Hi! Hello! Hi. ♡

I’ve had this coffee date on my heart for months, but life! time! It all feels extra slippery these days.

Recently I’ve met several people out in the real world who talked about what POY means to them and how much they have enjoyed the recipes over the years. And I think these little meetings gave me the push I needed to sit down and write this post.

Which… isn’t anything earth-shattering, I don’t think? But just a bit of an update on what life is like for us these days, what we’re thinking about, and how we’re refining the behind the scenes of Pinch of Yum as we head into 2024! (Yes, it’s February. This sort of lateness is on-brand.)

There have a been changes to a lot of things within POY in the last year – almost all of them for the better, being driven by alignment of values and priorities.

And there have been some lost-feeling moments, too. As life goes.

This coffee date is really just a review of where things are at personally, and blog-wise. ♡ Maybe you can relate or maybe you just find it interesting? Or maybe it’s actually very boring and you’ll be done reading in about two seconds! We’ll find out!

Here we go. This is, in a (long) nutshell, The State of Things.

Our girls are 3 and 5 and OH MY! it is a fun stage for me as a mom.

We are out of the sleepless nights stage, the “why is my baby crying” anxiety cycles, and the pumping / breastfeeding / spit up loop that was somehow both so rewarding and soul-crushing.

And now we are sleeping again. (PRAISE!) The baby stuff has generally moved out of the house to make room for a seemingly endless supply of trinkets, paper scraps, stickers, and Paw Patrol and Barbie toys and accessories that I find literally everywhere. Help?! We are on a regular rotation between hugs, snuggles, I love you’s, and Level 10 tantrums, but this works for me. Even though I absolutely love babies, I feel much better equipped to handle the challenges of this stage than I ever felt with our girls as babies.

This last year has been one of soft and normal parenting goodbyes.

In the fall, we took Lena, our youngest, to Build A Bear so she could put her very last pacifier inside a teddy bear as part of Operation: Pacis Are Not Forever. As we were getting ready to leave the house, I ran upstairs to grab the paci and did my signature paci-grab move – one knee on the ground, tuck the shoulder, and a far reach back under her crib to grab the last little rubber paci and it just hit me. This is the last time. And I felt the pinprick of tears almost immediately. It is such a mundane little mom task. I never particularly loved needing to contort my body into this weird position to grab her pacis from under her crib and never even thought twice about it. And then it just ended, and I won’t do that part of mom life anymore. It’s bittersweet.

We’re now almost done with diapers (didn’t cry about that one) and we’re talking about Kindergarten and gymnastics and big girl beds and finding a new home for the crib and the stroller. The baby days look so rosy in hindsight and I’m already missing them so deeply.

But, big picture, I’m in such a better place than I was 2-3 years ago. I’m so glad to be sleeping. I’m so glad to be generally in a predictable routine. I’m a more confident mom – I feel like I generally know what our girls need. And most days, I just get to stand in awe of what wonderful little creatures these kiddos are.

This is a good stage for us. I really love it.

The irony of the internet is that things change so quickly and so frequently that you never really fully develop any long-lasting mastery of a thing – it’s always a moving target.

There are constantly new waves to catch, and I kind of love it. It keeps me on my toes and makes life exciting.

But at times, it can also feel a bit disorienting. Like, wait, I thought I had this down? The other day, in a moment of blah-ness, I said to Bjork: “I don’t even know how to write a blog post anymore.” I’ve literally written thousands of blog posts. I’ve always felt like I knew what I was doing. But things are constantly changing. People’s internet behavior. What is helpful. Who I am as a person and what I value in the content I create. None of it is static. And sometimes that feels a little defeating.

On the good side:

And on the tricky side:

Add becoming a parent into the mix and it’s left me asking the question, “what am I even doing” on a semi-regular basis over the last few years. As in, is this the right thing to focus on? Is this where my heart is? Am I connecting with people the way I want to?

And yet, in a lot of ways, I feel more confident, competent, and motivated than ever before.

What a ride.