Hi Friends and welcome to The Midnight Toddler! This is my first time ever blogging. To be honest with you, I am a little scared. I feel like I should start with a little bit about myself and The Midnight Toddler.

I am a happily married stay-at-home mother to five boys, three of whom are human and two of the four-legged variety. As a woman, I am delightfully outnumbered and would not have life any other way. Our human children are twelve, six, and four years old. My husband and I will celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary in May. We met and got married in college. I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Child Development. My career began in the childcare industry followed by about a decade in social services before making the choice to stay at home with our twelve-year-old, back when he was still an only child. He was around the age of five years old. We ended up homeschooling our boys by happenstance. They are currently in sixth grade, kindergarten, and pre-k. That has been quite a fun journey that I would love to share with you.

In my “spare” time I enjoy reading and writing science fiction/fantasy and writing stories for the boys. Additionally, I am a freelance writer for Culture Slate and in an effort to both continue learning about who I am as a person and demonstrate to the boys that one is never too old to go to school I enjoy being a part-time graduate student. I am working on a Master of Arts degree in English and Creative Writing. It is my hope to someday have creative work published.

I just celebrated my birthday. Lets just say that my cake was a fire hazard and leave the specific age a mystery. To be completely honest, I would say that it is only in the last few years of my life that I have started learning who I am as a person, ya know outside of the wife and mom identity. For instance, I love kids, especially mine but I would rather eat my own appendage than ever work in a daycare again. I liken the experience to drowning in a tank surrounded by hungry piranhas. And to put a visual with that; I once had ten kids in a room with one child capable of biting the other nine in a matter of seconds. I must say if I hadn’t been mortified it would have been impressive. I chose to leave that profession before it completely scared me out of having my own.

Following that experience, I worked in social services for about ten years. During that time a lot changed. I had our first baby and three miscarriages. Meanwhile, time moved on as it tends to do and we had a five-year-old who was having daily meltdowns. The regular phone calls from both sets of grandparents who babysat for us was anxiety provoking, especially on top of an already high-stress job. We decided that he needed me to be his main primary caregiver. So, after many late-night discussions, we took a leap of faith and I left the workforce to take care of our little one. Back then we were busy working on speech and occupational therapy, and little did we know we were about to embark on the home education journey. These are all experiences I intend to write about in future posts.

I have realized over time how little I knew about myself before getting married. I find myself very thankful for my husband who has encouraged my interests, two of which being reading and writing. I am learning that it is okay to learn who I am as a mother along the way as well. It is really okay if we learn along with the kids.

Our oldest is about to be a teenager and I can honestly say he is the sweetest person I know. Aside from that (and of course I am biased) he is the child who made me a mom. So much learning with this one. It still blows my mind that we were allowed to take this newborn stranger home from the hospital with absolutely no instruction manual or test to show we knew what we were doing. One might assume that the experience babysitting and in childcare, college degrees, and all that I would have confidence as a mom. Let me tell you… having a degree that specialized in early childhood development meant nothing. I babysat siblings and other kids, including the two-year-olds in the piranha tank I mentioned earlier and that meant nothing either, it is just different when they are your own babies. Naturally, society seems to believe that simply being a woman means we are all preprogrammed to be mothers; which only made me feel even more alone in the endeavor. I call BS on that societal lie. No one is ready, it is all on-the-job training for moms and dads alike. We learn in the trenches of parenthood together with our kids – most of it is beautiful, happy, and fun but we’d be lying if we said life is always Instagram-worthy.

All three of our boys spent time in the NICU after their births. One son has a genetic diagnosis. Another one had a rare medical issue at six months old. We are more grateful than I have words to express that our oldest is not really interrupted by his genetic diagnosis and that our third-born was successfully treated. This kiddo is our youngest and is the namesake for our blog. He keeps what we like to call vampire hours. Seeing as how he is four now, you have some idea of how long I have talked about starting this blog. Our little Count J tends to sleep on his own clock. After many discussions with the neurologist who discharged him at the start of the pandemic as well as his pediatrician we have all agreed that while unique, his sleep schedule works for him. He is amazingly smart, very healthy, happy, and sweet-natured just like his big brothers. It may not work for everyone, but our schedule of 3 am bedtime works well for us…so why not, write about it!

Thank you for taking the time to read. I sincerely hope you enjoy the content. If you like this I would love for you to subscribe and share with your networks! Also, I welcome feedback so long as its constructive and kind. Please let me know if you have suggestions for improvement or any topics you would like to see us write about! 💜