mom life

Unpopular opinion: People who mow their lawns at 8 am are not a**holes.

~ newbiemomsite ~ Leave a comment

I finally understand people who mow their lawn at 8 am. I used to think they were assholes. Why were they doing this so early? Why couldn’t they wait until 9 at least? Do they not realize that other people are trying to sleep? And WHY do they keep stopping and starting the mower like 20 times? If they kept the noise going at least it might act like white noise and others could still sleep. So annoying!

Fast-forward ten years and I discovered the answers to all these questions, while I was mowing my lawn at 8 am. First, they’re not assholes, they just have kids. Continue reading →

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When Mommy met Coffee (A Reluctant Love Story)

~ newbiemomsite ~ 6 Comments

Today I’m going to tell you the story of how I met someone very important to me. No, not my husband – though that’s a good story too. No, this relationship has been long and tumultuous, but has a happy ending. It’s a real-life romantic comedy.

Except that the male lead is not some handsome guy – it’s coffee. Yes, coffee. I would like to tell you the heartwarming tale of how this mommy met coffee.

It all started over a decade ago….

Continue reading →

100 Pieces of Advice for New (and Newish) Moms

~ newbiemomsite ~ 2 Comments

Today is a big day at Newbie Mom Site: It’s my 100th post! I decided to celebrate by collecting 100 pieces of advice from parents.

I know what you’re thinking: “Uh, Newbie Mom, isn’t your blog tagline about how you DON’T do advice on the blog? And now you’re giving out advice?”

Oh, you read that, huh? Well, um, yes. But, it is a special occasion, after all. Maybe the tagline should be no advice except every hundred posts, when I’ll throw out all the advice I can think of. That’s catchy, right?

Anyway, I talked to many of the wonderful people in my real and virtual life, and they gave me a wealth of great tips for life as a parent. The names of these terrific people appear next to their advice. Any advice without a name is mine.

Here are 100 Pieces of Advice for New (And New-ish) Parents:

Or anyone who likes advice, really. Continue reading →

Things I can make with my Amazon Boxes from Christmas

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As parents of a young child, we didn’t have a lot of time to hit the mall this Christmas. Instead of facing the crowds we ordered almost everything with Amazon Prime. Stay home and have our presents come to us? Yes, please! (By the way, I am not affiliated with Amazon at all and am not receiving any payment for this. I’m just a fan.)

One by one our gifts arrived. We felt pretty happy with ourselves.”We’re winning Christmas!” we thought, as we tossed the empty boxes in the back room to deal with after the holidays.

Well, the holidays came and went and our pile of boxes grew and grew. By January our back room was no longer visible under all of the boxes. We could break them down and put them out for recycling, but that’s no fun.

Instead, here’s a list of things I can build with our Amazon boxes from Christmas:

Continue reading →

10 Realities of being both a teacher and a parent

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There are many great things about my job as a teacher. There are also many great things about being a parent – as you doubtless have read in my superb blog. However, there are also quite a few challenges of doing both at the same time.

Disclaimer: Even if you are not a teacher, I’m sure that other working parents can relate to many of these things. (Especially if your co-workers are not very mature.)

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Here are 10 Realities of Being a Teacher and a Parent:

Continue reading →

Me doing laundry VS. my husband doing laundry

~ newbiemomsite ~ 14 Comments

During my undergraduate degree, I spent a few summers working in a living history museum. It was one of those places where the interpreters dress in the clothing of the day and do activities typical to the time period. As a result, I have many useless skills for modern living.

Anyway, one of those activities was laundry. We would spend the morning showing visitors the joy of doing laundry without mechanical assistance, as it would have been done 100 years ago. Let me tell you, it was difficult. I have no idea how women did this and still managed to feed anyone. (Or do anything else, for that matter.)

By comparison, doing laundry with the help of modern technology seems like such a simple task:

1. Put laundry in washing machine.

2. Put laundry in dryer.

3. Fold laundry and put it away.

Easy, right? Sure. However, as most of us know, it is never quite that easy. For example, my husband and I have developed some very unique variations on this task. Let me show you what I mean.

Continue reading →