A year ago I was in my kitchen, trying to get ready dinner on the table when I heard this song for the first time.  It stopped me in my tracks and gave me goose bumps.  I stood there, trying not to cry, while my 7 month old babies rolled around on my living room floor.  I couldn’t help but long for the days when I felt them inside my skin. 

The Christmas before I was carrying twins, but I didn’t know until February.  I missed the chance to enjoy this feeling of two beautiful babies at Christmas.  I ignored the signs that there was more than one and focused on the single baby I insisted was there.   I look back at that Christmas and it feels distant.  I can’t help but feel like I missed out on something special. 

I have a tendancy to wish away whatever is happening right now.  I want to rush to a time that is easier, a time when things are smooth and confortable and not so rocky.  With 3 small children it’s easy to focus on what we don’t have, what we can’t do.  I daydream about the days to come, when they are a little more independant.  The every day responsibilities weigh me down and I look forward to an easier time.

This song brings me back to the moment I’m in now.  This is the last Christmas, the very last Christmas I will ever have with my four year old son and his 19 month old sisters.  I will never get this Christmas back.  And even though we may not make it to a Christmas play or through the Christmas Eve service, I don’t want to wish this Christmas away. 

So I sit back and I watch them play.  I try to memorize the way they move, their reaction to the Christmas tunes constantly playing in our house.  We talk about Jesus and Santa and reindeer.  I watch their eyes light up when the see Christmas light and trees.  I breathe in their joy and excitment.  I focus on the things they seem to care about, particularly my son, who is enjoying this Chrismas more than any before.  And I try not to loose that feeling that this is the last one I have with them exactly like this.

Wherever you are, whatever stage your in right now, take a moment to really breathe it in.  If you’re expecting your twins or knee deep in double the diapers, or chasing toddlers or keeping track of preschool activities, take a minute to let it sink in.  Look at your children.  Memorize every dimple and bump.  Commit this Christmas to memory, it’s the last one you have exactly like they are right now.  It can be so much harder with two, but it’s so much more rewarding.  Time moves quickly.  Before you know it we will be putting together a Christmas for 2012.  Don’t let this one slip away before you have a chance to really enjoy it.

You can listen to the song here

AmberD, also known as dollimama, spends her days keeping track of her 4 year old son and 19 month old twin girls.  You can read about her Life Not Finished or follow the crazy on Twitter.

It was incredibly cold out, and our local Santa is outdoors (He has a little hut that is heated.) I think Santa was a little surprised when we handed him two one-month-old babies. We snapped our photo, wished him Merry Christmas and left. Easy peasy. Sure, it’s not the best photo, but it was their first Christmas and it was on my must-do list. The rest, the tree, the wrapping, the hoopla, we skipped out of necessity and exhaustion.

The second year we did put up our tree, which interested our not-yet-walking one year olds but not anymore than a cardboard box might. And they opened their presents Christmas Morning (which were wrapped!) However, our must-do photo on Santa’s lap was sort of a fiasco. We went to see the local Santa again, which was a no-go since there was a crazy line and it was snowing sideways. As time ticked by, I realized that I would regret not getting the photo so I went to the mall on the 23rd of December and the three of us waited in line for, and I am not making this up, FOUR HOURS. I had to text my husband and have him bring extra provisions since we had exhausted the milk and snacks I brought along.  It was insane, but it was something I knew I wanted to do and would be completely bummed it we didn’t. I wanted my kids to be able to look back and see their visits to Santa every year since they were a month old. So we waited. And they were amazing, they sat in their stroller, waited patiently (I pretty much just kept a steady stream of snacks going in their direction.) and we got the best photo I could have asked for.

So this year, I got smart. We went to visit the man in red even before Thanksgiving. Early? Yes. long lines? No. All day leading up to the visit, my boys were saying, “See Santa?” and were really excited. We talked about how the visit would go, I asked them what they wanted to ask Santa to bring for Christmas and was repeatedly told, “Cheese.” And then the big moment came. And, well, it didn’t go as picture-perfectly as last year. But it’s honest and true and I love it.

I love that we’ve created the tradition of visiting Santa. And now we’re putting up decorations and making cookies and decorating Gingerbread Houses. It took a couple years for us to get our footing with the holidays and start making our traditions with our boys. Now that they are really starting to understand the world around them, the things we do this Christmas may shape all our yearly traditions to come.

But no matter what, they will have their Santa photos, and hopefully memories of the fun things we’ve done together as a family for Christmas.

You can read about our adventures on and off Santa’s lap at goteamwood.com.

One of my favourite activities at the end of the year is sending out holiday cards. Since becoming a mother, I haven’t been nearly as good at keeping in touch with friends around the world, and our holiday greetings are an annual opportunity to remind the people we care about that we love them. For nearly six years, I maintained a public blog, but there are plenty of folks for whom the blogosphere is a huge mystery. The act of addressing and stamping envelopes, filling them with our family’s good wishes, is very satisfying. I know that Christmas cards end up being a chore for many people, and I’m very glad that I find the whole experience to be fun!

I usually order photo cards with a photo from the year. When my husband is home for the holidays, I send out a family photo, but more often the picture is of our twin daughters alone. After all, my husband and I look pretty much the same year after year. Getting nice family photos is a challenge all its own, and after the first year, I elected to leave it to the professionals. A couple of years ago, we invested in an amazing photo shoot with the talented Brandi Nellis, but most years, we just hit up the Sears or JC Penney photo studio.

Although our nuclear family celebrates Christmas’s religious significance, we have many relatives who are Muslim, several friends who are Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist, and many more friends and relatives who are altogether secular. I try to pick a winter-themed photo card rather than a Christmas one, and add a handwritten note to recipients who we know will be celebrating Christmas or Eid, if it happens to fall in the winter.

Along with the photo card, I include a family letter, describing the highlights of our year. The majority of the letter usually ends up being about the children’s interests, milestones and accomplishments. This year, I invited our daughters to make their own contributions to the annual letter, and they each drew a picture and wrote a few sentences about the holiday season this year. It was pretty amazing to see them as excited about reaching out through the mail as I am every year.

How do you handle holiday greetings, and do you include your children in your efforts?

Sadia, her husband and their 5-year-old girls, M and J, send their holiday greetings from El Paso, TX, where they have just experienced their first Texas desert snow. Sadia’s husband told her about desert snow during his first tour of duty in Iraq, but it has to be seen to believed.

The fact of our situation is that there are two children of the same age and developmental station living in our home. If one is doing something the other isn’t, it’s difficult to not compare. Sure, one had to walk first, right? But when it was the same one crawling first, then walking first, then climbing and running first, it made the other seem to be falling behind. When one was saying words and the other was only grunting, we doubled our efforts to help the one we viewed as struggling. (All the while both were well within the expected range for those skills.)

Now they just reached their second birthday and had their 2-year checkup. In the past 6 months we have seen our littlest guy who struggled to gain weight (who was born 1 ounce heavier but by one-month was a full pound smaller) get not just a little bigger, but much bigger than his brother. Suddenly people are asking how far apart they are in age, since there is now a 3 inch and 4 lb. difference in size. I admit was scared to go to the appointment because while I knew one had really grown over the summer (He went through 3 shoes sizes since May!) and the other hadn’t.  was terrified we’d learn he hadn’t grown at all, or worse yet, he would have lost weight. I was afraid the doctor would question why he isn’t growing, why he hadn’t gained weight. I was questioning my own parenting, were we doing enough to make sure he’s eating the right foods? Should we be doing more? Was he really not growing, or was his brother just growing faster so it seemed that he was staying the same size? If we had only one kid that age would we have even noticed his slow-down in growth? Would we notice that he is wearing the same shoes he’s had since Spring is his brother hadn’t gone though so many pairs by now?

I dreaded that appointment for a month.  The good news is that he did gain weight, and height, though admittedly not much. He’s always been on the low end of the percentile chart, but he’s on the chart and his line is moving in the right direction. He’s healthy and happy. He’s just small. The doctor wasn’t concerned about his size or weight. She has a much better perspective of seeing them as two different kids, just two more patients that happen to share a birthday. I was relived to know he did gain some weight. And he did grow a little. I was even more relived that the doctor was fine with his checkup and deemed him healthy.

It’s hard not to notice he’s smaller than his brother. It’s hard to not compare. I have a friend whose twins are 2 months younger, who once told me she always worries about her kids whenever we get all four of ours together because her kids aren’t doing the same things mine are doing. I tried to reassure her that she shouldn’t compare our kids since 2 months at this age is a big difference. In another year they’ll have gained all those milestones and all be about the same skill-wise. Of course, this doesn’t mean I don’t do the same thing with my own kids. Why is that one doing such and such and the other isn’t? Am I doing enough to make sure one doesn’t fall behind? Maybe the hallmark of a good parent is to worry about these things, after all, I want the very best for my kids equally. How do other parents fight the urge to compare?

Jen Wood is a former computer geek turned stay-at-home-mom to amazing, vastly different and newly minted 2-year-old twin boys. You can follow the daily adventures of our family as we navigate the crazy road of twin toddlerhood, home preschooling and attempt to raise happy, well-adjusted citizens at goteamwood.com.

The waitress greets us with a cheery smile, asks us how many we are. “Four adults, two children,” I answer, pointing out L and R. My parents are sending us off before they head to Montreal the next day.  As the waitress walks us to a booth, she asks if I prefer high-chairs or booster-seats for the children.

“What are booster-seats?” I ask, fully aware of my ignorance. “Little seats that you can move around. They add height to any other regular seat,” she replies, without a hint of condescension.

The booster-seats sound perfect. My kids hate high-chairs.

“Great! Come on over this way. I’ll get the brown paper laid out first, and then bring out the crayons.” She smiles as she walks away in her black pants, and black t-shirt; her blond pony-tail bobbing along behind her.

“Here’s the crayons, and some menus. You need anything else, give me a shout. I’ll be back for the order in a few minutes,” she assures us. How wonderful! L and R sit at the table happily, unrestricted; and they draw pictures with my parents.

When she returns, Maher asks if she can suggest any vegetarian options for my mum. She pulls her pen out of her apron and uses it as a pointer, “There’s the garden salad, the coleslaw, there’s a veggie fajita, and we can do most any of the starters’ vegetarian. You just ask me, and I’ll request it in the kitchen.”

“Fantastic!” he replies.

“One chicken fajita should be enough for the two children right?” I ask her.

“Plenty. Portion’s big here.”

We place the rest of the order, and just before she turns around to leave, she asks if we want the fries out first. Maher and I looked at each other and then up at her. She understands. “Yes please, and the guacamole, and anything that’s ready. They’re hungry.” We didn’t mention that they won’t stay put for very long.

She smiles, winks, and asks, “They twins?”
“Yes, 23 months old,” I reply.
“I have three kids. A four year-old, and two year-old twins. All boys.” She says with a gleam in her eyes.
“Really? That’s wonderful. So you know!” I sigh with a sense of relief that sweeps across me.

I don’t usually stress out about being at a restaurant with my toddlers. In China it’s easy. Children are welcome everywhere, easy-going restaurants for sure, fancy places are no exception. The hosts, even the guests happily chat and play with them. That’s not to say that I’ve had any criticism in Canada over the last 3 weeks, neither in Montreal nor in Calgary; but it’s on my mind that they have to behave a bit differently. I do my best to keep the situation as much under-control as possible, without making a big deal out of it. And with my parents there to help, at least we’ll all get to eat.  But the mess we leave is always bigger than at the other tables, and our sweet waitress is the one who’s got to take care of it.

My stress dissipates after she hangs out longer, and after she tells us about her children. I feel a connection with her just for being a Mum of Twins. It’s not rational. But she understands what it’s like to be at a restaurant with excited twin toddlers. She’s not fazed by their loud chatter, their need to switch seats as they spill the water, and their desire to reach for the knives.

Part way through the meal, L needs a change of diaper. As we walk back from the washroom, the appropriately positioned toy store – right across from the restaurant — with a large poster of a crocodile eating a monkey, sucks Leila in. Before long, Rahul and two adults in our group join her. 15 minutes into the discovery, and a number of different dynamics later, I am back at the restaurant finishing up my meal, with my mum. I pick at the colourful bell peppers and onions from the children’s fajita, after I’m done with my own dish. It’s time to go though; time to say goodbye to my parents. I ask for the bill.

While I pay, the sweet waitress and I have a little chat. She’s the kind of woman who calls you honey. Not in a patronising sense.

“Who helps you with the kids?” I ask.

“My husband. He takes care of them in the day while I’m here, and he works at night. I was just talking to my co-worker over there,” she tilts her head towards another waitress, “Was just tellin’ her it’s been a week since I saw him. ‘N’ we live in the same house.”

“Man, that’s not easy,” I sympathise. She looks up at me, shrugs her shoulders and smiles. That’s when I notice the dark circles around her eyes.

“Have a good flight!” She waves.

“Thanks, and good luck with it all,” I pat her shoulder, and push our over-packed stroller out of the restaurant.

My mum and I walk over to the crocodile and monkey toy shop to pick up the rest of the gang. We slowly make our way to the security check.

Just this morning, L and R talked about a crocodile eating a monkey.

Have you had random mum connections that you still remember?

—————————

Natasha, mum of Leila and Rahul was an Ashtanga Yoga teacher until her little yogis became the teachers. You can find more of her thoughts and stories at Our Little Yogis.

While I don’t know what it is like to have just one kid, I do know that there are days that I have double the guilt to go with double the kids. My boys were born at the beginning of November in last nice week for months. When they were newborn it was such an ordeal to go places, we often didn’t go unless we really needed something. We would go as a family, one parent would wait in the car and the other would run in and complete the errand. We ate lots of meals in parking lots because it was easier to go pick up a sandwich and sit in the car lot than unload everyone. With the cold weather, the every-two-hours feeding schedule, the baby support items, it was easier to just stay home. So we did. Other moms with their one baby could pop him into the carrier, stroll peacefully around the mall, in and out of the bank, sit quietly in a restaurant. Our outings were logistical operations that make me tired just thinking about them. So we went out when truly necessary. We usually didn’t go to more than one place, since the load and unload was such a fiasco. They were infants, they didn’t notice.

When a brand new mom in my mothers of twins club recently asked what to do when her 4-day-olds were both crying, I remembered those blurry early days and told her, “sometimes you just have to let one cry.” It was tough on me remembering that, and made me feel callused and uncaring. But it is the truth. One person only has two hands and when you are outnumbered by needy infants, you do the best you can. I just kept telling myself they would learn to be patient, to take turns. And they did. But not before my heart broke over and over while I could only tend to one at a time.

My husband, the BEST DAD EVER, just before the boys were a month old, multitasking a middle-of-the-night feeding.

Now our boys are almost two and there are lots of things we do even though it is hard. We go out to dinner. We take the boys to the zoo, to museums, to parks. Even still, we sometimes pass on things that might be fun for them because it’s just too much to work with two toddlers. Last month we went to the Day out with Thomas where we saw and had the opportunity to ride trains. The railway museum was large and crowded so we took the stroller. The couple of times we let them out of the stroller it was a fight getting them back in, so it was easier to just skip anything that was indoors where strollers needed to be left outside. Did they notice they missed a second train ride or a visit to the switch tower? No, they did not. But I did.

I regularly take them to parks or even the splash pad on my own, which is exhausting and often stressful, but I want them to experience those things. However, for their safety, I can’t just load them up and take them to the beach or a crowded indoor play place. To make it fair to other families, we can’t go to parent/tot classes just me and them. We do go to story time at the library and they just started tot gymnastics, but we do both of those when my husband can join too and we each take a kid.

Since they were born, I have wanted to spend one-on-one time with each of them. And nearing their 2nd birthday I think I have taken one kid once on an errand once and the other kid by himself to the doctor once and that’s it. When my husband is home we want to be together as a family so we do things with the four of us. All this is to say that having two babies at once is hard, but not always for the reasons I expected. I expected the exhaustion. I expected the expenses. I expected to be pulled in two directions. I didn’t expect that I would feel so guilty about dividing my time, about skipping out on things after weighing the pros/cons of the logistics, about not being able to meet both of their needs all the time. Hopefully, like our parenting experience, our boys don’t know any different.

Keep up with our efforts to raise well-adjusted kiddos as guilt-free as possible at goteamwood.com.

I know a lot of people who had one child and then had twins. Or they had several children and then had twins. And in those families, the non-twins all seem completely level-headed and happy. But I wonder if a younger child growing up in the shadow of older twins might feel, well, like a third wheel. And then I think, well, if we have a third, we should probably have a fourth, so that he/she doesn’t feel that way…and it feels sort of funny to be thinking so far ahead about bearing a child just so another one won’t feel left out.

I’m curious about the experiences of other MOMS who have had another child after having multiples, especially if the multiples were your first children. Obviously you can try to ensure that your youngest child is included and doesn’t feel left out, but I imagine that having older identical twin sisters, as would be the case for any new child that I might have, would at times feel lonely, what with having no twin of your own. Have any of you found that be true? What have you done to help the non-multiples in your family not feel left out?

To be sure, the idea of having a singleton after having twins is very attractive. When the girls were young I used to day dream about breastfeeding only one baby and hearing the cries of only one baby. Did you all find raising singletons to be that much easier than your multiples? What was different about having one baby at a time versus two or three (or four?)

Most of the time I end up saying “David and Elizabeth” because I like the way it flows better. Just when I think I’m comfortable with that order, then I have to sign a greeting card and I run into the same issue. I try to be random in the order I list them hoping that it works out to half the time naming Elizabeth first and the other half naming David first. I’m not sure I have even come close to making it 50/50.

Which order do you introduce your twins or sign their names on greeting cards? How did you decide that was going to be the order?

Meredith is a mother of b/g twins, age 17 months old.

Hi! I’m a wife to a talented carpenter, I work part-time as an RN, I’m a mother of three and am originally from Finland. I’ve been in the US since 2000 (at age 8 I informed my parents that when I grow up I’d move to America and marry a black man). Well, my husband is not black but he tans pretty well!  We’ve made our home in the outskirts of Boston and are enjoying the adventures that come with 3 little ones.

I always knew that I would be a mother. It took me longer than I had planned or dreamed of. I thought I’d be married by 21, have kids by 25 and then raise them up when I still had lots of energy. Life doesn’t always go as I plan. I was 30 when I got married, 31 when our first child was born and 32 when the twins came. Talk about not having ‘lots of energy’.

Being a mom came very naturally to me (after all I had planned my whole childhood that when I grow up I’m going have 100 children!). Of course there was physical tiredness but that was expected. I didn’t go out much with three little ones but again that was expected. I didn’t sleep many hours in the first year but it didn’t bother me too much. We still had lots of sex and I still cooked good dinners so my husband was happy. Our lives formed to be very family-oriented and we liked it.

Nathan is now 4, Joshua & Beth just turned 3 yesterday. They are full of energy, from before the sun rises until when we tell them it’s time to go to bed and that reminder is most often greeted with piercing cries of ‘one more game! One more story! One more show!’ It seems that the calmness of the ‘baby time’ has disappeared (you know, how they’d stay where you set them down, how they didn’t protest when you dressed them up, or didn’t throw a fit when the meal was, once again, breast milk or how they didn’t talk back to you and question your every decision). I suspect that they have meetings in the middle of the night on how to outrun us. They seem to take turns in finding ways to get in trouble and test our unconditional love for them (like that time when they made ‘art’ to their playroom walls or the time they cooked dinner in a play kitchen with water from the toilet and flooded the entire basement in the process, twice!). They’re cute and they’re adorable but keeping up with them is so utterly exhausting, in so many levels. I don’t mind the physical tiredness that much but I would give a lot not to have to do (or say) same things over and over again throughout the week (who am I kidding, I repeat myself several times a day!). There’s the regular and mundane stuff that happens at every house; the kitchen with its many visits during the day. The dining room floor is clean only couple hours or so between meals and snacks and tea parties and picnics. There are the strong verbal protests against or lobbying for what we’re eating or not eating (and yes, they all like different things. I pat myself on the back almost daily for deciding to deal with dinnertime protests with simple ‘Sweetie, remember how you don’t always need to like the food we eat? Maybe tomorrow is your turn to like the food. Now go on and finish your plate’). The toys are scattered everywhere despite of my pre-baby plans to keep them in the basement, organized just like they are pictured in the Pottery Barn catalogues (yeah I know, was I naïve or what?). There is setting up for crafts and cleaning up after crafts, there’s bundling up to go outside and coming back in and did I mention the ‘I do it myself’s’? ‘No sweetie, you’re not old enough to slice your own bread quite yet’, ‘wahaaaaaaaaaa wahaaaa’. You’d think she lost a leg or something.

They’re bundles of joy and terror, bound together in such a way that it’s impossible to separate one attribute without getting little of the other in it. We love them, we’re so grateful for the opportunity to parent them but sometimes I wish we could package them up for a day and put them in storage. When I close my eyes I can see the pre-baby neatness of the house, the food that was always warm when we sat down to eat it, the bed that felt oh-so-good to sleep in on weekends, the spontaneous walks we took without having to spend half an hour getting everyone ready … but I don’t hear the little giggles of our daughter as she goes around playing ‘cute princess’, nor do I hear her twin brother reading books in Spanish (how DOES he do it? What happened to Finnish that I speak??) and I don’t hear our oldest ‘fixing’ my beautiful wood furniture and pretending to be ‘just like Daddy’. So I open my eyes and see the destruction and chaos and constant ‘noise’ that is now ever present in our home. Never mind how I sometimes wish it away, it is a sign of LIFE; that I have chosen to believe.

So dear HDYDI readers, what are your coping mechanisms and delusional thinking patterns that help you get through your days?

Right after my advanced teacher training course at SYT in 2009, I spent three months in my grandfather’s home city in India. It was there, in the peak of the summer, that after a round of IVF I got pregnant. There was the usual pregnancy stuff – fatigue, dizziness, and some vomiting. Overall, ok though. I had a long nap on my yoga mat every afternoon! Before the end of the first trimester, I insisted on returning to Chengdu, my current home city.

At 16 weeks things became more complicated. I had a major bleed, and spent the next four months in bed. The first month was spent in two Chengdu hospitals. I needed help. My mum flew in and without warning was roped into spending the next 9 months with me. Yoga helped too. The breath work calmed me through many sleepless nights.

At 26 weeks, upon the advice of doctors we flew to HK. The medical facilities there are outstanding.

From the 29^th week on, I was in hospital again, being pumped with medication to keep the contractions down.

Then on a Sunday, at 31 weeks exactly, L and R seriously wanted out. I was transferred to another hospital, one with an NICU. They were born in an emergency natural delivery at The Queen Mary Hospital. R spent 3 weeks in the NICU, L spent 6.

As expected, life during the NICU phase was rather stressful, filled with fear, anxiety, and isolation. Thankfully M was there for the delivery and spent the first 2 weeks after the birth. He then managed to return to HK every weekend for the next five months.

Only after both the babies were safely home, and upon M’s ceaseless insistence, did I get a yoga practice in once in a while. Mostly it meant a few minutes of feeling out my body, and then a half an hour nap on the mat. It has gradually changed as the weight dropped, and the flexibility, strength, and focus have come back. This me-time was only possible thanks to my mum and MIL who were with me.

We returned to Chengdu when L and R were 5 months old. The four of us were together for the first time. We were happy, but of course there was some anxiety as for most new mums, and a feeling of isolation.

It’s around this period of time that I began surfing the net while feeding in the middle of the night. I found this site, HDYDI and other personal blogs where MoT’s told their funny stories, their touching stories, their “How to deal with…” stories, I could finally relate. I wasn’t the only one exhausted, stressed about premature babies, their weight-gain and illnesses.

There were undertones of stress in my system for a long time. It was only when L and R were 14 months old that I consciously made the effort to ease up. I couldn’t do it all, couldn’t be perfect and shouldn’t need to be. One insight from a MoT stuck with me. With two, she quickly let go of the expectation for perfection.

I also had to let go of expectations: that I would be able to give equal amounts of attention to each child at all times, that I would always be calm and level-headed, that I would have breast – fed directly and not pumped all the milk into bottles, that I would have lost more weight by now, that I would be practicing and teaching yoga by now, that I would be going out with friends more…and on and on.

A good friend of mine often brought up the fact that I wasn’t doing anything for myself. After some reflection, I realised that I wouldn’t pressure myself, but certainly needed some outlets. Another friend of mine, mother of 4, and ex Chengdu International Women’s Club playgroup coordinator once told me, “if it’s not sleep issues, it’s going to be something else. You just got to make time for yourself somehow.”

Her words rang true. So to start with, I filled her position as playgroup coordinator when she left Chengdu, a small task, but a big step for me. It was my first connection with adults in a long time. Soon after, I started a blog. I have always been a private person, so it’s a big deal. Some nights I write in the middle of the night. But it’s my thing and I enjoy it. It’s my way of organising and expressing my thoughts; and then letting go of them.

I am signed up for an On-line Features writing course. I have always romanticised writing, and until now, didn’t have the confidence to do any of my own. I’m not planning to become a writer, but I am thoroughly enjoying the class.

In the mean time, yoga has gradually seeped back into my life. Being back in Koh Samui at SYT practicing daily, trusting my body’s abilities again, makes teaching in the near future seem realistic. M takes care of L and R while I breathe and move at my own pace from 8-10am every morning.
I have let go of many expectations of myself, but feel more motivated than ever to do the little things that make me happy and feel fulfilled. Being here with M, R and L is certainly one of them.

So as MoM’s with never enough time in a day, what do you do for YOU?  Did you have to “let go” of expectations you put on yourself?

These are some related posts and a challenge, that stuck in my mind:

Taking Control (www.goddessinprogress.blog.com)

It’s the simple things (www.seanasmith.com)

52 weeks of ME! Challenge (www.dolli-mama.blogspot.com)