I’ve been absent lately—please forgive me, dear readers! This time of year brings with it seasonal depression and a bit of chaos, but I’m here! There’s lots of life updates to come, including progress on therapies for our youngest, school for the big kids, and more.

It’s seems every year I only manage to get one or two Advent posts out in the blogosphere, despite planning for way more. Yet here we are once again—it’s December 5, and…well, here’s my first post.

Why Won’t My Kids Listen?

Spoiler alert: you don’t (and they won’t). Wait wait wait, please keep reading, I promise there’s something useful here! If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a ton of times: it takes a village. My friends and neighbors and small group and Mothers Ministry are my village, and someone from each one of those groups has either parented their children or somehow given me a tidbit of wisdom in PRACTICAL real-time situations that stuck with me. What I mean is, I read tons of blogs and books and listened to tons of podcasts on parenting, but there’s just something about seeing a mom interact with her five-year-old who is having a colossal meltdown in front of you that makes it stick with you more than all the best blog posts in the world.

Read on, and don’t forget to comment at the end if you have something that’s been particularly helpful in your season. Share so we can all benefit (myself included)!

Yep, that’s right. I’d like to say it’s always been the plan, but back in December my husband and I decided it was probably a lot less chaotic to send our oldest to brick and mortar traditional kindergarten. So we enrolled her in Pre-K in January, and she did great for 8 weeks! Then COVID shut everything down. And well, now here we are.