I love my kids more than anything on this entire planet and staying home with them everyday is an incredible opportunity I am privileged to get to experience every summer. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It is what I look forward to all year long! We have a blast spending time together going to the zoo, going to the Children’s museum, swimming, playing outside all day in the sunshine, watching movies on the rainy days, going on Target runs, doing art projects, cooking together, and doing about a million other things together, but let me tell you, it can be exhausting sometimes! Definitely a good kind of exhausting that makes me feel good inside and leaves me hoping I am just as tired again the next day from playing with my babies and being their mama, but exhausting none the less. 

With this current  COVID- 19 quarantine though, the struggle is a little more real and the number of exhausting days are a little bit greater. I have been home like so many others for over a month now trying to balance working from home, being a kick butt mom, and attempting to actually teach my one and three year old something everyday (I am a teacher, so this should be easy for me right?) while maintaining the most loving, non-television watching, fun home I can imagine. Let me just be the first one to say, it isn’t the easiest thing on the planet to do and some days I completely one hundred percent fail. Somedays my kids eat candy or watch too much “Fancy Nancy” (my three year old is obsessed). Somedays the house is a wreck and I can’t figure out why because I don’t remember sitting down, eating, or even going to the bathroom for that matter (it for sure wasn’t alone if I did). Somedays, my littlest climbs on anything and everything she can and I almost have approximately 352 heart attacks in what feels like a four hour period. Somedays, I am so stressed about how I am going to get everything done, I feel like I am drowning. Somedays, my girls cry all day long for what seems like silly reasons to me, but I know deep down feels like the end of the world to them. And somedays, they even fight (gasp!). Now when you tell somebody all of this at first, I am sure they are thinking what in the what? She is just completely failing miserably! If you are anything like me, you even feel that way about yourself sometimes and guess what, it is totally normal! We all think we are failures at some point.

In this house, there are definitely some "somedays” and there always will be. And guess what? I am 100% okay with that! Why? Well, let me tell you about the other days in this house. Other days, my kids eat nothing but fruits and veggies and don’t complain about one thing I make them for lunch. Other days, we read so many books in one day I loose count. Other days, we go on walks, play outside, have picnic lunches, and play together until my kids crash. Other days we do fun elaborate art projects that go exactly as planned. Other days we dance and sing, a lot! Other days, I get all of my work done at nap time and don’t feel stressed at all. Other days, my kids give each other hugs and kisses and are best friends all day long! Other days, I feel like I have this homeschooling a three year old thing down. Other days I feel so inspired by something I do with the girls, I get inspired to design outfits and end up killing two birds with one stone! My point to all of this is there are a whole lot of days in the year, if I can have more “other days” than “Somedays,” then I am taking it as a win! It is so easy during this quarantine to get stressed, overwhelmed, and down on yourself about not being a good mom, wife, career woman, whatever, if you focus on all of your “somedays.” Don’t! Focus on all of your “other days” instead. You are an amazing mama, own it! 

This week, I had a mama, teacher, designer win all in one when my three year old and I read the book The Rainbow Fish. This is one of my favorite books and it has great lessons for kids! Adaline and I read the book, then we talked about who the main character was in the book or who the book was all about. We discussed why the other fish didn’t like the rainbow fish and why he didn’t really have any friends. We talked about the importance of being kind to others and sharing and how he had so many more friends when he was kind. Then I cut out some different colored paper pieces for scales and some foil pieces for the pretty scales and we decorated our own Rainbow fish. Once we were done, we counted the different color scales and figured out which color was used the most. Then, we talked about the letter R, the sound it made, and we tried to think of other words that made the “R” sound. She absolutely loved this activity and so did I! We had a blast doing it together and she was learning the whole time without even knowing it. 

  While we were making our fish, I had a lightbulb go off and I came up with the idea of the book themed collection in our preorder at Addie Lou Blu this week!! I am loving how it turned out!

Our Rainbow Fish

The book collection inspired by our activity