Alright,
so admittedly, I don’t have the best track record when it comes to writing this
blog, but this has been the longest break I’ve ever taken.
Here’s
the quick catch-up for the past three years: I’ve got two kiddos now (my son is no longer a baby, he's four and a half, and I have a daughter who is seven months old), I’m still
writing children’s books and my debut books are coming out next Fall (check out
my website for more details https://serenagingoldallen.com/),
I still read a ton (aloud to my kiddos and to myself on my Kindle in the middle
of the night), and I will climb rocks again someday (it’s been over a
year—first because I was pregnant and then now because, you guessed
it…COVID-19).
Despite
having less time to myself than I’ve ever had before, I decided I should start
blogging again. Crazy, you say. There’s probably some crusted spit-up on the
floor that needs cleaning or a load of laundry to fold, you continue. You probably shouldn’t overextend yourself
anymore. Yes, yes, you’re correct. But I need something that’s just for me. All
of my other writing is critiqued, edited, revised, sometimes changed beyond all
belief. But this blog is mine. I can
do whatever I want with it. And the worst that can happen is that no one will
read it. So here’s what I’m going to do: refocus it, at least for the time
being, on my life at home as a mom and a writer.
I
spend a lot of time with both of my kiddos, but currently more with my son since my
daughter is in the three-naps-a-day stage (on the good days). My son LOVES
books of all kinds. I’ve been reading the Harry
Potter series aloud to him and we’re now on the sixth one. We started the
first one shortly after we locked down and he just can’t get enough of them. At
first I was a little worried that he wasn’t following along, but whenever I asked him questions about what we’d read he definitely understood. After we finish each
book, we watch the movie version of it together. On numerous occasions, he’s
asked why something is different from the book or has been left out. It’s been
really fun having these conversations with him because my husband is not a Harry Potter fan. My son still loves
picture books and he has a renewed interest in board books, thanks to his
sister (he also has a renewed interest in baby toys—is that normal?).
My
sister-in-law and I are each planning one project a week to do with our “big”
boys (my older nephew is three and a half and my younger one is five days older
than my daughter). Having projects to look forward to each week is helping a
little with the stay-at-home fatigue. The first project we did was to make
playdough. Back when my son used to go to preschool (you know, way back in March when life was still normal), I was the mom who made the
playdough each week. I had the boys help measure out the ingredients and stir
them together. I did the cooking and kneading and then they got to choose the
colors they wanted. Then they kneaded the dye into the dough (I put small balls
of dough into plastic sandwich bags and they squished to their heart’s
content—we did have to help them at the end to get the dye fully mixed into the
dough). And then the boys played blissfully for at least five minutes without
fighting.
I
got really excited today because my daughter scooted over to her shelf of
board books and started pulling them off and throwing them on the floor. I was
like, “YES! Another reader in the house!” My son’s love affair with books
started in the same way when he was her age. Every morning, I would set him
down in the living room and he would immediately scoot to his shelf of books.
He would then pull all of them off and chew on them. Hopefully my daughter doesn’t
get in to the habit of consuming large enough portions of her books to get
sick.
All
right, I gotta stop procrastinating. Time to stop blogging and get a little work
done. Until next time (which hopefully isn’t in another three years).
What
I’m reading:
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.
Written in the first person, it’s about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife and their
life together. I bought this on a whim. Well, really because it was on sale for
Kindle and had a lot of stars. I’m not sure how accurate it is, but so far it’s
quite good—well written and captivating. It’s reminiscent of Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan
and Loving Frank by Nancy Horan,
which are also based on the lives of the partners of famous men.
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