Earlier today, my sweet 5-year-old Moses asked me: “Remember when we goed to the store?” Me: “When we WENT to the store?” “Went!” “Yes I remember…” Then this just happened: “I writed my name….” Me: “I WROTE my name.” “Wrote my name.” and I realized– when I started out, I didn’t know how constant this mothering job…
Author: Jess Connell
Why I DON’T “Get Out Of the House More”
{Note: This article has been updated from its original publishing in Dec. 2008.} Today I want to share the ethos behind some big choices of my life. I’ve lived as an at-home-on-purpose mom for the last 13+ years of my life because I believe this simple truth: as a mom of young children, the best place for me to be…
Parenting When I Don’t Know What To Do
We all hit those moments. You know the ones. The ones where you have NO idea what you’re supposed to do. Here’s a sampling from my own mom experiences: My oldest, at 2 years old, (who I was convinced was practically perfect in every way) reared back and hit me in the face–hard– in the middle of…
Home Is Wherever I’m With You
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have the cutest, hippy-dippy love song. It’s my most recent favorite song to capture some of the way I feel about Doug: Oh, it gets some things wrong. Don’t go looking for perfect expressions of truth among imperfect humans. Every human offering gets some things wrong. And yes, it’s…
Does Body Image Have Any Connection to our Souls?
One thing I’m super thankful for is that my mom and dad gave me a healthy perspective on food and body image. The more I look around, the more this seems to be increasingly rare in our modern world. My mom’s weight fluctuated over my growing up years, and I remember her working to be healthy and active…
A Christmas Giving Tradition You Can Do WITH Your Kids
This is a sponsored post. One of our family traditions is to use the Christmas season as an opportunity to GIVE. Beyond our personal giving (Christmas gifts to one another), each holiday season brings an opportunity to reevaluate the charities and ministries we give to. Over the years, one ministry we have consistently participated in is Operation Christmas…
HELP! I Feel Like My Daughter’s In Charge!
This question came in response to my advice about handling tantrums— Q: I have a 3 year old daughter, who I think should just be re-named “stubborn”. I know I am going to have to put my foot down and insist, always, that what I say is followed through with. When my daughter is raging, and…
How I Use the MBTI to Understand Our Family
I just took another Myers-Briggs assessment. Every time I do it, I feel fear that my letters will change, but no… They haven’t changed since college. 🙂 The numbers strongly confirmed: by this measure, I’m still an ENTP. E= Extroverted (“extraverted” to the MBTI purist) N= Intuition T= Thinking P= Perceiving Here’s one description: Prophet: You are…
“Mama, What Does $*@#%! Mean?”
At some point it happens. Maybe you’re watching a movie, or they hear it on the playground, maybe they read it on a sign… heck, I heard one referenced on CNN today… At some point, even in the most protected environment, innocent eyes of our children look to us and ask- “Mama, What Does $*@#%! Mean?” I…
Thinking, Reading, Learning- 10/15
Mmmmmmm, it’s fall! The leaves are on the ground… I’m wearing socks again… and we just started our first fireplace fire last night. Here are the things I’m currently thinking about, reading, and learning. What I’m thinking about: “Side Hustles”– I’ve been blogging for 9 years now. In January, we’ll have been homeschooling…