I went and spent some time with my friend Kari a couple of weeks ago. Kari is a huge role model of mine. She is an amazing wife and an amazing mother to 5 beautiful kids. [Check out her blog HERE.] I couldn’t help but wonder what Kari’s magic secret was to parenting her kids so well. So while picking her brain about different topics ranging from spanking to baby schedules to education, Kari said something that really blew me away. She said that parenting is a journey. All parents are on the journey, whether we are in the baby phase trying to choose between breastfeeding and formula or in the adolescent phase trying to decide between public school, private school and home school. There is no cut and dry perfect formula to being a parent. As Kari told me, 1 + 1 does not equal 2 in the parenting world. It is all a journey, there is no magic secret, and we are constantly learning what ideas and techniques work best for our family.

Here in our Headquarters, we don't believe a child is ever too young to start learning about responsibility - specifically in the area of chores! Etta Jayne is just shy of 5 months old and is already responsible for vacuuming the floors... Okay, I kid I kid. She is only responsible for eating, sleeping and pooping :) But Emerson on the other hand started helping with little chores probably somewhere around 18 months. We have always made it a point to involve him with housework, even before he could do a lot of the things himself. We want him to know that he has an important role to play in this family.

I used to think that my primary job as a mother was to be my kids' playmate. And I truly used to spend every waking minute with Emerson, my firstborn. But after a very exhausting second pregnancy and having another baby that requires lots of attention, it dawned on me that I cannot be my toddler's playmate and my baby's source of life at the same time.  At first, I felt serious guilt about this. I was putting way too much pressure on myself as a mom. But then I realized that this is just a part of life, and sooner or later, Emerson was going to have to learn that the world doesn't revolve around him :) I still interact with him while he is doing different activities throughout the day, and I also try make time to read books with him or play choo choos while his sister is sleeping, but I just cannot devote the entire day to him anymore. And some days may go by where our one-on-one time is slim. But I no longer feel guilty about this. It's just the reality of being a mom to a baby and a toddler.

Since relaying to the world that we had a home birth, there have been so many people asking us to share our story! People have wanted to know every detail, so we figured it would be easier to write it once and share it with everyone. So here is Etta Jayne’s birth story, all details included :)

First of all, home birth was not a “SuperMom” thing for me. I didn’t have anything to prove. I just didn’t have the best experience in the hospital with Emerson’s birth and had complications for several months after. So why not look into other options? We started looking into the midwife route and the more we learned, the more we knew that was the route to take this time!