"There is no way to be a perfect mother, but there are a million ways to be a great one."
Last week, two of my children went back to face-to-face learning in school after almost a full year of at-home learning, an experience that tested my patience as a parent and my skills as a teacher. What did I learn? I am a better parent than I am a teacher, and I have a much greater appreciation for the importance of public schools and the roles teachers play in our children’s lives.
As a mom of four, much of my day is spent sorting through school papers and art projects. I hate to just toss the kids' art projects to the side, so I recently spent some time looking for cute and creative ways to display these. Here are a few of my top picks, with the key focus on being able to easily swap out last week’s piece for this week’s.
Many people have asked me this since our launch a few months ago. This isn’t my first go-around starting and running a small business. I started a children’s boutique in Boston years ago. But when I developed the concept for Bicycle Pie, I’ll admit, it was self-serving.
This time of year, I (along with everyone else) try to set new goals. But in the interest of full disclosure, they rarely last more than a few weeks. Maybe it’s because as my four little ones grow, our house seems to get smaller and smaller, but this year I’m determined to declutter and better organize the kids’ things. I’ve been reading tips and tricks on the topic and ultimately decided on five tasks that seem realistic and doable to help bring order and tidiness back to my home in the New Year.
There were a host of reasons for selling my Boston retail shop. I loved everything about that little boutique, but managing a business and trying to keep a growing family unruffled was an impossible balancing act for me. After our move, I made a promise to myself that, for at least one year, I would not think about a next endeavor. I would focus on only my family’s needs in the present.
Selling a business that you started and that you put everything you had into to get it to the point where it was successful, productive, and can thrive without you; it’s the ultimate goal for any entrepreneur. So why is it so hard when that time actually comes?
As a mom of 4, most of the time the waste we produce is the last thing on my mind, but I recently read that the average 8- to 12-year-old kid throws away nearly 67 pounds of lunch trash every year. Yikes! And when we moved homes last year, I cleaned like crazy for the open house and unearthed more tiny knick-knacks in the kids’ rooms than I care to think about. Life is complicated enough, but what uncomplicated changes can I make to reduce all of this unnecessary waste?
