and was undergoing massive change and restructuring. The biggest problem was that the importance of change management and communication had gone out the window, things that I hold in very high regard.
Morale had dropped, staff were miserable and were leaving in larger than normal numbers. In the end I decided that my family deserved more than my misery and unhappiness and more than that, so did I. Home was not a happy place for those first few weeks after I resigned, but it hadn’t been for months anyway.
Seven weeks of job searching and plenty of soul searching and I finally have landed the job of my dreams. There are many who voiced their concern and worried about the mistake I was making, those loved ones are now eating their words and telling me that I did the right thing and how brave I was to do it.
My brother recently sent me the following quote, which ironically also arrived in my letterbox in the form of business coaching advertising material in the same week I got the job offer.
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” Henry Ford
As scary and as uncertain as my decision was, I fully believed in myself and I took the leap. I knew what I wanted and I was determined to find it, plus I was totally prepared to accept whatever might be.
I knew that I may have to take an interim job in the meantime, if that’s what it took to find the right job and still keep my family on track financially.
My decision could have gone pear shaped and turned out badly, but I’m a big believer that sometimes you just have to believe.
The biggest lesson I’ve taught my children is that you have to believe in yourself, fight for what you are worth and be brave enough to follow your dreams. I’m doing exactly that, I’ve landed my dream job with the financial and personal rewards I know I’m worthy of. I’m now excited about going back to work.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve taught your children and do you back up your words with action?
This is an original World Moms Blog post by Fiona from Inspiration to Dream of Adelaide, South Australia. Fiona can be found writing or reading in every spare moment that isn’t filled up with work and her family.
Image credit Cliparto ID 3130264 – This image is used in compliance with the terms of the Cliparto Standard Royalty Free License Agreement.
Fiona at Inspiration to Dream is a married mother of three amazing and talented MM’s (mere males, as she lovingly calls them) aged 13, 16 and 22, and she became a nana in 2011!
She believes she’s more daunted by becoming a nana than she was about becoming a mother! This Aussie mother figures she will also be a relatively young nana and she’s not sure that she’s really ready for it yet, but then she asks, are we ever really ready for it? Motherhood or Nanahood. (Not really sure that’s a word, but she says it works for her.)
Fiona likes to think of herself as honest and forthright and is generally not afraid to speak her mind, which she says sometimes gets her into trouble, but hey, it makes life interesting. She’s hoping to share with you her trials of being a working mother to three adventurous boys, the wife of a Mr Fix-it who is definitely a man’s man and not one of the ‘sensitive new age guy’ generation, as well as, providing her thoughts and views on making her way in the world.
Since discovering that she’s the first blogger joining the team from Australia, she also plans to provide a little insight into the ‘Aussie’ life, as well. Additionally, Fiona can be found on her personal blog at Inspiration to Dream.
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by Tinne from Tantrums and Tomatoes | Sep 30, 2013 | Babies, Belgium, Family, Kids, Life Balance, Milestones, Parenting, Pregnancy, Relationships, Siblings, Tantrum and Tomatoes, Womanhood, World Mom Feature, World Motherhood, Younger Children
I suppose it is inevitable. After all, people are what they are, they can’t change themselves. And although curiosity was apparently the mastermind behind the murder of someone’s cat, there are many curious people out there.
And curious people ask questions.
Sometimes stupid questions, sometimes profound questions, sometime questions which aren’t really questions but more a judgement on one of your actions and/or beliefs.
And sometimes people ask questions on matters which are none of their damn business.
One of those questions is the oft asked : “When are you having another?” or – since I have two girls: “When are you going to have a boy?”.
The answer usually runs along the lines of : “Oh not just yet! I have enough on my plate with just these two!” or “A boy? With these two… (at which I point at my girls doing whatever they are doing) the poor thing would just get traumatized.”
But I rarely tell the truth: No, never. No we are not trying for another baby. No we are not planning to “gift” our girls with a baby brother.
Perhaps it is due to the fact that I had my two girls in such a short space of time (When n°2 was born n°1 was a mere 16 months old) but I am most definitely done having children.
There are many reasons, finances being but one of them. No, we are not in financial trouble, but face it: raising a child is wickedly expensive. For the past three years we’ve spent a small fortune on day care and let’s not even talk about the price of diapers shall we… Had I been better informed I might seriously have considered buying stock options in Pampers or Huggies. With both kids in school we get a bit of financial breathing space, we can afford to finish our home.
But the main reason is balance.
When you are a mother, whether you have a job or are a stay at home mom, life is nothing less than a big balancing act on a loose rope above a pit filled with hungry tigers and fire.
Our balance is OK, right now. We are not in immediate danger of falling off the rope. Both kids attend school full-time, they are too young to have ‘real’ hobbies yet so no rush, rush, rush on Saturday morning – as yet (Please note: I do not count running after each other screaming bloody murder as a hobby).
Because of their relative closeness in age their feeding schedules (if I may be so blunt) are relatively in sync, meaning I don’t have to provide three or four individual breakfasts, lunches and dinners anymore each day. Lately they’ve started playing proper games together, in which each is an equal player and which do not require constant parental interference, just distant supervision.
We can start going on proper outings without dragging half the nursery and a whole plethora of baby food along, just a change of clothes, some cookies and a water bottle will get us through.
So in short: after four years of clutching desperately at that rope we’ve arrived at a spot where we can breathe freely, where we can relax for just a second, where there is time to be “us” and “just me” again.
The realization that we were as we should be came when we gave away the double stroller without an inch of pain or regret. Just happiness that there would finally be some more room in the garage.
Our family has found its balance and it feels wonderful.
When did you realize your family was as it should be?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer in Belgium and mother of just two…Tinne from Tantrums and Tomatoes.
Born in Belgium on the fourth of July in a time before the invention of the smart phone Tinne is a working mother of two adorably mischievous little girls, the wife of her high school sweetheart and the owner of a black cat called Atilla.
Since she likes to cook her blog is mainly devoted to food and because she is Belgian she has an absurd sense of humour and is frequently snarky. When she is not devoting all her attention to the internet, she likes to read, write and eat chocolate. Her greatest nemesis is laundry.
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by Mama B (Saudi Arabia) | Sep 11, 2013 | 2013, Cultural Differences, Culture, Family, Family Travel, Grandparent, Home, Life Balance, Saudi Arabia, Uncategorized, World Motherhood
The first week of school, after a two and a half month summer, is nearly over and we are slowly getting into the swing of things.
I love the schedules, the school calendar, the time tables. The order of it all is just so… ahh… comforting! It only takes a short while before I start dreaming of our next break, but being back home is such a blessing.
There is a feeling I get when landing back in Riyadh, which is like sitting back in your favorite chair that has moulded its self to your body perfectly. Everything fits into the right place. It is an enormous relief, no matter how much fun we were having, to be back home where I know where everything is if I need it.
When I am traveling I feel totally disconnected. My life here revolves around my family – ‘my tribe’ as I call them. This is not only my ‘mini tribe’, consisting of my husband and children, but of my whole tribe of mother, father. sisters, sisters in law, brothers in law, cousins, aunts and uncles. It is a foreign feeling to be somewhere without the them for a long while.
Mama B’s a young mother of four beautiful children who leave her speechless in both, good ways and bad. She has been married for 9 years and has lived in London twice in her life. The first time was before marriage (for 4 years) and then again after marriage and kid number 2 (for almost 2 years). She is settled now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (or as settled as one can be while renovating a house).
Mama B loves writing and has been doing it since she could pick up a crayon. Then, for reasons beyond her comprehension, she did not study to become a writer, but instead took graphic design courses. Mama B writes about the challenges of raising children in this world, as it is, who are happy, confident, self reliant and productive without driving them (or herself) insane in the process.
Mama B also sheds some light on the life of Saudi, Muslim children but does not claim to be the voice of all mothers or children in Saudi. Just her little "tribe." She has a huge, beautiful, loving family of brothers and sisters that make her feel like she wants to give her kids a huge, loving family of brothers and sisters, but then is snapped out of it by one of her three monkeys screaming “Ya Maamaa” (Ya being the arabic word for ‘hey’). You can find Mama B writing at her blog, Ya Maamaa . She's also on Twitter @YaMaamaa.
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by Karyn Wills | Sep 2, 2013 | Brothers, Childhood, Education, Family, Life Balance, Motherhood, Nature, New Zealand, Parenting, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood, Younger Children
When my boys were learning to roll over, I never stopped them from bumping their heads on the floor. We had carpet, vinyl and tiles, and they had access to all of those surfaces and often rolled from one to another. By the end of the first week there had been a few bangs and tears, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted with a cuddle and rock in my arms – and they had all learned to lift their heads up as they rolled.
I didn’t really think about this approach much but assigned it to other events as they grew. I did things like: holding my hand over the corner of a table when they toddled by; casually pointing out the floor was wet after I had mopped it; physically turning them around as they crawled down our concrete steps, so they could get down backwards; making sure they had one bed they could bounce on; and showing them how to get out of the trees they had climbed. As a result by the age of four they could all do things like; cut food and sticks using sharp knives, get themselves out of tight spots, and use a battery-drill and an iron without hurting themselves. By then they knew the difference between tools and toys.
I never pushed them or even encouraged them to do these things; I just (mostly) allowed them to as they were inclined to, taught them a few tricks, and turned up with plasters and cuddles when things didn’t go according to plan.
I have come to accept that children are driven to seek a certain amount of danger and I have found the more I have allowed my boys to set the pace of their ‘dangerous’ behaviours the more self-assured and capable they have become, and more aware of the risks NOT to take.
They occasionally have bitten off more than they could chew (when four years old, our eldest decided to ride around our block alone on his bike, he didn’t want to do that again for another two years) but most often than not they have taken small steps, fast. I often see children who have not been allowed to take the same small steps and they seem, to me, to be either too timid to take any chances or they over estimate their abilities to truly dangerous levels.
There seem to be two strong opposing forces in New Zealand parenting at the moment. One in which ‘safety first’ is the catch phrase, and the other which emphasises the importance of children being allowed to take measured risks. It seems I’ve ended up on one side of this debate without even trying, but now am really pleased that I have taken the approach I have taken.
What’s the approach to danger in your house? Do you think children need to be kept safe or that they need to learn to manage danger?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer in New Zealand, Karyn Van Der Zwet
The photograph used in this post is credited to the author.
Karyn is a teacher, writer and solo mother to three sons. She lives in the sunny wine region of Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand in the city of Napier.
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by Ecoziva (Brazil) | Aug 12, 2013 | 2013, Being Thankful, Birthing, Brazil, Child Care, Contraception, Family, Husband, Kids, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Marriage, Milestones, Motherhood, Nature, Parenting, Pregnancy, Working Mother, World Motherhood, Younger Children
It is no secret to those who know me that marrying and having kids wasn’t exactly part of my life plan. I thought someday I might want to, but up to my 24th year of age – which is when I got pregnant with our first child – the feeling hadn’t come up. My husband, on the other hand, wanted to marry and have a bunch of kids from the time he was a teenager!
After a lot of inner work and, above all, after seeing our son’s face for the first time, I fell in love with motherhood. The issue then became: how many children would we actually have? What exactly would be the average between my hesitance and my husband’s “as-many-as-I-can-convince-her-to”?
The answer was part instinct, part serendipity. As a wedding gift, one of my husband’s college professors had a painting made especially for us. The painter did not know us, so (as the story goes) the professor described us as two young, nature-loving, alternative creatures. The piece that resulted – which now hangs right here behind me – portrays a solemn-looking, round-faced couple that is so close they could be Siamese twins. The left hand of each rests on the other’s heart. The girl wears a flower printed dress, has flowers in her hair and a single flower in her hand. The guy wears a suit of sorts. On the side of each of their shoulders is a green, succulent plant, and above each plant is an angel resting on what seems like a marble pillar, one blue, one yellow. Above the couple is a yellow, flying fish.
I was five months pregnant then and had just found out the baby was a boy. The name we chose means “he who tills the earth”. I don’t know who said it first, but we started joking that the blue angel was our boy, the yellow angel was our future second child (a daughter whose name would mean “lady of the waters” in an Indigenous language) and the flying fish would be our youngest (a little boy whose name – a reference to a famous Greek character – would mean “he who balances himself in the air”).
Coincidence or not, here we are almost nine years later with the three of them, born in that order and aged nearly nine, two and a half, and five months. And with the added bonus that both our lady of the waters and our little “flying fish” were born in our tub, to the sign of Pisces!
Having gone through a particularly difficult pregnancy this last time, I constantly tried to convince my husband to undergo a vasectomy. He, however, did not even want to hear about it (like many men I know, he has a huge needle phobia!).
Later, while I was in labor, he said he would do it (talk about good timing!). At that moment I was ecstatic, yet after the baby was born I began to question myself about our decision. I look at that cute little baby (it doesn’t help that he is so calm and sleeps so well!!) and think wistfully, “Oh my, this is the last baby in the house until we have grandkids!” Or now, as the time approaches to start introducing food in addition to nursing, “This is the last time I will be able to smell this pure breast milk breath all the time!” And so on…
My husband of course took advantage of all this and decided to postpone the vasectomy for another two years until I am absolutely sure.
When I stop to really ponder, three seems like a perfect number considering our life style and the way we raise our kids. For instance, we enjoy working from home as much as possible and choose to rely on as little outer help as possible; all of this gets harder with more kids.
Of course, if we “accidentally” did have more children we would find a way. On the other hand, if my husband did undergo a vasectomy and then we later changed our mind, we could adopt (which was a possibility we had considered before having our third child).
Do I really want more kids or am I just attached to this cute baby phase? The truth is, I don’t really know the answer right now! Let’s see what the future has in store…
And you, how many kids do you have? Was it a planned number or did it just happen? How did you decide? Please share your story!
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our enviro-mama and mother of three in Brazil, EcoZiva.
The photograph used in this post is of the referenced painting commissioned for the author and her husband. It was submitted by the author.
Eco, from the greek oikos means home; Ziva has many meanings and roots, including Hebrew (brilliance, light), Slovenian (goddess of life) and Sanskrit (blessing). In Brazil, where EcoZiva has lived for most of her life, giving birth is often termed “giving the light”; thus, she thought, a mother is “home to light” during the nine months of pregnancy, and so the penname EcoZiva came to be for World Moms Blog.
Born in the USA in a multi-ethnic extended family, EcoZiva is married and the mother of two boys (aged 12 and three) and a five-year-old girl and a three yearboy. She is trained as a biologist and presently an university researcher/professor, but also a volunteer at the local environmental movement.
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