Celebrating Motherhood: Andrea

Today's featured local mom is Andrea, you can read the questions she answered here.
Occupation: SAHM
Age: 35




Children: Sadie 5, Calum 3, and Lucie 15 mos
When you were a teenager and you thought about your future life, what did you think and how does the reality match up?
As a teen, I always pictured being married with children as an adult. I also envisioned staying at home with them until they were school aged and then resuming a career outside the home. As I got older I envisioned having four children specifically - this was after a wonderful summer spent looking after 4 siblings while their mother was having her first round of chemo for breast cancer. Today I am married and have three children, am a stay at home mom at the moment....and have no idea what the future holds as far as career outside the home later in life. I would say my reality matches pretty close to what I envisioned...but had no idea how wonderful kids of my own would be...
6. What is the hardest thing about being a mom?
The hardest thing about being a mom for me is keeping my patience...and making the effort to follow through with the discipline strategy I am trying to use consistently! But I think this also is tied into patience. Sometimes exhaustion (or laziness, depending) can lead to cutting corners on consistency, and I have found kids can smell it a mile away when they know you will not follow through! Having patience with them will help them to learn to have it, and this is a very important quality to be modeled in my opinion.
7. What is the best thing about being a mom?
The best thing about being a mom is seeing them learn and grow....becoming their own person is an amazing journey I feel blessed to be able to witness firsthand. I also have found it really cool to see my kids who are in preschool come home with knowledge - a song, a fact or even an opinion - that I have not given them. It just reconfirms the fact that they are their own independent people.
8. When you think about your parenting style, what words would you use to describe it?
I would say my parenting style is experiential. I think the more diverse and rich and numerous the experiences my kids can have, the better! We love to travel, and I would consider our extracurriculars and friendships to be quite diverse as well. "The more you know, the more you grow" is a saying I agree with!
9. All new mothers get lots of parenting advice, sometimes more than they want! What was some advice that you appreciated and would pass on to others, or alternatively, what was the worst piece of advice you ever got ?
Best advice is easy: enjoy it because it goes by so fast. Even the middle-of-the-night feeds, or the every-hour-after-midnight feeds as it sometimes went were to be cherished...hard to do for someone who loves their sleep so much. But during those quiet moments in the dark, I always tried to remember that I would hopefully one day look back on those times with love while I was a worried wreck at home pacing the floor, wondering where my teenager is and what they are doing. Much rather be woken up for a few minutes in the middle of the night for a nice, cozy cuddle was the way I tried to look at it!
10. What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you became a mother?
I can't think of anything yet I wish I had been told....lots I didn't know but am enjoying learning it along the way.
11. What kind of grown-ups do you hope your children will become?
I hope my children grow up to be open minded and fair. With patience :)
12. How do you keep a sense of balance in your life?
Balance is something I strive for, but won't admit to having just yet. The toddler years are quite time-consuming. But I really enjoy my hour or so of reading in the night! Looking forward to getting back to the gym in the next year though...this will go a looong way towards the balance thing.
13. What is your guilty pleasure?
My guilty pleasure is definitely shopping.
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