FYBF – Fears, Tears and Belly Laughs (Part 3)

Welcome to the FYBF Fears, Tears and Belly Laughs series!

While I’m on holidays, I’ve asked some very special bloggers to share a story based on one of the prompts and wow wee, what a great line up!

Please make sure you leave some comment love for each guest blogger. The more love we give out, in tenfold it returns.

I wish I could give you a proper introduction into this next post for the Belly Laughs theme but at this stage – I actually haven’t received it.

Luckily, the guest blogger in question happens to also be one of my best friends and she is so damn lucky to not only have me as a friend but one who is forgiving and exempts her from blog post deadlines.

As most of you will know, Brenda is the founder of FYBF but also runs her own show over at Her Collective, Digital Parents and 3C Digital. How she manages to stick to deadlines over on those sites, I’ll never know.

Anyway, I love her all the same.

So…here it is…the blog post I know nothing about…take it away, B!

—

A letter to my 22 year old first time mother self…

Dear Young Mum Brenda,

How good was Toy Story?! Spoiler alert. That ending scene with Andy and the little girl Bonnie in Toy Story 3. Tears galore.

In some ways, Andy is like your firstborn Josh, all grown up and about to move away for college in 2015. I remember you wishing for him to grow up already so you can get your life back and do some more growing up yourself. Let me tell you right now, you’ll feel a sense of loss when it finally dawns on you that he will be moving away for good. So enjoy your time with him as much as you can. And don’t be so grumpy with him when he doesn’t meet your all too high first-born expectations of him. He’s still figuring out what he wants to do with his life. Support him and give him all the love.

Your middle son Eli will try and push his boundaries. Don’t scream at him! Try not to. He’s only fourteen. Nourish his entrepreneurial soul. That kid is one clever, business-savvy dude in the making. Be proud of it. He’s got that skill set from you.

Your middle girl Hannah. Your feisty little feminist who has somehow perfected The Puberty Eye Roll. Be gentle with her. She’s a lot like you only more creative and more arty and 1000% more emo. Nurture her spirit. She needs you to be there for her no matter what. Eventhough you think she’s not listening to you and gives you the “OMG Mum, just stop it already” look just keep telling her all those Oprah-esque affirmations especially this one “Hannah, be your own sunshine.”

Your baby girl Sophie, she’s going to be in Year 3 next year. And she’s just lost her front tooth which you lost!! Seriously Brenda, how can you lose the damn thing?! Good thing you can still yarn a fairly believable story for losing it. “The Tooth Fairy taking it earlier than usual on account of it’s a crazy busy season and she’s trying to beat her own schedule???”  Genius if I may say so myself.

Your baby girl is growing up so fast. She doesn’t want to be called a baby anymore. She’s now A Girl, capish? And she wants to be a scientist! A rock scientist to be exact. I think that’s a geologist. Not sure. I might have to google it. Oh yeah, Google is your best friend. Pretty much 90% of your parenting knowledge will come from Google Land. Enjoy it!

You have a dog called Max. He’s a Jack Russell Terrier cross Chihuahua. You got him from the shelter. He’s like your fifth child. A child who never answers back, doesn’t give you the eye roll and is more than happy to be treated like a baby forever. So take solace in the fact that someone in the house is always happy to see you and always greets you in the morning like he hasn’t seen you in twenty years. 

What else can I tell you? Nothing much really. Because I am still figuring it out myself! But go easy with yourself. You’re doing the best that you can. Stop saying to yourself that you’ve failed as a mum whenever there’s a “child raising” crisis happening.

And oh, you’ve got sexy as running legs now. You’ve become a runner! You ran your first half marathon and full marathon this year! Crazy times!

Keep chasing those dreams, my dearest. You may not get all of them but you’ve given it your red hot go. And that’s an A+++ in my book.

Till next time.

Your Older But Way Hotter Mum Brenda 
xxxx

 

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1. Follow With Some Grace.

2. Sign up to the awesome Digital Parents community ( if you haven’t already done so). DP was created by Brenda Gaddi who happens to be the creator of FYBF. She’s also created 4 gorgeous kidlets. In case you’d like to know. Or maybe not. But we’ll share that info just the same.

3. Add your post URL to the FYBF linky. Please only link up one post.

4. Grab the funky FYBF button and post it on your sidebar. Help spread the blogfloggin love.

5. Visit the blogs of your fellow FYBF’ers and share the comment love