Episode 3 - Folding Socks and Garbage Chores

The Lumpy Mother

Natalie and Sarah talk through their big and small New Year’s Resolutions, why mornings are the worst, redefining success when you’re a stay at home parent, and more in this episode of The Lumpy Mother!

Resources mentioned this week include the Instagram account @coachingwithkelsey

You can follow Lumpy Mother on Facebook and Instagram @lumpymotherpodcast and on Twitter @lumpymotherpod1.

We want to hear from you! Email us at [e-mail] with your yes’, no’s, and hello’s, or anything else you might want to share!

Transcript:

Natalie: Hi, I'm Natalie Mills!

Sarah: And I'm Sarah Stark!

Natalie: And you are listening to the Lumpy Mother, the podcast where we share the joys and terrors of motherhood.

Sarah: We are two best friends and Moms who love learning and laughing together. I have an 8 month old son and a 2 1/2 year old daughter.

Natalie: and I have 4 kids, and 8 year old daughter and 3 songs who are 7, 6, and 18 months.

Sarah: So, if you fiercely love your kids but also fiercely love when they leave for school in the morning...

Natalie: Then you have come to the right space.

Sarah: The way this works is that Natalie and I will have a yes, a no, and a hello for the week. Or, in other words, something good, bad, and random that has to do with our week in parenting.

Natalie: Sarah and I have a feeling that you will relate to our experiences.

Sarah: But if you can't relate, tell us about it! Email us at [e-mail]! We love to learn and we want to know what you think about the topics we cover. and we just might share it in an episode.

Natalie: Every week we want to talk just for a few minutes about the things we talked about in the previous episode as a little update. Sarah do you want to go first this time?

Sarah: Yes. So last week my no was about power struggles and the main thing was doing my 2 1/2 year old daughter, Evie's, hair because she hates it! and I want her to have bodily autonomy but yeah, she gets so many things in her hair, so I almost force her every time to put her hair up. Anyway, I've been trying to be more relaxed about that this week. Today, Evie's hair was covered in cream cheese, she had a popsicle so she's sticky. It was really bad. We decided that we're going to cut her hair but I still want to wait because of covid and we don't go anywhere unless we absolutely have to so until then I"m just going to have to play with it or maybe only do her hair when other people come over. Letting go is really hard because it looks bad. She looks so dirty and she just had a bath yesterday. I gave her another bath today...I guess she's just going to have to have more baths. She loves baths, maybe that will mix things up.

Natalie: I vote that you just do it in your kitchen with a pair of scissors.

Sarah: Gasp

Natalie: I cut all of our kids hair and Nick's hair.

Sarah: nice, you probably save so much that money that way! I guess I was thinking I wanted her first hair cut to be a picture/video experience. But only one of us can go in with her, so maybe it'd be better with both of us there for the experience.

Natalie: I feel like it's just as special of a memory if Mommy does it.

Sarah: Yeah and we can save a bunch of her locks. Maybe that's what we'll do. So that's where we are with that. and then for my hello last week I talked about how I tried to escape zip ties based on this guy who is an ex-royal marine that I found on instagram. He does all these escape videos and one of them was escaping zip ties. and I tried it unsuccessfully again. The zip ties were just too heavy duty I think. Well anyway I said he's from the U.K...but he's probably, DUTCH in the USA since his handle is @dutchintheUSA. How about you, Natalie, any rewinds?

Natalie: I talked to my Mom and she listened to the episode where I mentioned she was my yes and we laughed about how I followed her around the house. She said you could have just sat down at relaxed. It just feels weird letting someone else do everything.

Sarah: It feels like you have to manage it like you have to make sure that nothing is forgotten so they all sleep. For me, it's making sure everything is done so the kids sleep all night.

Natalie: For me, it more about feeling guilty if I let her do all the work or something. So anyway we talked about that a little bit.

So next up, we're really excited about this

Sarah: Yes! We have our first listener emails! It makes me really happy. People are responding, they're listening, they're liking.

Natalie: Oh, it's so fun.

Sarah: The first email I'm going to read is from Angie. It says:

Hi Natalie and Sarah,

As someone who listens to podcasts religiously and isn't a mother, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your first episode. Since I don't have children of my own, it's sometimes hard to relate to what being a parent entails. But your stories made me have more empathy for those in my life who are trying to juggle parenthood. My boyfriend has been the primary caregiver of his daughter since she was born and is currently responsible for doing virtual learning with her three days a week. He's told me similar stories about public meltdown and sleepless nights when she was a toddler.

Wow, thank you, Angie, that's so amazing that someone who doesn't have kids is listening too.

Natalie: She's a bonus Mom. My first one is from Amy and she has older kids but she said:

My advice from a mother of older kids is to let your littles make mistakes. Be there to catch them when they fail, help them learn from the experience.

and I loved that.

Sarah: Yeah, I love that too. I think that's hard to do. Especially when my toddler is interacting with other toddlers and they're not sharing or something, I know she'll learn better..if you watch long enough they figure it out, but I'm always stepping in. It's another worry of someone thinking I'm a bad mom because of my daughter's actions which is not fair to my daughter because I'm centering myself.

Natalie: I step in when it's with strangers, but when we're with people who I'm really close with the parents and we're friends it's almost like we make an agreement that we're going to let them figure this out. Then I know it's a safe place that my kids can do it as well.

Sarah: Ohhhh that's perfect because everyone is agreement beforehand, your kids are safe, and they're making their own mistakes.

This next email is from an anonymous listener. It says:

Great first podcast episode! It was my first podcast listen ever! It's not really bad advice, but I hated when people would tell me, 'at least your baby is healthy. or, healthy baby, happy momma!' after I had a traumatic birth experience with my older son. It made me feel really guilty at a vulnerable time. Now I make sure to never say anything like that to new Moms where I didn't realize before how it could be taken so poorly.

Natalie: I loved her perspective. I thought that was really enlightening.

So our last email today is from Samantha. She has some advice, but she also had a really great sleepwalking story that I wanted to read.

She said:

As a new mother and a young mother I wish someone had told me how important it is to accept help from others. With my first two kids I was completely on an island alone and it was so difficult. I had more help with my last two, but I also had far more friendships established. Also, when you're at the hospital, let the nurses take the baby to the nurser for a few hours so you can actually sleep.

Her nine year old will sleepwalk from time to time. When he was four or five he walked into the living room and tried to pee into the play refrigerator in his play kitchen. It's now a hilarious story that he is very proud of.

Sarah: I love that he was proud of it. At first, I thought it was going to be in their actual fridge. or in the freezer, can you imagine if it froze? That's where my brain went: What's the worst outcome of having to clean this up that could occur.

Thank you for the emails everyone!

Okay, Natalie, what's your yes?

Natalie: Yay! My yes is game-changers in kids development. There's some obvious things that make your life a lot easer like: sleeping through the night and that kind of stuff. But I Love thinking about the weird things that make a huge difference. Like when they're still young and learn to put the pacifier back in their mouth on their own. That felt like a huge moment. Especially in the middle of the night we would have kids that would lose the pacifier and then wake up. That felt huge. Every so often my kids hit one of these things and it always feels like a big deal. Even, like, holding their own bottle. One of my favorites was when they learned to buckle their own seatbelts. The boys used to have to sit all the way in the back of our mini an and before they could buckle themselves in , I had to open the trunk and stand in the trunk where anyone that drives by can see my butt hanging out over the back and lean over the backseat to buckle them in. So when they could buckle themselves that was a huge deal. Small things like putting on their own shoes. When we leave the house it takes forever for everyone to get dressed. We live in a cold and snowy area, so shoes and coats that sort of stuff. Recently, our kids are finally confident with the remote control. Next level screen time. I can tell them, yes, you can watch tv, and they can do it all on their own. So I don't have to stop the dishes or whatever else I'm doing and they can turn it on, they can get to Netflix, or Hulu, or Amazon Prime, they can pick the shows that they want, they can change it if they want to. That's huge for me.

Sarah: That's one of the most frustrating things for me is when I have to stop in the middle of something like a chore and just trying to get it done. It seems to take so much longer to get things done, even the little things. So I'm going to start training Evie on the remote.

Natalie: Do it! It's totally worth it!