dear santa,

you and i have a long and significant history that began when my eight-year-old self questioned the existence of you and god in one fell swoop. so i hope that you will not get your velveteen knickers in a wad over the fact that i have chosen you to be on the receiving end of my latest musings.

first, i should say that all i want for christmas is for my life to slow down. i’m not talking about the way that time creeps sluggishly under the weight of anxiety when sick kids are (again!) home from school.

sick bird

i’m talking about the reinstatement of routines that had their own happy, measured rhythm. i never thought i would ask for something like this, but i just want to wash and fold all of the family’s laundry on mondays while the kids eat popcorn on towels in our bedroom and watch back-to-back episodes of the british cartoon kipper the dog. also, i would love for there to be two (TWO!) nights in a row when the adult residents of our house are free from all recreational, church, work, and civic commitments and can resume the deep spiritual practice of falling asleep while watching the latest season of top chef.

p.s. if this slower-paced life could still include the necessary d.i.y. renovations to our newly purchased mountain house that would be swell.

den before and after

"the mermaid room" becomes "the god's eye room"

i am willing to give up running the half marathon this saturday, creating and distributing our annual christmas cd, and, as evidenced by my behavior in the days preceding and following thanksgiving, major components of my self-hygiene routine.

what do you say, big guy?

second, my children are under the impression that they can ask you for items on their lists without notifying me that they are doing so. goodness knows, at ages five and almost-three, the kids are way too young to start questioning your existence (and god’s), but their unwavering belief in you is making my job difficult. would you mind forwarding me all texts, emails, letters, and telegrams that come your way from our house? thanks. lylas (love you like a sis).

third, and this is a two-parter, when you come bounding down our chimney, would you mind cleaning it out at the same time? ’tis the season. also, how do you feel about entering our home via an UNDECORATED hearth? just think of it as a few less strands of tinsel that ms. clause will have to extract from your beard.

to show my appreciation for all that you do during this busy time of year, i’m going to leave you a little something special to go along with the usual christmas cookies.

peace out,

mary allison

first name: Madison

age: 32

current city: Nashville

living situation: I live in a 1960s one-story ranch house in the Nashville suburbs with my husband, Charles, and our two-year-old son, Charlie. We also have two enormous German shepherds who take up lots of bed space.

occupation: Mama, household manager, chef, maid, laundress, dog walker, secretary, chauffeur, wife – and that’s just on weekends and before 9:00 a.m. and after 5:00 p.m. on weekdays! The rest of the time I’m a marketing communications manager for a global risk consulting company. I recently went back to work full-time after working a flex/part-time schedule for about 18 months.

how do you structure your time and space? Going back to work full-time was a hard decision to make but I had to choose between increasing my hourly commitment or leaving altogether, and I have neither the patience nor the creativity to be a stay-at-home mom (my hat’s off to all of them out there!). So life right now is a little crazy. I used to run errands during the week so we could have family time on the weekends, but now we spend at least part of our Saturdays and Sundays going to the grocery store, the cleaners, Target, et cetera.

Another casualty of working full-time is that our home life isn’t quite what I want it to be. I wish our house were tidier. I wish I made the beds every morning. I wish laundry were done (meaning cleaned, folded and put away) in fewer than three days. I wish we all sat down to a home-cooked meal every night at 6:30. So I’ve learned to lower my standards a little bit, while maintaining focus on the things that are most important to us: eating healthily, exercising, having some downtime, reading books, playing, and getting enough sleep. I figure that if the biggest victim of our lifestyle is that my house is a little messier than I like, I can live with that. Hopefully Charlie will remember that we read to him every day, not that a laundry basket routinely sits in the den for days on end. We do have a housekeeper who comes once a week and does the heavy cleaning. And she irons. That’s been a huge lifesaver for our whole family.

In terms of time structure, flexibility is crucial for us. With a young child, creating a morning schedule and evening routine is essential – but so is the ability to break that routine when there’s a tantrum, or someone gets sick, or one of the pups decides to escape. Another critical element is teamwork. My husband (who’s incredibly supportive and helpful) and I tag-team to get everything done. That way, if there’s a wrench thrown into a morning routine that would prevent me from making an early meeting, Charles can take Charlie to school.

Childcare has been an ongoing struggle for us. We had a nanny after Charlie was born, which was wonderful. But it’s an expensive undertaking, especially for one child. She did help keep our house clean, and do the baby laundry, and meet work/repair people in the middle of the day. We definitely took all of that for granted. After a bad experience with her replacement, we put Charlie in a full-time daycare/preschool near my office. It’s had its ups and downs, but overall, it’s been a great experience for him. Plus, it’s about one-third the cost of a nanny. The only downside for me personally is that it’s a 40-minute commute from our home, and that much time in the car with a cranky, hungry toddler can be challenging. That and my car looks like a Goldfish explosion happened.

I’m incredibly jealous of our peers who live near their relatives and thus have access to free, on-demand babysitting. Charles and I would really like to have more date nights, so we’re working on creating a stable list of good sitters. 

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives, 

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? We’re in spring right now. It’s a period of growth, of transformation, of blossoming. We’re watching our toddler turn into a little boy right before our eyes. It’s amazing and humbling. He learns so many new things every day, and we love being there for those discoveries. Spring is also a period of change, and our lifestyle has changed dramatically with my working full-time again. We’re also hoping to have another baby soon – another transformation for our family! Challenges abound for us right now (the terrible twos are in full force in our house), but we try to keep some perspective and remember that this is just a stage that too shall pass.

-What season(s) preceded this one? Fall, which is both a time of new beginnings (school season, football) and endings (leaves turning, warm weather ending). We lost two people very close to us: Charles’s aunt and my great-uncle, who was my quasi-grandfather. It was incredibly sad. But it was also a joyful time of spending time with an unimaginably awesome little boy and a fantastic husband.

-What season(s) might your future hold? Hopefully summer – both literally and figuratively. Pool and popsicles and beach trips – so much fun for all of us! Maybe enjoying our last few months as a 3-person family (summer always comes to an end, right?). 

Favorite family activity/activities: We’re really lucky in that Nashville is a great place for families. We love going to the zoo and riding on the carousel, attending story time at the library, playing at the playground, having picnics at the park, swimming at our awesome Y in the summer, and hiking at Radnor Lake  or Percy Warner Park. Once a week, Charlie and I also do a toddler music program called “the music playhouse,” and a gymnastics class.

favorite solo activities: Reading is my lifeblood; I’d be lost without it. I also love crossword puzzles, cooking, writing, swimming, hiking, and movies. I’ll also cop to really loving TV. Writing all this makes me wish I had more time for myself!  

my days are marked by endless shortcuts, tricks and concessions that are driven by creativity, necessity, and most of all, convenience.

for example, the monkey and bird receive morning doses of PBS and afternoon boosters of dora. they also take baths in the middle of the day, not because i am following the advice of the latest parenting guru but because i simply want to contain the kids while i fold laundry.

there are countless parenting philosophies calling out to us from every corner of pop culture, and many of them are wildly attractive. this is why, as a popular book title states it, “i was a really good mom before i had kids.” but things are different now that my life includes internet searches such as, “are holly berries poisonous?” it is not that i am parenting without convictions. i would describe my particular version of motherhood as a tapestry that includes the latest wisdom delivered by scientific and personal research. but this tapestry really is held together by what blogger Julie of a little pregnant calls “a series of reflexes, instincts, and minute-by-minute adjustments.”

my natural tendency is to apologize for the huge gap between today’s tidy expert parenting schemes and my own comedy of errors, which is often held together by love and duct tape. but the people i’ve encountered through this blog are proof that women’s greatest triumphs are rarely the result of textbook decisions made according to published plans.

mothers of invention from the blog's first month

the mothers who dazzle me with their love of life are always those who raise their children with a sort of makeshift flexibility, and who reinvent themselves in each season using this same, treasured skill.