This post is sponsored by Born Shoes as part an ongoing partnership to highlight their fall collection and wave my fall freak flag.

Disclaimer: When I was writing for baby sites a couple years back, I learned a lot about clickbait titles. I’ve never been very good at titling my posts because it’s usually the last thing I do, so I often just pull something from a post and throw it in a title, but I noticed editors were great at changing my titles to make them sound exciting–often more exciting than my piece actually was–and I paid great interest to their titling techniques. “MY BABY HAD A ROOT CANAL!”, for example, is far more interesting than “Mom Guilt and Dental Health.”  And numbered posts? Who doesn’t love a Top 10 List? Whether or not I care about what the list is about, there’s something riveting about the fact that someone actually got the list down to 10 ten things, and I just have to know what they are. 10 Ways to Fix Your Transmission, you say? Oh my God, DO TELL.

I thought these boring subjects turned into clickbait titles were pretty funny–or should I say “WHOA! You Just HAVE to See How Clickbait Transformed These Subjects!!!!!!!!!” My favorite–Oliver Twist, turned into: Watch This Kid Burst Into Tears When He’s Refused Some More Porridge.

I suppose I should pay more attention to clickable titles–throw more exclamation points in there, a little drama: “Why I’m Failing As a Mom and You Are Too!”–but my brain isn’t very good at that. With that said, I do have a 10 List today because I love me some Tens.

I’ve been comparing my motherhood days lately with my early motherhood days, and it is much like looking in the mirror and comparing what I see to what I saw ten years ago when I shopped at Charlotte Russe and wore leggings as pants. Moral of the story: People change. I miss the more patient me though–the one who took pictures of poured out Cheerios and taped them under “Motherhood is Funny” rather than “I’m Losing My Shit.”

Do you know I used to spend entire afternoons reading books on the floor with little Lainey while scrapbooking motherhood gratitude journals? It’s not even feasible today with schedule juggling and the demands of three kids. But I do love when I find that motherhood mojo again–when I look in the mirror and am reminded of the beauty of change. When, at the end of the day when I’m lying in bed nine years and three kids in, I still feel like a brand new mom holding my baby for the first time…lucky. So grateful for the adventure.

My 10 sure-fire ways to reignite that mojo, even on the hairiest of days:

1. Get away FROM the kids. Ironic, yes, but it works. You need to breathe for yourself before you can breathe life into motherhood, so get out the door and go find a coffee shop. A bookstore. A TJ Maxx, a Whole Foods, a pottery class, a sushi joint, a hotel. Be by yourself. Journal. Harmlessly gossip. I can leave my house on a Saturday morning for my “Hour of Power” thinking I might never come back, and every time I pull back in my driveway after some time alone, my heart soars at the site of my kids running to greet me.

2. Get away WITH the kids. We’re on a little staycation right now, and I can’t tell you how great it’s been to be away and not have laundry or cleaning or e-mails to keep me busy. Our job is simply to HAVE FUN, and it makes me appreciate these little kid days so much.

3. Stop, Drop and Read. Curling up on my bed with my kids and a stack of picture books is always, always magic.

4. Write a Letter to Your Child. Nothing makes me go from “I’m Losing my Shit” to “Life is Beautiful” more than writing. Every time I challenge myself to write a letter to one of my kids to be read later by them, I always soften and feel that surge of love come rising to the surface.

5. Go Outside. Go to a park, head for your backyard, sit in your driveway. Give your kids some sidewalk chalk and bubbles, and watch them play.

6.  Make a 10 List. Just like this one. “Ten Things I Love About Lainey at 9 Years Old.” “Ten Things I Love About Nella at 6 Years Old.” “Ten Things I Love About Dash at 3 Years Old.” It pulls you out of that “pining for the baby days” and helps you focus gratitude on RIGHT NOW.

7. Balance Glossy Parenting with Keepin’ It Real. Nothing makes you feel like a bad mom more than surrounding yourself with perfection. I love Pinterest and pretty parenting magazines and following beautiful feeds on Instagram, but I make sure to intake things that balance all that–reading books that dig into real life challenges, talking to friends who keep it real, following people who are open about what parenting really looks like.

8. Be Spontaneous. I am so inspired by spontaneity and can’t tell you how many times I’ve been inspired from throwing the kids in the car and doing something crazy. Driving 40 minutes to a beach we’ve never visited before, cashing in that Groupon coupon for a family salt cave session, telling the kids we’re going on an adventure even though I have no idea where we’re going. A change of scenery and the excitement of adventure can do wonders.

9. Tell Your Kids Their Birth Story. Out of nowhere–when the house is a mess, and one too many kids asked you for a drink. When you’re a hair’s breadth from losing it, call everyone to the living room. Sit down, invite your kids to circle around you, and one by one, tell them the story of the day they were born. Include all the details.

10. Go Through Your Pictures. Keep a folder of pictures of you with your kids. If there’s not enough pictures in it, make a point of getting more (self timer, ask your spouse, a friend, take selfies with your kids). Print your favorites, create a book, look through them often.

Wearing my favorite fall shoes right now, these Jolene heeled oxfords.

This post is sponsored by Toca TV.

If I want to feel old, all I have to do is think about my first computer. I might as well have been tapping out morse code on it, as it was archaic and hardly functional. I mean, lining up dot matrix paper alone would have me giving up today, but nevertheless we plunged forward, waiting 30 minutes for MS-DOS to boot up and cramming floppy disks into slots to save our work. This will all sound so hilarious to our kids someday, and they’ll ask us to tell them about our first car phones with the antennas we had to pull out first or the AOL chat rooms where we could–gasp!–talk to people in REAL TIME, as if we drove covered wagons and waited on town criers to deliver our news.

When I wasn’t waiting for my computer to boot up, I was thinking about being a mom. I was of one those kids who thought about being a mom all the time. When I was 16 and most girls my age were tearing out pictures of Jonathon Taylor Thomas from Tiger Beat magazine, I was circling which stroller I wanted someday from the JC Penney catalogue. What I couldn’t have prepared for though, was how much raising my kids would look different from the world I knew then because of how much technology would change. No one was talking about how to keep your kids on safe sites or what’s too early to have a social media account in 1988 because we thought making it through the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Bros. was the greatest of our technological worries.

Twenty-eight years later, the jig is up. We’ve advanced, and technology and the Internet are a big part of our children’s world, incorporated in their education, our homes and the way we dream about the future.

If you’re reading this, most likely you’re connected in some way, and quite possibly your children are too–at least through iPad apps and videos, whether you use them only occasionally for road trips and rewards or, like many of us, have praised the holy gods of eating out when an iPad saved a dinner and transformed a near “GET IN THE CAR NOW–WE’LL TAKE THIS TO GO” trip into a “Hey, let’s order dessert” stay. And after 24 hours in a car, driving both ways to and from Michigan this past summer, listen: I will sing the praises of technology.

As parents though, we know we’re treading new waters, pioneering parenting practices in this digital world, without a lot of data to show their effects yet. We know that monitoring screen time–both our kids’ and our own–is important, and we are all figuring out what’s appropriate for our kids and our families. What’s most critical though, is that the time our kids do spend on devices involves carefully regulated content and that we control the firewall of input that goes into their precious little brains.

One of our favorite fun and interactive app creators, Toca Boca, is launching its much anticipated video streaming service for kids, Toca TV, which will provide a playful video experience for kids in an ad-free, safe and fun environment–no third-party advertising or sponsored ads that pop up while your kids play which can lead them into danger zones. My favorite part? Old-fashioned curating of every single video that’s added. That means Toca TV doesn’t rely on algorithms but rather curates their content using a scorecard where each video is watched by a member of their team to make sure it’s right for kids.

Toca TV has every kind of video your kid could want, from Minecraft gameplay to craft D.I.Y.s. Lainey loves the kid-hosted life hacks videos and craft D.I.Y.s. Thanks to the comic book shoes D.I.Y. she saw on Toca TV, we’ve got another Mod Podge project on the docket (not mad). Dash and Nella love the animated originals with funny Toca Boca characters they recognize. There’s also a recording tool where kids can record their own videos and apply silly animated filters for interactive fun where they exercise their creativity. Best part–the videos only save to your device, so it’s completely safe.

Toca TV is a subscription service, only $4.99 USD a month — and you can cancel anytime! You can try Toca TV for free on the App Store–download it today to get three free sessions.

Someday we’ll tell them all about the pagers we wore and dial-up Internet and what it was like to play Frogger with a joystick. But for now, we can give them a little fun monitored screen time without worrying that they’ll be diverted into the bowels of hell.

(that pointed foot though…!)

 

My fallometer is reading a bit higher now, given a quick trip to Utah this past weekend where fall is real, manifested in mountains and sweater temps. I scooped up a bit of that enthusiasm and brought it home where I can fully settle in to the end of the year, thanks to all my travels being completed. I ordered my first Christmas present yesterday, finalized Halloween plans and started to compile a list of the best fall movies for cozy stay-in nights (stay tuned!).

Little slices we’re enjoying lately…

Fake Smiles
I’m not big on telling my kids to smile for pictures, but I do it to Dash just so I can get this one…

Unleashing the Halloween Decorations
There’s a dollar store witch hat making its rotation on heads in our home, and spider webs have been draped from every bare corner. Game on, witches.

Fall Toes
We call this the “Pumpkin Spice Latte” Pedicure.

Uppin’ my Game for Days Alone with the Last Baby.
Reigniting that first time mom enthusiasm nine years later and trying to take this boy on the town for some fun when it’s just the two of us because I’m lapping this parenting little kids milk bowl up like a thirsty little kitten.

Mikey likes it.

Sanity by Milkshake
We had an hour to kill before Lainey needed to be picked up one afternoon , and things in the back seat were not going well at all. Tired of twisting back to get my uglymom on, we chose rather to save ourselves with chocolate milkshakes and an order or fries at Steak & Shake, and–look at that! Sharing and caring, and all is well with the world.

That Lady and the Tramp spaghetti scene still goes down as one of Disney’s most greatest moments.

Ralph
Quite in love with Ralph, our new dinosaur lamp who brings his prehistoric glow (all that bioluminescent vegitation) to Dash’s night stand.

Annual “Pumpkin Lot” Visit.
Can you sense my sarcasm in those quotation marks? Because it’s there. Nothing that says fall in Florida like churches tryin’ their damndest to create some magic in their parking lots, and we’re grateful. Go ahead–truck in those pumpkins, sprinkle that hay. We’ll show up.

I’m happy to report–not one fight over the wheelbarrow. Must have been that overlooking church.

This one’s growin’ up mighty fast. Leave it to annual traditions to remember just how small she was when we started this.

She can do it herself, thank you very much.

And finally, we managed to keep up with our annual Halloween card tradition this year…

Tipping my hot cider mug to you…cheers.