Jen Robe Writes

Everyone talks about how it takes a village to raise children.  No one talks about how to find a village.  There are all kinds of reasons why people are not surrounded by people who can be their village.  We moved internationally one year before my daughter was born.  We are naturally introverts and made a few casual friends, but it was only right before Mary was born that we made some close friends.  Our family is overseas and has not been able to visit because of Covid. So we knew people here but didn’t have what I would call a village.  Until I had a very scary experience that made me realize how important it is to have a village you can rely on. I came very close to passing out while home alone with Mary one day. We just finished eating lunch and I was starting to putter in the kitchen when I started to get extremely light-headed. I lay down on the floor for a minute then decided to get my water bottle.  When I came back into the kitchen, Mary was on the floor. Safely on the floor,

  I have a Pinterest habit.  I’ve had it for quite a few years. Anyone else? One of the things I keep seeing over and over is the Work at Home Mom. WAHM is a common acronym for it in the Australian cloth nappy groups. The "How I earn money as a Stay at Home Mom'' posts.  I hadn’t realized until recently that I had really internalized it.  I felt like that was who I should be.  I’ve tried a few methods, but nothing has really worked for me in the past.  I’m going to talk about the things I have tried.  After doing some real reflection I have decided there are some methods that I am passionate about that I hope to use to make money from home in the future.   Some methods that did not work for me: Crochet. Probably the first thing I thought about since I was doing a lot of crocheting in college. I did a lot of research about selling crochet and Esty stores but decided I could not crochet fast enough and the profit wasn’t worth the commitment it would take.   Prints on Etsy. I

B edtime for Mary normally starts around 7:00 with bedtime being around 7:30. We are normally all hanging out in the living room after dinner at this point.  We try to make a point to clean the living room every evening before Mary goes to bed.  I want her to see us cleaning and that it is not just a magic thing that happens. After we tidy the room, I breastfeed Mary, and then that's it.  She just goes to bed and I sit on the couch on my phone or reading, or I work on my writing.  Haha, not quite. But my husband does normally do the bedtime routine.  We find it is great for me to have a rest and for him to have time with Mary especially now that he is working in the office.  After the feed, Nick does a nappy change.  We put on a night nappy, which just has several more layers than the day nappies.  After the night nappy, Mary gets her teeth brushed.  Not her favorite part of the process, but it gets done.  Next, she gets put in her sleeping sack. Since it's winter we use two sl