Sometimes in parenting - zen is illusive

Perhaps the title of this blog is a bit pompous. Some days it feels like you're on top of the world and that you can totally control the chaos that is every day life. But there are also days where you are beat down. Children see the chink in the armor. They know when you're stressed out. They can smell the fact your control is teetering on the brink of the precipice.

This is when we look to our partners to step in. To help us keep our cool. And 9 times out of 10 they are there for us. But with two working parents, there are going to be days when they're not in that head space. So we yell when we shouldn't. We snap at our partners in front of the children. We hold back tears or sometimes we just cry.

Yeah, I've been there too. Sleep, hope for a better day tomorrow. Find a sympathetic ear. I can't promise it will get better but I can say that there are other parents in the same place, dealing with the same struggles, trying to make it from one day to the next. Too often we paint a Hollywood-inspired picture of parenting. Don't let those expectations weigh on your shoulders. Be there. Be authentic. When issues don't all resolve in an easily-digested and entertaining sitcom story line, your children will learn what it is to be persistent in the face of failure.

Instant Pot yogurt - failure and success

Here in the frenzy, we sometimes learn from failure. And sometimes I just make a slightly different mistake on the second attempt. So I previously discussed that I ended up making two changes to my yogurt routine at once, and thus was unable to isolate which was the cause of failure. I decided to avoid too much of a blow-by-blow by doing two more rounds of yogurt so I could actually post something that has a chance of being useful. To recap a bit, I got this heritage yogurt starter: The package comes with two packets of dried granules that look like the bread yeast packets that you put in the freezer. I followed the included instructions to heat the milk, cool it to 110 degrees Fahrenheit and then add the packet. If you read carefully, it also comes with the disclaimer that this may not produce a firm yogurt the first time around but that the second time you use a starter to make yogurt the bacteria would become substantial enough to make yogurt. I decided to hedge my be

We didn't buy a diamond ring and it wasn't about saving money

Early before the coalescence of the frenzy, we had started to form our family values. One of our now well-established family values is that we try to minimize harm caused by what we buy. We don't always succeed but there is one thing we avoided from the very beginning because of the incredible damage it has done around the globe. Buying a diamond ring. This was particularly my hang up perhaps caused by Leonardo DiCaprio's attempt at a South African accent . I would not spend money on a diamond ring. But I also didn't want to seem cheap to my soon to be bride, which was entirely in my head and had nothing to do with what she thought of me. So I started the delicate dance of figuring out if we were in the 100 percent getting married camp while bringing up my ethical dilemma. Luckily, I was not left wanting for clues on this one. It was made very clear that we were indeed in camp and that we should get started on pitching the tent before midnight. I got lucky bec

Fundamentals of personal finance - how to spend money

Here in the frenzy, money goes out the door on a daily basis. The frenzy can be expensive. So we have some experience spending money. However, having experience spending money is different than knowing how to wisely spend money. In an earlier post, I talked about gaps in my understanding of how to acquire money , but I had even more gaps in my understanding of how to spend money. It’s something I am still working on. For the vast majority of us, how you spend money is much more important than how you acquire it. It took me a very long time to learn that lesson. The first part of understanding your spending is to understand what type of spending you are engaging in. This is my personal classification, it may not map perfectly for your purposes but you should go through a similar thought process when you spend money. Expenses that cannot be avoided Some expenses cannot be avoided if you participate in the US economy, and since you're reading a blog on a dusty corner of

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