Okay, so I'm not going to tell you too much about myself and my family here, since I introduced us in my first post.
What I wanted to do here is explain a bit about the blog and what I hope it will become.
I know quite a few people who seem to have an immense amount of difficulty navigating their way through relationships, parenting, etc. To them relationships are an indecipherable enigma and they can't understand why their relationships never seem to work out...
I do not claim to be an expert and I am CERTAINLY not perfect, but I am the one they seem to come to for advice and I am in a long term relationship and raising children so I do have some experience. I do not claim to know everything but I thought I would put my knowledge, my mistakes, my successes, my failures and the things I learn from it all out there in the hopes that it might help others too.
I'll start with what is probably the most important thing these people who ask for my advice do not seem to understand (I blame our society for giving us the "crazy in love" and "happily ever after" mentalities). Relationships are not all uncontrollable passion, obsession and constant romance where everything just comes naturally and easily... Relationships take WORK and COMMITMENT and lots of it. If you expect to just lay back, relax and enjoy the ride without ever putting anything into it... or if you expect that 5 years down the road you will feel exactly the same as you feel in the first 5 months of a relationship you will be sorely disappointed.
That doesn't mean that relationships should be immeasurably difficult either. It is possible for people to not be a good match in spite of everyone doing their best to make it work.
Stick around and I'll tell you how my husband and I work to keep our relationship strong, healthy and satisfying. I'll tell you how I handle my relationships with my daughters (and how I get them to behave!). I'll tell you when I've messed up and we can all laugh and learn about it together. I'll also likely tell you about other things once in a while too if talking about something else strikes my fancy. None of it is perfect and you don't have to agree with me but, if nothing else, maybe you can learn from my mistakes so you don't have to make them yourself ;-).
