The maybe-not-so-secret writing process of the mom blogger.

Just as our children follow us everywhere, so do our stories and the little books in which we write them. If our stories were shared on a paper instead of in print there would be fingerprints all over them. Spilled coffee on the edges, raspberry jam in the middle, and tear stains near the bottom.

When do we write?

We write when we’re able. We write while our toddlers are in the bathtub making their specialty bath water coffees with bubbles and dirty water. We write when our babies are napping, when we should likely be napping ourselves.

We write when we can; in our heads, on our keyboards, and in our well-loved notebooks with the fancy floral inspirational covers.

We watch the stories form as we’re flipping pancakes, changing diapers, or watching brothers hold hands as they walk toward the slide.

Where do we write?

Wherever we can. When our kids are in the bathtub, we sit on the bathroom floor with our laptops wide open, vigilantly wiping off the rogue water droplets that splash our way.

We type up our stories sitting outside the baby’s room, waiting for him to fall asleep. We perch ourselves on big brother’s top bunk, while he sits beside us reading and the toddlers play cars and trucks on the floor below.

What do we write?

We write about the fistfights, the tantrums, the broken cheese. We write about the sticky fingered embraces and the notable big heart changes. We write about the laundry, the explosive messes, and the whining toddlers, and we share how it makes us feel in a way that we hope you know and understand.

We are simply trying to take the everyday and make it shine through words… and through that written process we discover the genuine magic of it all for ourselves.

Why do we write:

We write because it’s therapeutic for our souls and helps us focus on the good. We hope to encourage you and make you laugh. We want you to see what we see and to share in it with us, and to maybe see a little of yourself in our stories too, so that you never feel like “you are the only one.”

Writing about our baby’s eyelashes makes us notice them more often. Writing about impish grins and hysterical laughter makes us engage with our kids more fully. And writing about the fits thrown over the blueberry in the bowl instead of the raspberry, makes us see the silliness and hilarity of that moment and reminds us to laugh as well.

How do we write?

Usually with crying toddlers in the background, or sitting right on our lap as we just “quickly type out that last thought we had flying around in our head.” There might be a brother calling for assistance, or a fire alarm going off to signify that our pizza has finished cooking. These sounds are simply known as the mom blogger’s background noise.

How do we do it? Rarely with peace and quiet, but sometimes when all of the house is still and kids are all asleep in their beds, we do our best to write our last words and read them back to ourselves slowly without distraction.

And strangely enough, it’s at that point that we miss our kids who are in their beds… because they are the ones who truly write these stories for us in the first place.