"Vacation Mom" Joy of Motherhood challenge update

Last holiday season I challenged myself to take back the Joy of motherhood. You can find the post here. I wanted to begin to enjoy my children more and stop letting the stress of the world empty my love tank. I wanted to be more intentional in my parenting.. yes, in the things I teach them, but more importantly for me, I needed to be intentional in the time I spend with them.

Well, here we are in July and I have been reminded of both my progress, and how far I still have to go.

For my son's birthday we spent the evening at the restaurant of his choosing, went school shoe shopping (which both kids always love), and hit up a frozen yogurt place for some dessert before heading home to bed.

It wasn't much. Not really. Just time spent together.

But it was what he said in that yogurt shop that caught my attention and even made me feel a little guilty.

"I love this day. It feels like we're on vacation again!"

You see, a couple weeks ago we spent a week on vacation, the first real break I'd had from work in a year. Vacation was a blast. It was busy, and we were exhausted when we came home, but the quality time we were able to spend together was so worth it.

So my 7 year old comparing an evening out together to that of a wild, fun vacation was both sweet, and sad.

You see, vacation mom doesn't mind spending money on icecream late in the evening. Vacation mom loves just sitting and watching her children play. Vacation mom will actually let the kids choose what fast food chain gets our money come lunch time. Vacation mom savors every moment and captures each special memory with her handy smart phone cam. She listens intently to the very long stories her kids tell. Vacation mom is a fun mom.

But alas, vacations don't last forever. And I turn back into busy, stressed out, tired mom pretty quickly. Most of the time, too busy for anything out of the norm or spontaneous.

When I started my motherhood journey I envisioned it looking very different than it actually is. I always thought I would be that cool mom that did lots of fun things with her kids constantly.

I guess I was young and naive and thought I'd always have boundless emounts of energy to pour into my kids.

But it takes real effort to be the fun mom.

And sometimes I still fail at it. Summer reading program at the library? Yeah, haven't done it this year. We typically don't even go to the park and we have one IN our neighborhood. This was definitely another wake up call for me.

Because the world needs more of vacation moms. It needs more of woman pouring love into their kids. We need more families that are intentional with time spent together. Children need more happy memories with their parents. They need more family projects, family crafts, family games, and well- just family.

This journey of finding joy in the every day is a lifelong process. Because it's all too easy to forget to enjoy our children.

His sweet statement was a great reminder that vacation mom should show up more often than just vacation. Maybe often enough that she could be renamed weekend mom. And then someday, maybe even just mom.

The kind of mom that relaxes and enjoys her children before they are out from under her roof.

#noregrets