Am I really married with children? I say I am, but you rarely see them! This topic is makes me chuckle, but I feel it time to share a bit more about who I am and insight to my blog. To answer the title of the blog – YES. I am married and have been for fourteen years to a wonderful midwestern boy I met in Atlanta. Together we have three children. A daughter, whose 11, and identical boys who are eight years old. We have a cat, named Albie (after Professor Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter), He’s a ragdoll cat and quite possibly the biggest cat you’ve ever seen.
This blog started purely by accident. You can read more about that here and watch a video I made back in 2015. As it’s grown my husband and I have had dozens of conversations about exposing our lives, our home and the limitations we want around it. Any good marriage involves communication and a meeting of the minds. We had to both agree on what I would or wouldn’t share.
An evolving discussion
My husband and I both decided we would limit the exposure of our children and personal family life. His request is that any time the kids appear on the blog it’s not a personal pic. Meaning, they aren’t in their Jammie’s or in their bedrooms or in a very real life moment. Every photo you see is when we are “Christmas card ready” or an intentional photo. My husband is very private in nature. Me? I am not. You should know this by now! However, I completely agreed with him and together we worked through what felt most right for our family.
Sharing moments of our lives, no matter how polished they look, work for both of us. I get to share who and what I love most, and he feels like there’s some sort of guard up in sharing our family.
This is not, absolutely not to hate on or offend any bloggers who share their family. I actually love seeing bloggers lives and see a peak into their real world! It’s endearing, it’s real and it’s fun to find out that all homes are pretty much the same in their insanity, their mess and their chaotic fun! But it simply isn’t our choice.
How can we use this platform to teach our children?
We did talk through the question of, how can we use this platform to teach our children? As the daughter of entrepreneurs, the wife to one, and now one myself I take pride in starting a business from scratch. It felt like a natural way to show them that Mommy stumbled upon a passion, worked hard and now has “work” that came from her hard work. They are of an age to see the beginning to its fruition. So we thought through how we could turn this blog into something that worked to teach them something.
When you do see our children in any form of a blog post, like this one about toys, or one that’s about to come out soon, we use it as a “teaching moment” to teach them about business.
I start by saying “Mommy’s been hired for a job. I’d like for you to be a part of it. Would you like to?” They get the choice to say yes or no.
If they do choose to participate we start the business negotiations. I start by saying “OK. This is a job. You’re being hired by me to be a part of it. So you’ll need to take it seriously. How much would you want monetarily for your work?”
We negotiate fees or perks until we are all happy. Then when the “work” is finished, typically them being in a photoshoot, they submit an invoice. The invoice has the date, job, their name and what I owe them.
Then, just like any other job, they don’t get the money right away. I pay them about a week later.
Teaching our children about business
Why do I do all of this? Because my children are growing up in a privileged world and it’s important to my husband and me to teach them about work. We teach them to save, spend and donate. We love the idea of teaching them real world situations like negotiation, work and delayed reward. It creates independence and self pride, and my husband and I feel like them being in the blog serves a good purpose!
So that’s a little peak into my personal life and why this blog is very “me” focused. I hope you understand.
But, like all Moms, I’m constantly juggling the craziness that is Motherhood, raising three children the best I can, trying to be an attentive wife, and grow my blog which is a passion. I don’t always excel at all those roles at the same time (I think all wives need more wives to get it all done!), but behind the scenes know that the pretty pictures I present are just that – a presentation of pretty. What goes on behind the scenes of my real life remains for my husband and me only.
Thanks for following, you guys. I’m truly grateful!
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