Here's Why I Stopped Blogging

Last night my 1 year old was up from 1 AM to 3 AM, and so was her oldest sister who was completely distressed by our baby girl's screams, #whitenoisemachinefail. She's fine, she's not sick as far as we know, she's just got this idea that she doesn't want to sleep because whatever. Some strong independent woman feminist thing she got from somewhere.

While this was going on, John and I were working feverishly on a project that is way out of our scope, interrupting each other with something along the lines of "what the hell were we thinking?" every three to five minutes. We were working at night because there isn't a chance in the world that both of our brains can fire at the same time during the day, and we had a deadline, like actual grownups or something.

Once 6 AM rolled around, the 1 year old was up again with a fury, and John let me sleep in till the ripe old time of 7:45 AM for which I am eternally grateful - sounds like sarcasm, but I'm serious. Prayer hands emojis, praise hands emojis.

Morning rush, realize we forgot to read the assigned book for our daughter's kindergarten class, read it, mark it as a "smiley face" on her track sheet, rifle through the recycling pile to get "craft supplies" as per teacher's request (okay I did that in Saturday and in full sight of multiple neighbours, so high five), realize we don't have bread for a sandwich, decide that "snack lunch" is lunch enough, one takes child to school, other throws on Netflix for littles in an attempt to shower, let baby rifle through boxes in the bathroom cupboards in an attempt to shower, and put on shoes to go play in the backyard.

Coffee.

Post-morning rush, suddenly 1 year old realizes she's exhausted, attempt to nap, scream for an hour. Decide to stuff 1 year old with copious amounts of food in the hopes that she falls asleep in her high chair like her older sister did one time. Give three year old a bottle of chocolate milk that has an expiry date 3 months from now, which come on, let's not call that "milk". Continue feeding, baby continue yelling, realize complete failure to be the Blog / Instagram / Pinterest worthy mom that somehow is out there and somehow has all this under control and is also baking muffins that are GFDFSFTF (those are real things guys). Laugh 'cause Bunmi Laditan, Queen of "you suck but it's cool cuz me too" isn't making me feel better either just because she gave her kids pop tarts this morning and whatever other antics she's up to not doing today. Funny and real, but probably not #lifegoals either.

I stopped blogging because I am struggling to pull it together. Happily, wearily - okay happily-sometimes - wiping ketchup and banana off of stuff and reminding myself to eat vegetables and lose the 25 lbs I gained since having my last child. Oh and keep the business looking fly because it's all about Instagram these days and the being not just a talented but also a cool photographer, I think.

I stopped blogging because I don't want anyone to think I suddenly whipped into shape, or that is, maintained my whipped-in shape image that I was able to curate when I only had 1 kid who is the Type A personality poster child that prides herself on being generally tidy and obedient. It's not that I began feeling insufficient as a mom necessarily, but I resolved to stop listening in to or looking onto what other moms portrayed as their whipped-in-shape image. Sure, I still follow Emily Morrice because she took an active Christian leadership role in my life - my real life - for a formative period of time, plus her blog is beautiful and awesome and sincere. (I didn't not design it.) But otherwise, I had to plug my ears and yell NANANANANA so I didn't hear or see what other moms were doing because inadequacy would so quickly creep in. And if I blog, aren't I adding to that whisper of inadequacy in other moms' ears? (Not to say that's true, but it's how I felt for a while).

I stopped blogging because I'm "breathing underwater" for a little while (as one of my favourite authors calls it), and I actually don't have time. As I type this I've had one interruption to get more food (obv), wipe a face, remove a shirt, find a book, and break up a conflict fry up sweet potato which I did burn btw, but only a little.

I stopped blogging because I actually like my kids and I don't want to accidentally spill some beans on them to the public. As you might have read earlier, we want to homeschool them - whether or not that can truly be a practicality based on our 2-person-operations business is something we have yet to discover or surrender completely. In January we popped Lilian into regular public school because we couldn't honour her well and organize our time effectively, and she deserves the best, and we couldn't give that to her in that time. Maybe one day soon we'll sort it out. I think my kids are funny. I also think they're sometimes annoying, and they are certainly far from obedient, but they're learning, resolved sin after resolved sin,  to change - a little like their mama and daddy who aren't the same people as when this journey began.

I'm not resolved to stop blogging forever, but I have felt it on my mind and heart to write about why I stopped in the first place. I blogged before blogging was a popular method of parenting-storytelling (yeah that's right I did) and I garnered an actual audience by sort-of accident, and I get asked often why I haven't kept it up. People want to know why the story just sort of stopped before we went to Nicaragua. Well, that's why. It's not the end of the story, but it's a fits-and-starts telling of it because John and I are holding it together some days, and some days we're not, and we don't like telling partial stories.